“Science gives me hope. Not just because it’s inherently optimistic, but also because it’s a practical way of improving things.”

“Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, ' If science can't do something, therefore religion can.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

“I will not end on a happy note, because there isn't one. But neither do I despair. One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do and because America remains, as Lincoln said, 'the last best hope of earth.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

“I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

“science is the best way to do anything (if you want to do terrible things with technology, a terrible weapons for example science is the best way to do it because science is the best way to do anything)”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

“Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

“Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as an optimist.”

Shimon Peres (1923–2016) Israeli politician, 8th prime minister and 9th president of Israel

“There doesn't need to be a God for me. There's something in people that's spiritual, that's godlike. I don't feel like doing things just because people say things, but I also don't really know if it's better to just not believe in anything, either.”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

“My idea is to give hope, because where there is no hope, there is no vision, and where there is no vision, people will perish.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer