It is largely because the free-thinkers, as a school, have hardly made up their minds whether they want to be more optimist or more pessimist than Christianity that their small but sincere movement has failed.
--
Ch. II: The Great Victorian Novelists (p. 73)Gilbert Keith Chesterton
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Don't ever become a pessimist, Ira; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
Robert A. Heinlein
I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.
Peter Ustinov
Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.
William Golding
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
Antonio Gramsci
An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
Rene Descartes
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith
Chevalier, Albert
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