“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come.”
"A Poem of Difficult Hope".
What Are People For? (1990)
Context: Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Wendell Berry 189
author 1934Related quotes

Top 15 quotes from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi
“He who does not improve his temper together with his understanding, is not much the better for it.”
A Treatise on Self-Knowledge (1745)

As quoted in Testimonials to Paul Morphy: Presented at University Hall, New York, May 25, 1859
Source: A Theory of Justice (1971; 1975; 1999), Chapter II, Section 13, pg. 79

“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations.”
Variant: There were two ways to be happy: improve your reality, or lower your expectations
Source: Nineteen Minutes

“They realize at last that change does not mean reform, that change does not mean improvement.”
Source: The Wretched of the Earth

“Kaizen is everyday improvement, everybody improvement, everywhere improvement.”