I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.
Peter Benchley

I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?
Eugenio Montale

I think I probably hoped for it a little bit, but I'm not an optimist. I'm a realist... or maybe even a pessimist.
Clay Aiken

I vehemently deny that I was born a cynic and a pessimist.
Paul Getty

I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.
Antonio Gramsci

I'm not a pessimist, even though I do think awful things are going to happen.
James Lovelock

I'm sort of a pessimist about tomorrow and an optimist about the day after tomorrow.
Eric Sevareid

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
Paul Harvey

I've never seen a monument erected to a pessimist.
Will Harvey

In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right.
Jack Nicholson

Many an optimist has become rich by buying out a pessimist.
Robert G. Allen

No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
William Ralph Inge

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
Helen Keller

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
Oscar Wilde

Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege.
William Beveridge

The difference between an optimist and a pessimist? An optimist laughs to forget, but a pessimist forgets to laugh.
Tom Bodett

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
Mark Twain

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
George Will

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.
James Branch Cabell

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
J. Robert Oppenheimer