TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Environmental extremists ... wouldn�t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird�s nest.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index P > Category: Pessimist

Pessimist Quotes (7 quotes)

A pessimist is a person who is always right but doesn’t get any enjoyment out of it, while an optimist, is one who imagines that the future is uncertain. It is a duty to be an optimist, because if you imagine that the future is uncertain, then you must do something about it.
In The Pursuit of Simplicity (1980, 1981), 149, footnote 19.
Science quotes on:  |  Do (1905)  |  Duty (71)  |  Enjoyment (37)  |  Future (467)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Must (1525)  |  Optimist (8)  |  Person (366)  |  Right (473)  |  Something (718)  |  Uncertain (45)

A pessimist: an optimist out of a job.
Aphorism in The Philistine (Dec 1904), 20, No. 1, 10.
Science quotes on:  |  Job (86)  |  Optimist (8)

Men will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences. Science will go on whether we are pessimistic or optimistic, as I am. More interesting discoveries than we can imagine will be made, and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.
'Dr Linus Pauling, Atomic Architect', Science Illustrated (1948), 3, 40.
Science quotes on:  |  Consequence (220)  |  Curiosity (138)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Enthusiasm (59)  |  Gather (76)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Imagine (176)  |  Interest (416)  |  Interesting (153)  |  Knowledge (1647)  |  Matter (821)  |  More (2558)  |  Optimist (8)  |  Will (2350)

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Discover (571)  |  Doorway (2)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Spirit (12)  |  Land (131)  |  New (1273)  |  Open (277)  |  Sail (37)  |  Secret (216)  |  Spirit (278)  |  Star (460)  |  Stars (304)  |  Uncharted (10)

Some men who call themselves pessimists because they cannot read good into the operations of nature forget that they cannot read evil. In morals the law of competition no more justifies personal, official, or national selfishness or brutality than the law of gravity justifies the shooting of a bird.
…...
Science quotes on:  |  Bird (163)  |  Brutality (4)  |  Call (781)  |  Competition (45)  |  Evil (122)  |  Forget (125)  |  Good (906)  |  Gravity (140)  |  Justify (26)  |  Law (913)  |  Law Of Gravity (16)  |  Moral (203)  |  More (2558)  |  National (29)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Official (8)  |  Operation (221)  |  Operations (107)  |  Personal (75)  |  Read (308)  |  Selfishness (9)  |  Shoot (21)  |  Themselves (433)

There are pessimists who hold that such a state of affairs is necessarily inherent in human nature; it is those who propound such views that are the enemies of true religion, for they imply thereby that religious teachings are utopian ideals and unsuited to afford guidance in human affairs. The study of the social patterns in certain so-called primitive cultures, however, seems to have made it sufficiently evident that such a defeatist view is wholly unwarranted.
From a response to a greeting sent by the Liberal Ministers' Club of New York City, published in The Christian Register (Jun 1948). Collected as 'Religion and Science: Irreconcilable?', in Carl Seelig (ed.)Ideas and Opinions (1954, 2010), 52.
Science quotes on:  |  Afford (19)  |  Call (781)  |  Certain (557)  |  Culture (157)  |  Enemy (86)  |  Evident (92)  |  Guidance (30)  |  Hold (96)  |  Human (1512)  |  Human Affairs (6)  |  Human Nature (71)  |  Ideal (110)  |  Imply (20)  |  Inherent (43)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Necessarily (137)  |  Pattern (116)  |  Primitive (79)  |  Propound (2)  |  Religion (369)  |  Religious (134)  |  Seem (150)  |  So-Called (71)  |  Social (261)  |  State (505)  |  State Of affairs (5)  |  Study (701)  |  Sufficiently (9)  |  Teaching (190)  |  Teachings (11)  |  Thereby (5)  |  True (239)  |  Unwarranted (2)  |  Utopian (3)  |  View (496)  |  Wholly (88)

To the optimist, the glass is half full. To the pessimist, the glass is half empty. To the engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
Anonymous
Science quotes on:  |  Design (203)  |  Empty (82)  |  Engineer (136)  |  Full (68)  |  Glass (94)  |  Need (320)  |  Optimist (8)


Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.