#pessimism

I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago. ↗

— Wole Soyinka

#ceased #i #like #long #long time

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

#pessimism #age

Oh, that's typical of you modern young men; you've nibbled at science and it's made you ill, because you've not been able to satisfy that old craving for the absolute that you absorbed in your nurseries. You'd like science to give you all the answers at one go, whereas we're only just beginning to understand it, and it'll probably never be anything but an eternal quest. And so you repudiate science, you fall back on religion, and religion won't have you any more. Then you relapse into pessimism...Yes, it's the disease of our age, of the end of the century: you're all inverted Werthers. ↗

— Émile Zola

#religion #science #age

For better or worse, pessimism without compromise lacks public appeal. In all, the few who have gone to the pains of arguing for a sullen appraisal of life might as well never have been born. As history confirms, people will change their minds about almost anything, from which god they worship to how they style their hair. But when it comes to existential judgments, human beings in general have a unfalteringly good opinion of themselves and their condition in this world and are steadfastly confident they are not a collection of self-conscious nothings ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#change

School prepares you for the real world... which also bites. ↗

— Jim Benton

#pessimism #school #education

He wastes his time over his writing, trying to accomplish what geniuses and rare men with college educations sometimes accomplish. ↗

— Jack London

#intelligence #pessimism #real #writers #writing

Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience". "What's pessimism?" I said. "Religion without God. ↗

— Jonathan Kellerman

#pessimism #experience

That is the way we decided to talk, free and easy, two young men discussing a boxing match. That was the only way to talk. You couldn't let too much truth seep into your conversation, you couldn't admit with your mouth what your eyes had seen. If you opened the door even a centimeter, you would smell the rot outside and hear the screams. You did not open the door. You kept your mind on the tasks of the day, the hunt for food and water and something to burn, and you saved the rest for the end of the war. ↗

— David Benioff

#history #inspirational #jewish #jews #pessimism

The nice thing about being an empty-headed pessimist is that that your glass is only half air. ↗

— Bauvard

#funny #humor #pessimism #funny

Life isn't all fricasseed frogs and eel pie. ↗

— C.S. Lewis

#pessimism #puddleglum #humor