Realistic Optimism Quotes

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

The great challenge of adulthood is holding on to your idealism after you lose your innocence.

There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

I'm a romantic realist. I knew I would become a star, just as I know some day the bubble will burst.

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.

In being realistic we do not always have to be pessimistic. Christ never blinked his eyes at bad things. But he never became so obsessed with human evil that he lost faith in man.

I can't be told life is beautiful through a normal positive thinking book or a Hallmark movie; that language doesn't work for me.

I wouldn't have run for office if I wasn't an optimistic person. I'm a realistic optimistic person, though.

Leave behind the passive dreaming of a rose-tinted future. The energy of happiness exists in living today with roots sunk firmly in reality's soil.

A pessimist is a well-informed optimist.

The positive thinker is a hard-headed, tough-minded, and factual realist. He sees all the difficulties clearly... which is more than can be said for the average negative thinker. But he sees more than difficulties - he tries to see the solutions of those difficulties.

I don't believe in fairy tales, but I believe in you and me

I'm not interested in blind optimism, but I'm very interested in optimism that is hard-won, that takes on darkness and then says, 'This is not enough.'

There's only one thing more beautiful than a beautiful dream, and that's a beautiful reality.

You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.

I feel like I'm a relentless, pragmatic, determined optimist.

Nourish your hopes, but do not overlook realities.

Business can never be carried on without optimism, and the New World is essentially optimistic. But at the same time optimism does not absolve us from weighing carefully all possible difficulties.

We do need a vision that's uplifting, even whilst being realistic. And there's a lot in the world that already speaks to that, like tikkun olam in the Jewish faith.

I consent Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.