Somebody told me that pessimists always claim they are realists. This struck me as odd, not because it isn't true, but because there was a judgment in it, as if that makes a pessimist less than an optimist. Doesn't an optimist also consider himself an realist? In fact, I would go further and say it has to be so.
A realist is someone who sees the world as it is, without putting a positive nor a negative light on matters. An optimist put a positive light on the world, and sees things as better than they are. But what the optimist sees and believes about the world is what he believes the world to actually be, and thus sees himself as an realist. For what he sees as the world is what he believes the world to be. It is not like he could believe the world to be something other than what he believes the world to be.
Everybody must, deep down inside, believe that what they believe the world to be, is as close to what the world is as it is possible for them to believe, otherwise they would not believe it.
