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I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

I have friends who are very pessimistic. They say you can't possibly be an optimist nowadays. But I think, taking the longer view, you can still be as optimistic as you want.

I personally don't think of myself as either an optimist or a pessimist.

I'm a serious optimist. I come from a country where you have little to be hopeful for, and so you have to always be an optimist.

I'm naturally an optimist, but my basis for hope is rooted in my understanding of human nature.

I'm not a pessimist at all, but I'm not an optimist, either.

There are really two kinds of optimism. There's the complacent, Pollyanna optimism that says, 'Don't worry - everything will be just fine,' and that allows one to just lay back and do nothing about the problems around you. Then there's what we call dynamic optimism. That's an optimism based on action.

Whereas in the past optimism had been regarded as rather shallow - because 'oh well, it's just your temperament, you happen to be just a cheerful sort of person' - what I wanted to do was to establish that in fact it is the pessimists who are allowing all kinds of errors to creep into their work.

I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart. I have a very optimistic view of individuals.