“I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”

“I laughed. “You’re too young to be so … pessimistic,” I said, using the English word.“Pessi-what?”“Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.”“Pessimistic … pessimistic …” She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. “I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.”

“No one knows enough to be a pessimist”

“Every time I think I’m getting smarter I realize that I’ve just done something stupid. Dad says there are three kinds of people in the world: those who don’t know, and don’t know they don’t know; those who don’t know and do know they don’t know; and those who know and know how much they still don’t know.Heavy stuff, I know. I think I’ve finally graduated from the don’t-knows that don’t know to the don’t-knowsthat do.”

“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it he knows too little.”

“I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool, an optimist must know what a sad place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.”