Profoundly inspirational realism quotes will challenge the way you think, change the way you live and transform your whole life.
Famous Realism Quotes
Optimism doesn’t mean that you are blind to the reality of the situation. It means that you remain motivated to seek a solution to whatever problems arise. The Dalai Lama
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret. Gabriel García Márquez: A Life
I can’t be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive. James Baldwin
No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you’ve already had. Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Does saying things are improving imply that everything is fine, and we should all relax and not worry? No, not at all. Is it helpful to have to choose between bad and improving? Definitely not. It’s both. It’s both bad and better. Better, and bad, at the same time. That is how we must think about the current state of the world. Hans Rosling, Tactfulness
He who awaits much can expect little. No One Writes to the Colonel: and Other Stories
There’s no difference between a pessimist who says, It’s all over, don’t bother trying to do anything, forget about voting, it won’t make a difference,’ and an optimist who says, Relax, everything is going to turn out fine.’ Either way the results are the same. Nothing gets done Yvon Chouinard
Life is the best thing that has ever been invented. No One Writes to the Colonel: and Other Stories
I am essentially optimistic. Being alive is incredible. Life is extraordinary and beautiful. It can be hard and sad and terrifying, but it’s all we’ve got. James Frey
It is life, more than death, that has no limits. Love in the Time of Cholera
I choose to feel optimistic, because I don’t think I could get out of bed if I didn’t. Kerry Washington
Nothing in this world was more difficult than love. Love in the Time of Cholera
All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. Conan O’Brien
There is always something left to love. One Hundred Years of Solitude
While skepticism is healthy, cynicism, real cynicism, is toxic John Oliver
She had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love. Love in the Time of Cholera
Youthful cynicism is sad to observe, because it indicates not so much knowledge learned from bitter experiences as insufficient trust even to attempt the future. Maya Angelou
I became aware that the invincible power that has moved the world is unrequited, not happy, love. Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Optimism isn’t a belief that things will automatically get better; it’s a conviction that we can make things better. Melinda Gates
She discovered with great delight that one does not love one’s children just because they are one’s children but because of the friendship formed while raising them. Love in the Time of Cholera
I am very optimistic, and I always think positive, but within reason and never getting too far ahead of the game Luis Fonsi
The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast. Love in the Time of Cholera
Hope confronts. It does not ignore pain, agony, or injustice. It is not a saccharine optimism that refuses to see, face, or grapple with the wretchedness of reality. You can’t have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word. Cory Booker
The more transparent the writing, the more visible the poetry. Of Love and Other Demons
Hope will never be silent. Harvey Milk
The world must be all fucked up, he said then, when men travel first class and literature goes as freight. One Hundred Years of Solitude
Hope is contagious Greta Thunberg
Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism. Ben Shapiro
I’m a bubbling brew of emotions, but mostly, I’m an optimistic person. Carlene Carter
Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal. Gustave Courbet
It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism Angela Davis
Action films have a certain illogicalness to them. They’re what we call, when we’re working, exaggerated realism. Nick Nolte
Being truthful about the state of our nation and world does not equal losing hope. Hope sees truth and still believes in better. That which dismisses or does not seek truth, but grins, saying It will be okay, is naivete, not hope. Bernice King
Understanding that this is America shouldn’t evoke hopelessness. Hope and truth are connected. Hope is not naïveté. It is bearing witness to truth, still believing in better and yielding the energy to contribute to better. Bernice King
Comedy is exaggerated realism. It can be stretched to the almost ludicrous, but it must always be believable. Paul Lynde
Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Stephen Colbert
As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note. Seamus Heaney
Can we overcome apathy? Yes, but only if we have hope. Jane Goodall
We need realism to deal with reality. Slick Rick
I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they’re empowered to take action. Jane Goodall
I have always thought that foreign-policy idealism has to be tempered with realism. William Hague
No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do. Dorothy Day
I think sincerity was my sole aesthetic and realism my experimental technique. Edmund White
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. Walt Disney
Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. Martin Luther King Jr., I Have A Dream
No one wants to follow a pessimist You can be skeptical, you can be realistic, but you can’t be cynical. If your boss is Eeyore, do you want to work with someone like that? Oh, bother. Bob Iger
We can say that our feet are tired, but our souls are rested. Martin Luther King Jr., Our God is Marching On!
Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. John Lewis
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love
The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible and achieves the impossible. Winston Churchill
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. Martin Luther King Jr., Address in Washington D.C.
Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”
I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will. Clint Eastwood
Pessimism becomes a self fulfilling prophecy; it reproduces itself by crippling our willingness to act. Howard Zinn
The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. Martin Luther King Jr., Our God is Marching On!
The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope. Barack Obama
Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. Martin Luther King Jr., beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
I guess I do have a childlike sense of fun, and although I still have my dark days, I’m generally an optimistic person. The way things have gone in my life, sure, I could have been a bitter person. But I just find bitter people really un-fun, you know? And who wants to be that person? Drew Barrymore
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice. Martin Luther King Jr.
What I am trying to cultivate is not blind optimism but radical hope. Junot Diaz
A single individual is enough for hope to exist. And that individual can be you. Pope Francis
Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. Martin Luther King Jr.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places and there are so many where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory. Howard Zinn, You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train
We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. Martin Luther King Jr., I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
When we remember the stories of people power overcoming oppression in the past, it serves as the grounds for hope that it can happen again. For this reason, I define hope not as a feeling but as a conviction, based on the knowledge of all the ordinary people who have won against injustice before. Andre Henry
I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. Martin Luther King Jr.
History and data have convinced me that change, from the bottom up, is possible. I’m hopeful because I believe history is a story we’re writing together, not something happening to us which means we all get a say in how the story ends. Andre Henry
This conviction that we can win isn’t static. It’s a flame that must be fed and tended. We tend our hope by setting boundaries about how we consume news content that makes us feel despair. Andre Henry
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Martin Luther King Jr.
A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it. Aldous Huxley
If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all the other shallow things will not matter. Martin Luther King Jr.,
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it always Mahatma Gandhi
We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. Martin Luther King Jr.
Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists. Thomas Friedman
Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world. Martin Luther King Jr.
You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down. Charlie Chaplin
It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence. Martin Luther King Jr.
But I do think it’s important that we stay hopeful about our capacity to overcome that bigotry. And I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice; that if we allow ourselves to become hopeless, we become part of the problem. I think you’re either hopeful, or you’re the problem. There’s no neutral place. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. And if I’ve inherited anything from the generation who came before me, I have inherited their wisdom about the necessity of hope. Bryan Stevenson
When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. Paul Hawken
If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective. Martin Luther King Jr.
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. William Arthur Ward
