Top 55 Pessimistic Quotes

The United States is the ultimate land of optimistic promise, but it also gave birth to quintessentially pessimistic tragedy: ‘Moby-Dick.’

It takes a certain amount of courage to not be pessimistic. I’d like to believe there is good in everyone.

From 8 A.M. until noon, I am pessimistic. Then from 1 P.M. until 4, I feel optimistic.

The Freedom Caucus represents a pessimistic, divisive, and gerrymandered view of our nation. If America is to make progress, we must step forward from this form of politics – not just because we disagree with this or that policy but because it is fundamentally undemocratic and tyrannical.

I don’t want to be a grumpy old man or too pessimistic, because if I have a chance, I would prefer to watch a film in the cinema with an audience on a big screen instead of watching it on a cell phone. It’s a very different experience, but somehow I think this form will have its own future and life.

I think it is a luxury and privilege to be sane and well and pessimistic. Because with depression, you have no other option. You don’t want that pessimism, because it is crushing you and keeping you down at the bottom of the well.

I’m not as pessimistic as what a number of people seem to believe.

I’m not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there’s still a great green heart where there’s possibility. There’s hope in the wilderness.

It’s fashionable in some circles to be pessimistic about America, about conservative solutions, about the Republican Party. I utterly reject that pessimism.

I am incrementally a pessimist, but I see the international debate that Edward Snowden has engendered, and I think this is exactly where the discussion should be. So, I would say I’m more optimistic than pessimistic.

I have pessimistic moments when I think I should go on a diet because people are paying money to see movies with exceptional-looking actresses. But being in college has helped me realize that the best thing I can do is to feel good about myself and forget about other people’s standards.

Honestly, I had a very realistic, probably pessimistic outlook at the beginning of my career post-graduation of drama school. In general, I would see black women, usually older, playing a certain archetype on procedural shows. I thought, ‘Okay, that’s what I have to look forward to.’

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

The spirit of the gospel is optimistic; it trusts in God and looks on the bright side of things. The opposite or pessimistic spirit drags men down and away from God, looks on the dark side, murmurs, complains, and is slow to yield obedience.

I’m always fighting the cup-is-half-empty way of being, versus the cup-is-half-full. I’m always fighting the pessimistic versus the positive.

I’m pessimistic. I don’t think that justice always gets the right person.

Vermonters often ask me whether I am pessimistic about the future of our country. My honest answer is that I am not.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Every economy is uncertain. Referring to this or any economy as ‘uncertain’ is an unnecessary and pessimistic redundancy.

When I look at the world I’m pessimistic, but when I look at people I am optimistic.

To describe someone as a pessimist is to issue an insult, whereas to be labelled an optimist is to get a pat on the back. To dismiss someone’s argument as pessimistic is to suggest it is the product of a personality disorder, rather than careful analysis.

I always call myself either an optimistic pessimist or a pessimistic optimist – I’m not sure which way it goes.

Crisis and pressure help foster change – that’s why I’m not so pessimistic towards crises.

Clinically speaking, depression is a pessimistic sense of your own capabilities, and despondent lack of energy.

A conservative government survives essentially by dampening expectations and subduing hopes. Conservatism is basically pessimistic; reformism is basically optimistic.

The public is even more pessimistic about the economy than even the most bearish economists are.

I grew up in the 1960s and wanted to become part of the great space exploration effort, but when I graduated from college in 1974, the Apollo program was over, and the country had moved into this pessimistic mode. We had entered the ‘age of limits.’

If you’re not being pessimistic, you’re not being very realistic. But I think one must always have hope, and when you have children, of course, you have no choice but to work your tail off to try and protect the future for your children. And that is infused by hope in the end.

Gospel music is never pessimistic, it’s never ‘oh my god, its all going down the tubes’, like the blues often is.

If everything always went perfectly, I would feel like, When is the ball going to drop? Because good things don’t always last. Maybe I’m a pessimistic person. When something just seems too good, I can’t believe it.

If the general opinion is pessimistic, fantasy is going to hold its own.

If, as is natural, you focus on the corruption and on those threatened institutions that are trying to prevent change – even though they don’t really know what they’re trying to prevent – then you can get pessimistic.

Psychologists even have a term for this: they talk about ‘mean world syndrome’. People who have just seen too much of the news have become more cynical, more pessimistic, more anxious, even more depressive. So, yeah, I think that is something you need to be wary of.

What makes us feel pessimistic about the world, ultimately, is the way the media encourage us to believe that our fate hangs on the every move of the promise-breaking, terminally disappointing Teflon liars in Washington.

I try not to be too optimistic or pessimistic. If you’re a pessimist then that’s depressing all the time; if you’re an optimist and things don’t work out then that’s depressing, too.

The most famous and one of the most thoroughgoing opponents of bank credit was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson reacted to the panic of 1819 as a confirmation of his pessimistic views on banks.

Sorrow ages you prematurely. When you’re in emotional debt, you’re pessimistic about the future and, even in your green years, long to return to the past to remedy the shortfalls of love and opportunity you suffered.

On one hand, I am very pessimistic, but on the other hand, if I didn’t believe that speaking up would do something, I wouldn’t have spoken.

At my age it is unseemly to be pessimistic.

There’s nothing particularly wrong with being more pessimistic than optimistic. Optimism is broad-based, non-detail-oriented thinking; pessimism is detail-oriented thinking.

I think in life, you have a choice. You can either be optimistic or pessimistic, and I go for the optimism.

I’m very pessimistic.

I’ve always had this in some ways pessimistic and in some ways realistic idea that I’m the lowest rung on the ladder.

I’m not pessimistic about anything.

I’m not pessimistic about much of anything.

It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

This is what old guys do. They get dark and pessimistic.

I have a very pessimistic view that every win takes you closer to a loss because no-one in the world can keep on winning forever.

My parents said marrying was an optimistic thing to do in pessimistic times.

High IQ individuals don’t like surprises and are pessimistic, because it’s logical.

When you have vision it affects your attitude. Your attitude is optimistic rather than pessimistic.

I’m one of the more pessimistic cats on the planet. I make Van Gogh look like a rodeo clown.

A bright future may be what humanity aspires to achieve but it’s far easier to talk about conflicts that play out in dark and pessimistic settings.

The ’80s have been so much doom and gloom. We’ve become very pessimistic.

I’m not pessimistic about people in general, but only about the way they live.