Arthur Miller Quotes

If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny. Well, I can say that, pessimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man.

We're all born pessimists. It takes effort to be optimistic.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

The difference between a pessimistic and an optimistic mind is of such controlling importance in regard to every intellectual function, and especially for the conduct of life, that it is out of the question to admit that both are normal, and the great majority of mankind are naturally optimistic.

To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.

It's kinda hard to be optimistic, When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted.

I believe in man. I believe in mankind, as the worst and the best that has happened to this world.

Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have hope. And I also do think that human beings often do do wonderful, correct, brilliant things. So, on balance, I'd like to be optimistic about the future.

Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

Democrats believed in "progressivism." They believed in Big Government. But they at least attached optimistic outcomes to it. They really believed they were helping America. They really believed they were helping families, helping people. Now they've just become, "The country's horrible, it's rotten, it needs to be reformed!" The liberals of John F. Kennedy's day did not think there was anything really major wrong with this country.

I like pessimists. They’re always the ones who bring life jackets for the boat.

I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward.

If people were super-optimistic about technology there would be no reason to be pessimistic about the future.

Sometimes it's not the optimist you need, but another pessimist to walk beside you.

As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.

It is much more sensible to be an optimist instead of a pessimist, for if one is doomed to disappointment, why experience it in advance?

On one hand, I'm an optimistic pessimist. On the other, I'm a pessimistic optimist. But while there's life, there's still hope, and I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing if I didn't think there was still hope.

It is not usually our ideas that make us optimistic or pessimistic, but it is our optimism or pessimism of physiological or pathological origin that makes our ideas.

Nothing of any importance has ever been accomplished by a pessimist.

My mom's response after seeing a sign that read 'Love God, People and Life': 'Well a lot of people don't like people.'

When the outlook is steeped in pessimism, I remind myself, "Two and two still make four, and you can't keep humankind down for long."

You have the freedom to choose to be optimistic or pessimistic. You can peel off your old attitude like a suit of clothes, and put on a brand spanking new attitude every single day. It's as simple as that.

It is a modern tragedy that despair has so many spokesmen, and hope so few.