Word: optimist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...real filibuster needs 15 men.*Last week Washington observers gave the Borah anti-repeal forces a minimum of 25 men, a maximum of 40. Therefore Jimmy Byrnes knew he had the most important thing-the votes-in the bag. But well he knew that only such a magnificent optimist as Franklin Roosevelt could seriously believe that 435 brass-tongued, leather-lunged Congressmen would meekly report to Washington, legislate one bill, then go quietly home in a time of crisis. Byrnes said nothing, silently agreed with Bennett Clark that the Congress, once called, would stay for the duration of World...
Meanwhile that incurable optimist, Madam Secretary of Labor Perkins, announced in Denver that Labor's warring leaders will also be at peace within a few months. John Lewis' declaration to the contrary last fortnight, said Miss Perkins, was "by no means a conclusive statement...
...matters when he served as adviser to the Yugoslavian Government in 1927-28. Serbs appreciated his advice, but continued to oppress Croats, Macedonians, Hungarians. "That cured me," Beard says. He thinks Europe is just a big Balkans, that Americans can never solve Europe's problems. A long-term optimist, Beard believes that Fascism cannot come to the U. S. "Democracy," says he, "is a cause that is never won, but I believe it will never be lost...
...most popular professor Yale ever had. A curricular revolutionist, he started (44 years ago) the first college course in the modern novel. A superb showman, he made world headlines when he invited Gene Tunney, who had just cut Dempsey to ribbons, to lecture Yale students on Shakespeare. [An optimist, he finds Schopenhauer "a charming companion."] Friend of Galsworthy, Conrad, Henry James, Shaw, Santayana, Henry Ford, he is a "hero-worshipper" who once told Joseph Conrad he loved him; a critic who called the swing of Eddie Guest's poetry "perfect," Joyce, Dreiser and such moderns "rubbish...
...after plainly intimating to the House that what must now be expected is an almost unlimited extension of Japanese influence in East Asia and of German influence in East Europe. The shades of British Imperialists from Good Queen Bess to Rudyard Kipling must have paled perceptively. But an optimist to pessimists, and others, Neville Chamberlain said: "China cannot be developed into a real market without the influx of a great deal of capital, and the fact that so much capital is being destroyed during the war means that even more will have to be introduced after the war is over...