#pessimism

Without the hope of posterity, for our race if not for ourselves, without the assurance that we being dead yet live, all pleasures of the mind and senses sometimes seem to me no more than pathetic and crumbling defences shored up against our ruin. ↗

— P.D. James

#pessimism #posterity #the-future #men

The mind is an intricate mechanism that can be run on the fuels of both victory and defeatism. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#emotions #optimism #pessimism #thinking #attitude

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust. ↗

— Kingsley Amis

#history #love #pessimism #truth #art

My pessimism goes to the point of suspecting the sincerity of the pessimists. ↗

— Edmond Rostand

#pessimism #pessimists #point #sincerity #suspecting

All live to die, and rise to fall. ↗

— Christopher Marlowe

#fate #life #pessimism #death

How can you say that so casually? You're talking about the possible death of hundreds of people, yourself included." He gave a negligent shrug. "Wrong place, wrong time. Life sucks. ↗

— Shannon K. Butcher

#death #life #life-sucks #pessimism #wrong

Our experience of the governments of the world, our knowledge of the weapons at their disposal, and our awareness of our own limitations justify pessimism. But some mysterious factor deep in the human psyche has produced a countervailing conviction that educating, organizing, uniting, and acting will make a difference. ↗

— David T. Dellinger

#pessimism #political #resistance #education

Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#darkness #human-nature #optimism #perception #perspective

Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire. ↗

— Bruce Springsteen

#between #each #fire #lights #optimism

One has to have the courage of one's pessimism. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#pessimism