Charles Sanders Peirce Quotes

I am not a big fan of positive thinking. The term suggests that there is something negative that you have to counteract by being positive. That is an artificial duality.

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.

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.

Your life will follow your expectations. What you expect is what you will get. If you dwell on positive thoughts, you will move in that direction; if you continually think negative thoughts, you will live a negative life.

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

Never underestimate the repellent power of a negative mental attitude. It can prevent life's lucky breaks from benefiting you.

If you're not optimistic on some level, then you've given up.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

Our thoughts about an event can have a dramatic effect on how we go through the event itself. When our expectations are low, it's easy to be pleasantly surprised. When they're not, we're vulnerable to painful disappointment. Because of this, many people spend a good deal of effort trying to avoid developing high hopes about anything.

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

I think I have a mental nappy attitude.

I've always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

Anything that happens that's good, they think, Oh, it's an accident, when is the roof caving in? You've got to get them out of that mental framework.

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

I'm very realistic in my outlook on everything in life. When I look ahead in my mind to see what's going to happen next, I see the good and I see the bad.

There is a tendency to overestimate the positive things in our lives and underestimate the possibility of negative things

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

I don't like being pessimistic. I don't like living my life with a nihilistic mindset.

The optimist lives on the peninsula of infinite possibilities; the pessimist is stranded on the island of perpetual indecision.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

Happiness is a state of mind. It's just according to the way you look at things.

It is a curious quirk of human nature that some people can see opportunities, while others only see problems.

If you wait until circumstances justify your thinking pleasant thoughts, you are likely to wait forever.

Pessimism is an excuse for not trying and a guarantee to a personal failure.

A positive thinker does not refuse to recognize the negative; he refuses to dwell on it.