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"Everything will be all right if you do this."
An optimist believes it will, so long as people have faith
A cynic hopes it might, with planning and some judicious security padding
A pessimist knows it won't, no matter what anyone does
An idealist does it anyway, regardless of how they think it will turn out, because it's what should be done
A pragmatist doesn't care, so long as enough of what they value survives, because 'everything being alright' was never a realistic goal to start with
This being my personal view, at least of the hard ends of the scales. I never really thought that idealism and cynicism were actually opposing ends of one scale, given that it's perfectly possible to be a cynic and an idealist (*holds up hand*). I put cynicism as the midpoint of the optimism/pessimism scale, because it's about how you view the potential results of an action, and put pragmatism as idealism's opposite, because that's about the reasons for an action.
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