Pessimism

(222 votes)   The taste for worst-case scenarios reflects the need to master fear of what is felt to be uncontrollable. It also expresses an imaginative complicity with disaster.

Susan Sontag
1933-, American Essayist

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(179 votes)   Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.

Thomas Hardy
1840-1928, British Novelist, Poet

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(113 votes)   Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

James Baldwin
1924-1987, American Author

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(110 votes)   A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself.

George Bernard Shaw
1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist

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(94 votes)   If you keep on saying things are going to be bad, you have a good chance of being a prophet.

Isaac Bashevis Singer
1904-1991, Polish-born American Journalist, Writer

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(87 votes)   Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

Mark Twain
1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer

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(86 votes)   The pessimist is seldom an agitating individual. His creed breeds indifference to others, and he does not trouble himself to thrust his views upon the unconvinced.

Agnes Repplier
1858-1950, American Author, Social Critic

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(79 votes)   Pessimism never won any battle.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
1890-1969, Thirty-fourth President of the USA

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(77 votes)   A pessimist is one who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

Elbert Hubbard
1859-1915, American Author, Publisher

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(77 votes)   It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.

Emile Durkheim
1858-1917, French Sociologist

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(77 votes)   The most prolific period of pessimism comes at twenty-one or thereabouts, when the first attempt is made to translate dreams into reality.

Heywood Broun
1888-1939, American Journalist, Novelist

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(69 votes)   We all agree that pessimism is a mark of superior intellect.

John Kenneth Galbraith
1908-, American Economist

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(63 votes)   If you pray for rain, don't be surprised if you're struck by lightning.

Damien Cannon

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(61 votes)   In the long run, the pessimist may be proven right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip.

Daniel Readon

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(58 votes)   I doubt anyone will ever see -- anywhere -- a memorial to a pessimist.

Source Unknown

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