#optimism

...I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out as I go or at least try to understand it. Or f***, just think about it. I'll face whatever comes my way... ↗

— John O'Callaghan

#keep-going #life #live #living #love

I trust, and I recognize the beneficence of the power which we all worship as supreme- Order, Fate, the Great Spirit, Nature, God. I recognize this power in the sun that makes all things grow and keeps life afoot. I make a friend of this indefinable force…this is my religion of optimism. ↗

— Helen Keller

#nature #optimism #religion #spirituality #nature

I have an unshakable belief that mankind’s higher nature is on the whole still dormant. The greatest souls reveal excellencies of mind and heart which their lesser fellows possess-hidden, it is true, but there all the same. ↗

— Helen Keller

#human-nature #mind #optimism #nature

When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being, I cried, ‘it is good to be alive!’ I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain silence would impose dumbness upon me henceforth! The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there was hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine? ↗

— Helen Keller

#god #heaven #hope #love #optimism

The fatal error of much science fiction has been to subscribe to an optimism based on the idea that revolution, or a new gimmick, or a bunch of strong men, or an invasion of aliens, or the conquest of other planets, or the annihilation of half the world--in short, pretty nearly anything but the facing up to the integral and irredeemable nature of mankind--can bring about utopian situations. It is the old error of the externalization of evil. ↗

— Brian Aldiss

#mankind #optimism #science-fiction #utopia #men

For you the cup isn't half full or half empty, you're always topping it up. ↗

— Rowena Cory Daniells

#empty #optimism #pessimism #pessimism

Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. ↗

— Stephen Colbert

#optimism #pessimism #disappointment

It is the most ambitious and driven among us who are the most sorely in need of having our reckless hopes dampened through immersive dousings in the darkness which religions have explored. This is a particular priority for secular Americans, perhaps the most anxious and disappointed people on earth, for their nation infuses them with the most extreme hopes about what they may be able to achieve in their working lives and relationships. ↗

— Alain de Botton

#americans #anxiety #atheism #disappointment #drive

To make the world a better place, see the world as a better place. ↗

— Alan Cohen

#visualization #visualization

One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn' t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. ↗

— Lucille Ball

#discouraged #faith #get #hard #hard way