Pessimism

Pessimism is a state of mind that views life and its aspects from a negative perspective, especially in regard to future events. It is the opposite of optimism.

I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. ~ Leonard Cohen

Quotes

• I can't be a pessimist because I'm alive.
  • James Baldwin, "The Negro and the American Promise"

• —Blessed are they who expect the worst, for they shall get it!
  • John Brunner, Quicksand (1967), Chapter 24

• If you expect the worst from a person, you can't ever be disappointed. Only the disappointed resort to violence. The pessimist, which is another way of saying the Augustinian, takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink. The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed; that is one of the most abiding of human satisfactions.
  • Anthony Burgess, in The Wanting Seed, p. 11 (1962)

Creeds matter very little... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label. ~ James Branch Cabell

That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant. ~ Rex Stout

In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing. And this will not be possible until all the determinism and pessimism that we have inherited from the 19th century — and which has infected every department of our culture, from poetry to atomic physics — has been dismissed as fallacious and illogical. ~ Colin Wilson

• Whatever pretended pessimists in search of notoriety may say, most people are naturally kind, at heart.
  • James Branch Cabell, in The Cream of the Jest (1917)

• Creeds matter very little. ... The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. So I elect for neither label.
  • James Branch Cabell, in The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926)

• I am so often accused of gloominess and melancholy. And I think I'm probably the most cheerful man around. I don't consider myself a pessimist at all. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel completely soaked to the skin. … I think those descriptions of me are quite inappropriate to the gravity of the predicament that faces us all. I've always been free from hope. It's never been one of my great solaces. I feel that more and more we're invited to make ourselves strong and cheerful. .... I think that it was Ben Jonson who said, I have studied all the theologies and all the philosophies, but cheerfulness keeps breaking through.
  • Leonard Cohen, as quoted in "The Joking Troubadour of Gloom" in The Daily Telegraph (26 April 1993)

I believe that there is a moral government; and that God reigns. I am no pessimist; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also to the good men through whom He has worked. ~ Frederick Douglass

• I believe that there is a moral government; and that God reigns. I am no pessimist; I give thanks to the good Lord, and also to the good men through whom He has worked.
  • Frederick Douglass, Speech at Tremont Temple (September 1890)

• Man, at least when educated, is a pessimist. He believes it safer not to reflect on his achievements; Jove is known to strike such people down.
  • John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty (1977)

• The literature doesn't show that positive thinking helps (sports) performance; what the literature shows is that negative thinking hurts performance.
  • Dr. Colleen Hacker, Journal of Excellence Issue 4 page 14

• To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way.
  • Thích Nhất Hạnh, The Miracle of Mindfulness (1999)

• Don't ever become a pessimist … 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, in Time Enough for Love (1973)

• My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?
  • Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

• If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.
  • Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

• Let pessimism once take hold of the mind, and life is all topsy-turvy, all vanity and vexation of spirit. There is no cure for individual or social disorder, except in forgetfulness and annihilation. "Let us eat, drink and be merry," says the pessimist, "for to-morrow we die." If I regarded my life from the point of view of the pessimist, I should be undone.
  • Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

• No pessimist ever won an audience commensurately wide with his genius.
  • Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

• Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the world at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.
  • Helen Keller, Optimism (1903)

• It’s an odd quirk of the scientific personality that pessimism can result just as readily from a lack of outstanding problems as from their continued presence.
  • David Kordahl, (Winter 2019)"Steven Weinberg Glimpses the Promised Land". The New Atlantis: 120–128. (See Steven Weinberg.)

• Immune to the blandishments of religions, countries, families, and everything else that puts both average and above-average citizens in the limelight, pessimists are sideliners in both history and the media. Without a belief in gods or ghosts, unmotivated by a comprehensive delusion, they could never plant a bomb, plan a revolution, or shed blood for a cause.
  • Thomas Ligotti, in The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror

• if we see a light at the end of the tunnel,
  it's the light of an oncoming train.
  • Robert Lowell, in "Since 1939." Day by Day. (1977)

• The kind of facile optimism that a figure such as Boris Johnson exudes is... a way of avoiding the issues, of pretending that we can resolve our problems by not thinking deeply about them, but by simply asserting “we can do it”. There is something equally objectionable about unthinking pessimism. About the insistence that a social problem is so beyond control that we cannot avoid catastrophe or so deeply rooted that it cannot be dug out... This, as much as climate change or racism, is an issue to confront. Otherwise, despair about challenging such problems will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Kenan Malik Want to change the world? Then you’d better give up on self-defeating pessimism The Guardian (7 November 2021)

• Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.
  • Shimon Peres, As quoted in Serving "60 Years to Life", Newsweek Europe (12 December 2005)

• ...but first there is a certain experience we must be careful to avoid... we must not become misologues, as people become misanthropes. There is no greater evil one can suffer than to hate reasonable discourse. Misology and misanthropy arise in the same way. Misanthropy comes when a man without knowledge or skill has placed great trust in someone and believes him to be altogether truthful, sound and trustworthy; then, a short time afterwards he finds him to be wicked and unreliable, and then this happens in another case; when one has frequently had that experience, especially with those whom one believed to be one's closest friends, then, in the end, after many blows, one comes to hate all men and to believe that no one is sound in any way at all...This is a shameful state of affairs... and obviously due to an attempt to have human relations without any skill in human affairs.
  • Plato, Phaedo 89d–e

• This is a pleasant surprise, Archie. I would not have believed it. That of course is the advantage of being a pessimist; a pessimist gets nothing but pleasant surprises, an optimist nothing but unpleasant.
  • Rex Stout, in lines for Nero Wolfe, in Fer-de-Lance (1934)

• Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry, or hard-done-by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 119

• All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain-body, in which case even a minor situation may produce intense negativity, such as anger, depression, or deep grief. The ego believes that through negativity it can manipulate reality and get what it wants. It believes that through it, it can attract a desirable condition or dissolve an undesirable one.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 119

• Negativity is totally unnatural. It is a psychic pollutant, and there is a deep link between the poisoning and destruction of nature and the vast negativity that has accumulated in the collective human psyche. No other life form on the planet knows negativity, only humans, just as no other life form violates and poisons the Earth that sustains it. Have you ever seen an unhappy flower or a stressed oak tree? Have you come across a depressed dolphin, a frog that has a problem with self-esteem, a cat that cannot relax, or a bird that carries hatred and resentment? The only animals that may occasionally experience something akin to negativity or show signs of neurotic behavior are those that live in close contact with humans and so link into the human mind and its insanity.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 119

• Occasionally... two ducks will get into a fight - sometimes for no apparent reason, or because one duck has strayed into another's private space. The fight usually lasts only for a few seconds, and then the ducks separate, swim off in opposite directions, and vigorously flap their wings a few times. They then continue to swim on peacefully as if the fight had never happened. When I observed that for the first time, I suddenly realized that by flapping their wings they were releasing surplus energy, thus preventing it from becoming trapped in their body and turning into negativity. This is natural wisdom, and it is easy for them because they do not have a mind that keeps the past alive unnecessarily and then builds an identity around it.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 120

• When you have reached a certain degree of presence, you don't need negativity anymore to tell you what is needed in your life situation. But as long as negativity is there, use it. Use it as a kind of signal that reminds you to be more present... you stop it from arising by being fully present.
  • Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment (1997) p. 120

• As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
  • Leon Trotsky, "On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many Other Things" (1901), as quoted in The Prophet Armed : Trotsky, 1879-1921 (2003) by Isaac Deutscher , p. 45

• Maslow's psychology, firmly based upon Freud and Watson, simply points out that the optimistic side of the picture has been overlooked; the deterministic laws of our 'lower nature' hold sway in their won field; but there are other laws. Man's freedom is a reality — a reality that makes a difference to his physical, as well as his mental health. When Frankl's prisoners ceased to believe in the possibility of freedom, they grew sick and died. On the other hand, when they saw that Dachau had no chimney, standing out all night in the rain seemed no great hardship; they laughed and joked. The conclusion needs to be stated in letters ten feet high. In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing. And this will not be possible until all the determinism and pessimism that we have inherited from the 19th century — and which has infected every department of our culture, from poetry to atomic physics — has been dismissed as fallacious and illogical. Twentieth century science, philosophy, politics, literature — even music — has been constructed upon a weltanschauung that leaves half of human nature out of account.
  • Colin Wilson in New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution, p 219-220 (1972)

See also

• Awakening
• Awareness
• Consciousness
• Cynicism
• Depression
• Enlightenment
• Four Noble Truths
• Grief
• Ignorance
• Joy
• Meditation
• Nihilism
• Now
• Optimism
• Philosophical pessimism
• Self-pity
• Wisdom