“Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.”

A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 234

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Thales9

ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician -624–-547 BC

Nathanael West book The Day of the Locust

Source: The Day of the Locust

“In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something and none has too much.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau book The Social Contract

Source: The Social Contract

“Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope; and few are reduced so low as that.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

No. 34
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)

“Radical hope anticipates a good for which those who have the hope as yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.”

Jonathan Lear (1948) American philosopher

Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Harvard University Press: 2008), p. 103

“People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to Charles James Fox (8 October 1777)
1770s

“Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.”

A.R. Ammons (1926–2001) American poet

Paris Review interview (1996)
Context: I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good.