“Do no wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly.” - From my fortune cookie. 
The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.
– J. Robert Oppenheimer
Nice one!
hm. where do I now have to continue?
I guess you started with optimist and your association said pessimist=? ;)
Realist
I thought it would be fun to find interesting quotes.
I had considered starting up a new thread topic, then thought better of it.
If you wish to continue using single-word association, that is ok too. 
Otherwise, we could start doing quotes that affected us as humans in one way or the other. [?]
Oh!!
Almost fergot …
In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
– Henry Christopher Bailey
Why not?
We could make a poll.
.but I once read somewhere that “65.26% of all statistics are meaningless” ;)
So let’s just do it!
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” - Sir Winston Churchill
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Properly stated:
“72% of all statistics are inaccurate. Is this one of them?”
(Found on a wall in a Men’s Room bathroom stall)
“There is real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.” - Norman Vincent Peale
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
– Thomas A. Edison
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny …’ - Isaac Asimov
“Opps?! No ‘Opps!’”
– Opus to Oliver Wendel Jones
The Linux philosophy is ‘Laugh in the face of danger’.
Oops. Wrong One. ‘Do it yourself’. Yes, that’s it.
– Linus Torvalds
security blanket
– Linus van Pelt
An army of principles can penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot.
– Thomas Paine
"I have an existential map; it has ˜you are here’ written all over it."¨- Steven Wright
The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it’s very limited in what it can do logically. It’s an existential experience - there and then gone.
– Bill Moyers
Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. – Vince Lombardi
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either.
– Benjamin Franklin