“Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.”

“Without effort and change, human life cannot remain good. It is not a finished Utopia that we ought to desire, but a world where imagination and hope are alive and active.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope.

In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

“But in adversity, intelligence alone cannot sustain hope. Ultimately, hope can be sustained only by finding purpose in adversity, by imposing a pattern on the fortuitous disasters of existence. Human beings, if force to it, will compromise their intelligence to preserve their hope.”

Edmund Cooper book Seed of Light

“… where there is no more hope, song remains.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

“Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity's belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.
All this we owe both to ourselves and to the peoples of the world who are so well represented here today.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

“Education breeds confidence. Confidence breeds hope. Hope breeds peace.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

“The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible…Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

“Resistance is folly or heroism—a virtue or a vice—in most cases, according to the probabilities there are of its being successful. The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

“you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock