When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice," Amos liked to say. "Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.

When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice,' Amos liked to say. 'Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.

Crucial decisions are made, today as thousands of years ago, in terms of the intuitive guesses and preferences of a few men in positions of authority...[it is] quite likely that the fate of entire societies may be sealed by a series of avoidable mistakes committed by their leaders.

(Billy) Graham went through passages of hypochondria and his closest friends had to assure him that he was not about to die.

Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience".
"What's pessimism?" I said.
"Religion without God.

So desperate was Kugel for things to turn out for the best, proclaimed Professor Jove, that he couldn't stop worrying about the worst. Hope, said Professor Jove, was Solomon Kugel's greatest failing.