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Optimism Quotes

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Optimism Quotes

“Silver linings are, in essence, the construct of hope. They give us something to look forward to, focus on, and strive for. They inspire change by providing a glimpse of a better future. A silver lining is not the same as being in denial or having rose-colored glasses. It is the ability to find hope amid darkness, to see possibility where others see despair. Being an optimist can be a challenging mindset to maintain in moments of negativity. For this reason, those with the space to envision the silver linings must do so. Furthermore, when we cannot find them ourselves, we can rely on each other to help us cope until we can.”

“We only see things which we want to see in this world. If you want to see only negative you will find this world full of negativity, pain and bad things. But the moment you want to see magic in the universe, if will appear at every moment in your life. Never allow your heart to be filled with hatred, jealousy, complaints, etc... Replace them with compassion, vision and gratitude.”

“With our powerful founding story, our unusual reverence for our Constitution, our geographic isolation, and our two centuries of relative economic success, modern Americans have long been convinced that liberal democracy, once achieved, was impossible to reverse. The founders themselves were not so certain: their beloved classical authors taught them that history was circular, that human nature was flawed, and that special measures were needed to precent democracy from sliding back into tyranny. But American history, to most modern Americans, does not feel circular. On the contrary, it is often told as a tale of progress, forward and upward, with the Civil War as a blip in the middle. Cultural despair does not come easily to a nation that believed in the Horatio Alger myth and Manifest Destiny. Pessimism is an alien sentiment in a state whose founding documents, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, contain one of the most optimistic views of the possibilities of human government ever written.”

“Base your understanding of the world on data, rather than journalism. Journalism is a highly non random sample of the worst things that have happened in any given period. It is an availability machine, in the sense of Tversky and Kahneman's availability heuristic; namely - our sense of risk, danger and prevalence is driven by anecdotes, images and narratives that are available in memory. A lot of good things are either things that "don't happen" (like a country at peace, or a city that has not been attacked by terrorists, which almost by definition are not news), or things that build up incrementally, a few percentage points a year, and then compound (like the decline of extreme poverty). We can be unaware, out to lunch about what's happening in the world if we base our view on the news. If instead we base our view on data, then not only do we see that many (although not all) things have gone better (not linearly, not without setbacks and reversals, but in general a lot better... and that paradoxically, as I've cheekily put it, progressives hate progress), but also that the best possible case for progress - that is, for striving for more progress in the future, for being a true progressive - is not to have some kind of foolish hope, but to look at the fact that progress has taken place in the past; and that means: why should it stop now?”