“‘Optimism is cowardice.’”
Oswald Spengler, quoted by Modris Eksteins in Globe & Mail June 3, 2000
“The dark night of the soul was not discovered by Freud; it was at the heart of the experience of faith.”
Charles J. Sykes, A Nation of Victims: The Decay of the American Character
“Start every day with a smile and get it over with.”
W.C. Fields, quoted in the features on a DVD of six classic W.C. Fields shorts I acquired years ago
“Of what use is a dream if not a blueprint for courageous action?”
Bruce Wayne in Batman (the 1966 movie)
Machiavelli’s advice about walking in the footsteps of the great “makes two points: first, that we’re bound to learn from the past whether or not we make the effort, since it’s the only data base we have and second, that we might as well try to do so systematically. E.H. Carr... observed, in What Is History?, that the size and reasoning capacity of the human brain are probably no greater now than they were five thousand years ago, but that very few human beings live now as they did then.... ‘History is progress through the transmission of acquired skills from one generation to another.’”
John Lewis Gaddis The Landscape of History
“[D]o not men die fast enough, without destroying each other?"
Francois de Salignac, The Adventures of Telemachus, the Son of Ulysses
“Man sets self ablaze using chainsaw to open gas tank”
Headline in Ottawa Citizen April 20, 2006 furnishing conclusive proof of the human capacity for folly
“‘I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism. – Roberto Rossellini; 1906-1977”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/2238066-i-am-not-a-pessimist-to-perceive-evil-where-it