
“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”
Source: Reflections
Source: Blood Noir
“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.”
Source: Reflections
“To the optimist, pessimists are neurotic; to the pessimist, optimists are deluded.”
Humor in Psychotherapy (2007)
“[…] You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience.”
Page 352-353.
Stepping Westward (1965)
Variant: Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.
Quoted in Women Know Everything!: 3,241 Quips, Quotes, and Brilliant Remarks By Karen Weekes, p. 41
Source: Adventures of a Mathematician - Third Edition (1991), Chapter 3, Travels Abroad, p. 55
Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 359 et seq.
Eliot's note: Stimulated by Shackleton's Antarctic expedition where the explorers at the extremity of their strength believed there was another who walked with them across South Georgia!
Epilogue, p. 242
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)