Rosabeth Moss Kanter Quotes

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.

There's nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

It might interest you to know that the 1828 Noah Webster Dictionary identifies the optimist in complimentary terms, but says nothing about the pessimist. The word 'pessimist' was not in our vocabulary at that time. It's a modern 'invention' which I believe we should 'dis-invent.'

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

I thought all my life that optimists and pessimists pass away the same way, so why be a pessimist?

Pessimists are toxic. I love optimists - and by that, I don't mean people who are unable to see challenges. Optimists are solution-oriented.

Sometimes pessimism or optimism gets popular, and it's contagious.

The Church of TED is very optimistic. Bulgarians are some of the most pessimistic in the world. There are the Happy, the Unhappy and the Bulgarians.

Optimism may sometimes be delusional, but pessimism is always delusional.

Optimists and pessimists die the exact same death, but they live very different lives!

Optimists are right. So are pessimists. It's up to you to choose which you will be.

...an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.

How can we expect something positive to come from all the negative that we put into this world?

Pessimism is a very easy way out because it is a short view of life. If you look at what is happening around us today, you can't help but feel that life is a terrible complexity of problems. But if you look back a few thousand years, you realize that we have advanced fantastically. If you take a long view, I do not see how you can be pessimistic about the future of mankind.

It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.

One thing we can do is make the choice to view the world in a healthy way. We can choose to see the world as safe with only moments of danger rather than seeing the world as dangerous with only moments of safety.

You may have problems to solve but for every problem there is always a solution. It's a positive-and-negative thing: you can't have a problem without there being a solution. There always is. Your job is to find it.

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

An optimist is a person who sees only the lights in the picture, whereas a pessimist sees only the shadows. An idealist, however, is one who sees the light and the shadows, but in addition sees something else: the possibility of changing the picture, of making the lights prevail over the shadows.

It's better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right

It's hard to stay positive when there's a lot of evil in the world.

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.

Someone once said a cynic is just a disappointed romantic. That really, really sums me up.

I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her. Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: “It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.

When you focus on problems, you get more problems. When you focus on possibilities, you have more opportunities.