"There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism"
About this Quote
The claim that there is only one optimist and that it is man himself frames optimism as an active human project rather than a sunny mood granted by fate. It points to a gritty, collective wager: despite repeated encounters with catastrophe, people keep choosing to proceed. Survival here is not simply biological endurance; it is a sustained act of imagination, the capacity to picture a livable next step when none is guaranteed.
Edward Steichen speaks from a vantage shaped by a century of rupture. Born in 1879, he witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the dawn of the nuclear age. He led the U.S. Navy’s photographic units, documenting conflict at close range, then turned in peacetime to curating The Family of Man at MoMA, a sweeping 1955 exhibition that assembled images of birth, work, love, grief, and celebration from around the world. That exhibition became a manifesto for postwar humanism: beneath ideology and borders, a common thread of endurance and tenderness persists. The quote reads as a distilled credo behind that project.
Optimism, as he frames it, is not naive positivity. It is the disciplined insistence that meaning can be made after loss, that structures can be rebuilt, that discovery and cooperation are worth the risk. It underwrites science and art alike; the experiment and the photograph both begin with faith that something worthwhile can be revealed. Calling it magnificent acknowledges how improbable it often feels, especially when history offers ample evidence for despair.
There is also a quiet democratization in the phrasing. The optimist is not a heroic individual but humanity itself, a shared capacity that emerges precisely because vulnerability is shared. The repetition we have survived it on our optimism stresses a practical truth: without the willingness to imagine tomorrow, there would be no impetus to heal, innovate, or forgive. For a photographer who sought light in the human face, optimism is that light, the exposure that makes the image possible.
Edward Steichen speaks from a vantage shaped by a century of rupture. Born in 1879, he witnessed two world wars, the Great Depression, and the dawn of the nuclear age. He led the U.S. Navy’s photographic units, documenting conflict at close range, then turned in peacetime to curating The Family of Man at MoMA, a sweeping 1955 exhibition that assembled images of birth, work, love, grief, and celebration from around the world. That exhibition became a manifesto for postwar humanism: beneath ideology and borders, a common thread of endurance and tenderness persists. The quote reads as a distilled credo behind that project.
Optimism, as he frames it, is not naive positivity. It is the disciplined insistence that meaning can be made after loss, that structures can be rebuilt, that discovery and cooperation are worth the risk. It underwrites science and art alike; the experiment and the photograph both begin with faith that something worthwhile can be revealed. Calling it magnificent acknowledges how improbable it often feels, especially when history offers ample evidence for despair.
There is also a quiet democratization in the phrasing. The optimist is not a heroic individual but humanity itself, a shared capacity that emerges precisely because vulnerability is shared. The repetition we have survived it on our optimism stresses a practical truth: without the willingness to imagine tomorrow, there would be no impetus to heal, innovate, or forgive. For a photographer who sought light in the human face, optimism is that light, the exposure that makes the image possible.
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| Topic | Optimism |
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