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[[File:Glass Half Full bw 1.jpeg|thumbnail|right|300px|The half a glass of water helps illustrates of two different mental [[attitude]]s, optimism (half full) and pessimism (half empty)]]
[[File:Glass Half Full bw 1.jpeg|thumbnail|right|300px|The half a glass of water helps illustrates of two different mental [[attitude]]s, optimism (half full) and pessimism (half empty)]]
'''Optimism''' is the practice of looking on the bright side of things, much as the little heroine of ''[[Pollyanna]]'' was trained by her father, a missionary, to make a game of finding something to be glad about in all circumstances.
'''Optimism''' is the practice of looking on the bright side of things, much as the little heroine of ''[[Pollyanna]]'' was trained by her father, a missionary, to make a game of finding something to be glad about in all circumstances.
The term is often used as meaning someone who looks for the positive side of a situation and anticipates the most positive outcome of a venture.
An optimist is one who looks at a glass of water that is half-full and half-empty, and focuses on how it is half-full. A [[pessimist]] focuses on how it is half-empty.
French author [[Voltaire]] mocked the concept in his novel ''[[Candide]]'' (1759), ridiculing [[Leibniz]]'s notion that this is the best of all possible worlds.
An old [[Russian]] joke says a pessimist believes that things cannot possibly get worse while an optimist is confident that they surely can.
[[Antonym]]: [[Pessimist]]
== Learned optimism ==
== Learned optimism ==