A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is a man who hopes they are.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

"What is an optimist? The man who says, "It's worse everywhere else. We're better off than the rest of the world. We've been lucky." He is happy with things as they are and he doesn't torment himself.

What is a pessimist? The man who says, "Things are fine everywhere but here. Everyone else is better off than we are. We're the only ones who've had a bad break." He torments himself continually."

A pessimist is one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while the pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind.

Pessimist: the optimist who didn't arrive.

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive.

A pessimist is a person who finds an oyster in a pearl.

An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line.

A pessimist is a man who looks both ways when he crosses the street.

The optimist believes that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this might be the case.

And who is and should be a pessimist? He who is mature for death and is in no condition to love life, just as the optimist cannot turn away from it. If he does not realize that he will live on in his children, his procreation loses its horrible character; but if he does realize it, he will recoil in horror from it, just like Humboldt when he noticed that the torments that another being must endure for perhaps eighty years are too high a price to pay for a few minutes of pleasure, and will consider the procreation of children, and rightly so, as a crime.