Quotes about Optimism

I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling & laughing.

Optimism is the opium of the people.

Remain faithful to the light... Remember, the sun is shining behind the clouds.

Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, and orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons ...Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more propitious the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper the hope is. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

I vow to interpret every experience as a direct healing of the Goddess with my soul.

This is a perfect moment.

It's a perfect moment for many reasons, but especially because you and I are waking up from our sleepwalking, thumb-sucking dumb-clucking collusion with the masters of illusion and destruction.

Thanks to them, from whom the painful blessings flow, we are waking up.

Their wars and tortures,
their crimes against nature,
extinctions of species
and brand new diseases.

Their spying and lying
in the name of the father,
sterilizing seeds and
trademarking water.

Molestations of God,
celebrations of shame,
stealing our dreams and
changing our names.

Their cunning commercials
and blood-sucking hustles,
their endless rehearsals
for the end of the world.

Thanks to them, from whom the awful teachings flow, we are waking up.

~~

Their painful blessings are cracking open more and more gashes in the shrunken and crippled mass hallucination that is mistakenly called "reality." And through the fractures, ripe eternity is flooding in; news of the soul's true home is pouring in; our allies from the other side of the veil are swarming in, inspiring us to become smarter and wilder and kinder and trickier.

We are waking up.

As heaven and earth come together, as the dreamtime and daytime merge, we register the shockingly exhilarating fact that we are in charge of creating a brand new world. Not in some distant time or faraway place, but right here and right now.

~~

As we stand on this brink, as we dance on this verge, we can't let the ruling fools of the dying world sustain their curses.... We can't afford to be consumed with our anger; we can't be obsessed and possessed by their danger. Our mysterious bodies crave delight and fertility. Our boisterous imaginations demand fresh tastes of infinity.

In the new world we're gestating, we need to be suffused with lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty. We've got to be teeming with radical curiosity and reverent pranks, voracious listening and ferocious thanks.

~~

So I'm curious, my fellow creators. Since we are in charge of making a new world - not just breaking the old world - where do we begin?

...Here's what I say: We will ignore the cult of gloom and doom and embrace the cause of zoom and boom. We will laugh at the stupidity of evil and hate, and summon the brilliance to praise and create. No matter how upside-down it all may temporarily appear, we will have no fear, because we know this secret: Life is crazily in love with us - wildly and innocently in love with us....

Pronoia is our word of power, the spell we cast to shake ourselves awake again and again.... It's the brazen perception that all of creation is conspiring to shower us with blessings.

Pronoia means that even if we can't see and don't know, primal benefactors are plotting to emancipate us. The winds and tides are on our side, forever and ever, amen. The fire and rain are scheming to steal our pain. The sun and moon know our real names, and the animals pray for us while we're dreaming. Do you believe in guardian angels and divine helpers? Whether you do or not, they're always wangling to give you the gifts you don’t even realize you want....

~~

...Some people argue that life is strife and suffering is normal. Others swear we're born sinful and only heaven can provide us with the peace that passes understanding. But pronoia says that being alive on the rough green and brown earth is the highest honor and privilege. It's an invitation to work wonders and perform miracles that aren't possible in any nirvana, promised land, or afterlife.

I'm not exaggerating or indulging in poetic metaphor when I tell you that we are already living in paradise. Visualize it if you dare. The sweet stuff that quenches all of our longing is not far away in some other time and place. It's right here and right now.

Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew the truth: "Earth's crammed with heaven."

YOU'RE ALIVE BECAUSE OF LOVE. YOU'RE *MADE* OF LOVE.

DEFINITION: Pronoia is the antidote for paranoia.  It's the understanding that the universe is fundamentally friendly.  It’s a mode of training your senses and intellect so you're able to perceive the fact that life always gives you exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.

HYPOTHESES: Evil is boring.  Cynicism is idiotic.  Fear is a bad habit.  Despair is lazy.  Joy is fascinating.  Love is an act of heroic genius.  Pleasure is our birthright.  Receptivity is a superpower.

PROCEDURE: Act as if the universe is a prodigious miracle created for your amusement and illumination.  Assume that secret helpers are working behind the scenes to assist you in turning into the gorgeous masterpiece you were born to be.  Join the conspiracy to shower all of creation with blessings.

To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.

In social affairs, I'm an optimist. I really do believe that our military-industrial civilization will soon collapse.

"My deepest impulses are optimistic; an attitude that seems to me as spiritually necessary and proper as it is intellectually suspect."

"To all cynics and pessimists: Do you need a readon to have faith, be positive, have hope, and believe? Here it is: the sun will be back tomorrow. And on that day when the sun does fall frm the sky? So what? Congratulations. You were finally right on the very last day."

Never hesitate to admit failure.  Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism

Maybe we have to break everything to make something better of ourselves.

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

Find the best in everybody… Wait long enough, and people will surprise and impress you. It might even take years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting.

"Like so many of us, I spent a great deal of my life....cataloging all the ways I had been injured and abused...I analyzed and categorized the whos, whats and wheres of my misery.  I was a confirmed pessimist, always able to see the dark side of anything and everything.  My belief was that life was hard and disaster was looming around every corner...Despite life's difficulties, it was my responsibility to do all the good I could and become the best person I could be...I started to notice the dearth of positive emotions in my life...I knew precious little about joy, happiness, optimism, faith and trust....That's when I learned that you don't have to be saddled for life with mental attitudes you adopted in childhood.  All of us are free to change our minds, and as we change our minds, our experiences will also change."

Everything works out in the end. If it's not worked out, it's not the end

Faith is believing that one of two things will happen: that there will be something solid for you to stand on- or that you will be taught to fly.

Some of the world's greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. 

Yes, I am optimistic about the environment. If you assume business is exerting the most negative influence on the environment and also has the possibility to impact it positively, there are a bunch of forces that are impacting business that are fundamentally different from the situation 3 or 4 years ago. There are pressures to be transparent that just didn't exist before and these pressures are coming from unlikely places, such as the insurance industry. In the most recent issue of The Ecologist, the editorial asked what is having the most positive impact on global warming. The answer is the insurance industry. Unlike the current administration, the insurance industry has made its mind up for reasons of self-preservation. For purely pragmatic reasons, they are increasing pressure on big business to reduce C02 emissions. In a similar way in Europe, the Association of Insurers has concluded that increased transparency is critical to understand the risk that an insurance company has in insuring a company. That pressure to provide that transparency in and of itself can cause change.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.  Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side so long as you are true to the best that is in you!

"We'll never survive!"
"Nonsense. You're only saying that because no one ever has."

When a person says, "I'll try," the part he doesn't say is "but I'll probably fail."

Life can change on a dime, so I always try to carry extra change

Jonni L. Jones

One Dilbert Blog reader noted that current research shows that happiness causes success more than success causes happiness. That makes sense to me. There’s plenty of research about people having a baseline of happiness that doesn’t vary much with circumstances. And given that happy people are typically optimistic, energetic, and fun to work with, I can see how happiness would lead to success.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will.

i would advise them that the world is yours, go out there and get it.  once you get it, watch what you do with it.  everyday is a hurdle.  the fact that God gives me motivation to jump and keep jumping is key.  i believe that education and exposure are important.  you have these kids who aren't exposed to anything.  they set limits.  i say the world does not revolve around you, but it does revolve around the sun.  do you want to be part of the revolution?

but can everyone simply choose the path he loves?  someone has to take the ordinary jobs.  all i know is, that worked for me.  and it didn't work for other people i know to get a so-called safe job, because there's no such thing anymore.  the only thing that stays constant is the idea that people have to escape.

all i want to make sure of is that she's doing something she loves.  watch your kids when they sit down and absolutely get lost in something.  maybe that's what they should be doing--the thing they're dying to do all the time.

i'm a perfectionist, so i'm never satisfied with myself.  i've always been psychotic about that kind of stuff--in a good way.  i'm very disciplined.  like the food and the whole thing, i'm always looking to "how can i eventually just turn into a ball of light and fly off the planet?".  until that happens and God basically pull the blinds back, i will not be satisfied... if i found out that if i ate pine nuts for the next month i could see God, i'd be eating pine nuts.