As quoted in FPA Book of Quotations : A New Collection of Famous Sayings (1952) by Franklin Pierce Adams
“A pessimist is a man who thinks all women are bad. An optimist is one who hopes they are. ”
“A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.”
The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)
“A pessimist is a man who thinks everybody is as nasty as himself, and hates them for it.”
Epilogue, p. 242
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)
“The Optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, the Pessimist fears it is true.”
This is derived from a statement of James Branch Cabell, in The Silver Stallion (1926) : The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
Misattributed
Variant: The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
“The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”
Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 31
Context: Why could the typical investor expect any better success in trying to buy at low levels and sell at high levels than in trying to forecast what the market is going to do? Because if he does the former he acts only after the market has moved down into buying levels or up into selling levels. His role is not that of a prophet but of a businessman seizing clearly evident investment opportunities. He is not trying to be smarter than his fellow investors but simply trying to be less irrational than the mass of speculators who insist on buying after the market advances and selling after it goes down. If the market persists in behaving foolishly, all he seems to need is ordinary common sense in order to exploit its foolishness.
“A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.”
“To the optimist, pessimists are neurotic; to the pessimist, optimists are deluded.”
Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)
