Golda Meir
Politician
"Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself."
Pessimism quotes
Pessimism
78 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Elon Musk
Entrepreneur, Business Magnate
"Optimism, pessimism, f**k that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosopher
"The bad thing about all religions is that, instead of being able to confess their allegorical nature, they have to conceal it."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosopher
"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer
Philosopher
"Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside pessimism — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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Pessimism quotes (page 1 of 4)
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"The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism."
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"Hope transforms pessimism into optimism. Hope is invincible."
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"Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair."
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"Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect."
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"I don't believe in pessimism."
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"The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable."
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"Enough to know no knowing."
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"I still think sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin."
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"Younger people have so many opportunities. I don't see any pessimism among them."
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"I'm British; pessimism is my wheelhouse."
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"We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves; fear, desire, hope, still push us on toward the future."
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"Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received."
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"This actual world of what is knowable, in which we are and which is in us, remains both the material and the limit of our consideration."
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"Every human perfection is allied to a defect into which it threatens to pass, but it is also true that every defect is allied to a perfection."
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"There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism."
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"The official strategy is defensive pessimism, always."
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"Pessimism, she is a fond friend of yours, yes?" - That's uncalled for. I barely know her. Mere acquaintances, at best."
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"Schopenhauer has analysed the pessimism that characterize modern thought, but Hamlet invented it"
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"In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation - it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry."
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"My pessimism has never been flabby."
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