Politics & Power Quote by Gordon B. Hinckley

Hinckley’s sentence isn’t really about “pessimism” in the abstract; it’s a tactical warning about mood as a moral force. The line moves like a sermon should: from the intimate to the geopolitical, stacking consequences until a private habit becomes a national emergency. Families. Institutions. “Nearly everyone.” Entire nations. The crescendo is the argument. If discouragement can be framed as contagious, then optimism becomes not merely a temperament but a civic duty.

The intent is disciplinary as much as consoling. “Criticism” gets paired with “pessimism” to suggest they’re adjacent vices, not separate tools - which quietly delegitimizes dissent. In many religious communities, criticism can look like disloyalty, and pessimism like spiritual failure. By tying both to collapse and defeat, Hinckley isn’t just urging kindness at the dinner table; he’s protecting collective cohesion. The subtext: do not erode the shared story that keeps the group stable. Hold your tongue, guard your attitude, sustain the institution.

Context matters. As a late-20th-century LDS leader, Hinckley spoke to a fast-growing, reputation-conscious church navigating modern media scrutiny, cultural change, and internal pressures for transparency. “A shroud of gloom” is vivid, almost theatrical, but it’s also pastoral: a picture of what happens when grievance becomes identity. The rhetorical trick is to make negativity feel not intellectual, but infectious - a fog that spreads - so the moral response is quarantine: gratitude, loyalty, uplift.