Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 10, Back At Los Alamos, p. 208
Context: I was still very hopeful that much work lay ahead of me. Perhaps because much of what I had worked on or thought about had not yet been put into writing, I felt I still had things in reserve. Given this optimistic nature, I feel this way even now when I am past sixty.
“I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.”
2010s, 2018, Farewell statement (2018)
Context: I have tried to serve our country honorably. I have made mistakes, but I hope my love for America will be weighed favorably against them.
I have often observed that I am the luckiest person on Earth. I feel that way even now as I prepare for the end of my life. I have loved my life, all of it. I have had experiences, adventures and friendships enough for ten satisfying lives, and I am so thankful. Like most people, I have regrets. But I would not trade a day of my life, in good or bad times, for the best day of anyone else’s.
I owe that satisfaction to the love of my family. No man ever had a more loving wife or children he was prouder of than I am of mine. And I owe it to America. To be connected to America’s causes — liberty, equal justice, respect for the dignity of all people — brings happiness more sublime than life’s fleeting pleasures. Our identities and sense of worth are not circumscribed but enlarged by serving good causes bigger than ourselves.
"Fellow Americans" — that association has meant more to me than any other. I lived and died a proud American. We are citizens of the world’s greatest republic, a nation of ideals, not blood and soil. We are blessed and are a blessing to humanity when we uphold and advance those ideals at home and in the world. We have helped liberate more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. We have acquired great wealth and power in the process.
Ôwê daz er niht vrâgte dô!
des pin ich für in noch unvrô.
wan do erz enpfienc in sîne hant,
dô was er vrâgens mit ermant.
Bk. 5, st. 240, line 3; p. 127.
Parzival
“If stocks are optimistic, then so am I.”
Kudlow's Money Politics blog http://kudlowsmoneypolitics.blogspot.com/2007/09/september-optimism.html, September 4, 2007.
Life After God (1994)
“I cannot be an optimist but I am a prisoner of hope.”
Epilogue, p. 242
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)
Attributed to "Jimmy R." in Days of Healing, Days of Joy (1987)
Misattributed
Source: link https://books.google.com/books?id=7QNk4eNvS44C&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=%22days+of+healing+days+of+joy%22+%22jimmy+r%22&source=bl&ots=C-jAUVg8y8&sig=fB9m-eQ1IvtjJV6Ncz8mZ30RRHo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIrYnZyNDlyAIVV_5jCh07uQOs#v=onepage&q=%22days%20of%20healing%20days%20of%20joy%22%20%22jimmy%20r%22&f=false
