“The renunciation of war as expressed in the Japanese Constitution has given a first ray of hope to a world in darkness and despair, and men today cling to this hope passionately. Can we really do something about it or are we to stand aside as idle onlookers, unable to contribute for better or for worse?”

— Martin Niemöller

Statement for a Japanese publication (February 1954), as quoted in Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984 (1984) by James Bentley, p. 214

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Martin Niemöller 13

German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor 1892–1984

Michael Frayn (1933) British writer

Clockwise (1986), cited from Malcolm Page File on Frayn (London: Methuen, 1994) p. 65.

“The great disease of mankind is ignorance.
With knowledge you can grasp tight a belief: that you can be better, that the world can be better. With that, you can claim hope.
Hope is the eternal tool in the survival kit for mankind. We hope for a little luck, we hope for a better tomorrow, we hope — although it is an impossible hope — to somehow get out of this world alive.
And if we can't and don't, then it is enough to rejoice in our short time here and to remember how much we loved the view.”

Sidney Poitier (1927) American-born Bahamian actor, film director, author, and diplomat

Source: Life Beyond Measure (2008), twenty-third letter — The World I Leave You, p. 273

“Absence from whom we love is worse than death,
And frustrate hope severer than despair.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"Hope, like the short-lived ray that gleams awhile", line 35.

“The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

letter to Koichi Mano (3 February 1966); published in Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman (2005), p. 198, 201
also quoted by Freeman Dyson in "Wise Man" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18350, The New York Review of Books (20 October 2005)
Context: The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. … No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself — it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

“I feel I am privileged to express a hope. The hope is this: that we shall have peace throughout the world: that we shall abolish wars, and settle all international differences at the conference table: that we shall abolish all atom and hydrogen bombs, before they abolish us first.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)

“War is at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the satisfaction that the other fellow isn't any better off; and, finally, the surprise at everyone's being worse off.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

“It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand. ~ Brian Stimpson, Clockwise”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

“If I've tried to bring anything to federal politics, it's the idea that hope and optimism should be at their heart; we can look after each other better than we do today.”

Jack Layton (1950–2011) Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada

" Jack Layton's statement http://www.ndp.ca/press/jack-laytons-statement." July 25, 2011.
On announcing a leave of absence following a new diagnosis of cancer.

“Art is the expression of the conviction that we can have a rational relationship with the world and each other. It isn't the faith or hope that we can, it is the demonstration that we can.”

Edward Bond (1934) English writer best known as a dramatist

Source: Programme note for We Come to the River (1976); cited from Lear (London: Methuen, 1983) p. xii.

“There’s a really interesting thing about despair, I think. It has a spark in it of deep motivation. I think despair can be described as looking at every possible scenario and seeing no hopeful one. But what that means is, if you can present someone in despair with one scenario that looks hopeful – that looks like a real possibility – then there’s this immense wealth of motivation to drive toward it, because despair is not a nice place to be.”

Shaun Chamberlin

Kosmos interview on grief, Dark Optimism, aliveness and activism (2014) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2014/12/21/dark-optimism-power-of-grief/#post-4075

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