“The the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hope are optimistic.”

“I'd rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right.”

“When I look back upon my early days I am stirred by the thought of the number of people whom I have to thank for what they gave me or for what they were to me. At the same time I am haunted by an oppressive consciousness of the little gratitude I really showed them while I was young. How many of them have said farewell to life without having made clear to them what it meant to me to receive from them so much kindness or so much care! Many a time have I, with a feeling of shame, said quietly to myself over a grave the words which my mouth ought to have spoken to the departed, while he was still in the flesh.”

“I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.”

“I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist.”

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

“I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.”