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We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon. Franklin D Roosevelt
Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow. Joseph Conrad
Sons of businessmen and daughters of officials got a head start that was equivalent to an entire lap or two around the track. I think it is inevitable that people like me would lose the race. So that made me think, why do I even try? Zhiyuan Zhang, replying to Insider Asia, follower of ‘lying flat movement’
The abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life. Edward Gibbon, 1737-94, Memoirs of My Life, 1796
My motto: fuck hope. George Carlin, Brain Droppings audio
Marriage is the death of hope. Woody Allen
I felt much better when I gave up hope. Woody Allen, cited John Pilger
cf.
Since I gave up hope I feel a lot better. Steve Taylor, song
An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth – scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books – might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope? Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
It’s not my victory; it’s yours and yours and yours. If a gay can win, it means there is hope that the system can work for all minorities if we fight. We’ve given them hope. Harvey Milk
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, Work Without Hope
This was freedom. Losing all hope was freedom. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instil a love of learning. Brad Henry
Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace. Confucius
While there is death there is hope. Richard Crossman, 1907-74, re death of Hugh Gaitskell in 1963 and favourite phrase of Harold Laski
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream. Martin Luther King, The Trumpet of Conscience
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. Martin Luther King junior
Those forgotten people enjoyed generation after generation of hopelessness. Gangland: Kill or be Killed, History 2009
Losing all hope was freedom. Fight Club ***** 1999 starring Edward Norton & Brad Pitt & Helena Bonham Carter & Meatloaf & Jared Leto et al, director David Fincher, hero
Her: There’s no hope in it.
Him: It’s the truth. Croupier 1998 starring Clive Owen & Alex Kingston & Gina McKee & Kate Hardie & Nicholas Ball & Alexander Morton & Nick Reding & Paul Reynolds & Barnaby Kay, director Mike Hodges
You’ll leave Hope behind after a few months of this. Star Trek: Voyager s2e23: The Thaw, [lowest rated Voyager] machine prisoner
First black president, and all those wonderful words about hope and change ... Whatever happened to hope? Andrew Marr, Obama: What Happened to Hope? BBC 2012
I end tonight where it all began for me: I still believe in a place called Hope. Bill Clinton, A Place Called Hope, 1992
If you’re working 50 hours a week to try to maintain family income, and your children have the kinds of aspirations that come from being flooded with television from age one, and associations have declined, people end up hopeless, even though they have every option. Noam Chomsky
Just when I had made my today
Secure with safe yesterdays
I see tomorrow coming with its pale glass star called hope.
It shatters on impact
And falls like splinters of cruel rain
And I see the red oil of life
running from my wrists
onto tomorrow’s headlines. Spike Milligan, Hope
In all things it is better to hope than to despair. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts. Alain de Botton
Don’t despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don’t. Surrender to events with hope. Alain de Botton
The problem with these ideas is that they’re far too optimistic. In Seneca’s analysis, people get angry because they’re too hopeful. Alain de Botton, Philosophy: Seneca on Anger, Channel 4 2000
Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word; but in the night of death hope sees a star and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. Robert G Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
Hope springs eternal. Early 18th century proverb
He was the single most hopeful person I have ever met. The Great Gatsby 2013 starring Leonardo di Caprio & Tobey McGuire & Carey Mulligan & Joel Edgerton & Isla Fisher & Jason Clarke & Elizabeth Debicki & Jack Thompson & Amitabh Bachchan et al, director Baz Luhrmann
Activism doesn’t give up. Activism doesn’t fall silent. Activism doesn’t rely on the opiate of hope. Woody Allen once said, ‘I felt a lot better when I gave up hope’. Real activism has little time for identity politics, which like exceptionalism can be fake. These are distractions that confuse and sucker good people. John Pilger, Socialism Chicago 2009, Power Illusion and America’s Last Taboo; viz also website
Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate. It is true that there is a state of hope which belongs to bright prospects and the morning; but that is not the virtue of hope. The virtue of hope exists only in earthquake and eclipse. It is true that there is a thing crudely called charity, which means charity to the deserving poor; but charity to the deserving is not charity at all, but justice. It is the undeserving who require it, and the ideal either does not exist at all, or exists wholly for them. For practical purposes it is at the hopeless moment that we require the hopeful man, and the virtue either does not exist at all, or begins to exist at that moment. Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful. G K Chesterton, Heretics