Quotes about hope
page 25

John Gay photo

“While there is life there 's hope, he cried.”

John Gay (1685–1732) English poet and playwright

Fable, The Sick Man and the Angel
Comparable to: "For the living there is hope, but for the dead there is none", Theocritus (3rd century BC), Idyl iv, 42; "Ægroto, dum anima est, spes est" ("While the sick man has life, there is hope", Cicero (1st century BC), Epistolarum ad Atticum, ix, 10
Fables (1727)

Nathanael Greene photo
Henry Cuyler Bunner photo

“You hope you come up with the odd memorable one. That's the best any of us could hope for.”

Ian Darke (1950) British association football and boxing commentator

2010s, 2014, Voice of the Americans (2014)

Louise Imogen Guiney photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Mark Satin photo
Walter Rauschenbusch photo
Phil Ochs photo
Sammy Cahn photo
Cate Blanchett photo

“Thank you of course to Miss Hepburn. The longevity of her career I think is inspiring to everyone. But most importantly and on behalf of everyone I know in The Aviator, thank you to Martin Scorsese. I hope my son will marry your daughter.”

Cate Blanchett (1969) Australian actress

After winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for portraying Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator, (27 February 2005)

Julian of Norwich photo
Rudyard Kipling photo
Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné photo
Samuel Johnson photo
Richard Nixon photo

“I want to tell you that I was so damn mad when that Supreme Court had to come down. First, I didn't like the decision. Unbelievable, wasn't it? You know, those clowns we got on there, I tell you, I hope I outlive the bastards.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

After the US Supreme Court ruling in New York Times Co. v. United States (The Pentagon Papers Case).
2000s

Theodore Roszak photo
Stevie Wonder photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Käthe Kollwitz photo
Nathanael Greene photo
George Eliot photo
Albert Einstein photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo
Theodore Dreiser photo

“Parents are frequently inclined, because of a time-flattered sense of security, to take their children for granted. Nothing ever has happened, so nothing ever will happen. They see their children every day, and through the eyes of affection; and despite their natural charm and their own strong parental love, the children are apt to become not only commonplaces, but ineffably secure against evil. […] The astonishment of most parents at the sudden accidental revelation of evil in connection with any of their children is almost invariably pathetic. […] But it is possible. Very possible. Decidedly likely. Some, through lack of experience or understanding, or both, grow hard and bitter on the instant. They feel themselves astonishingly abased in the face of notable tenderness and sacrifice. Others collapse before the grave manifestation of the insecurity and uncertainty of life—the mystic chemistry of our being. Still others, taught roughly by life, or endowed with understanding or intuition, or both, see in this the latest manifestation of that incomprehensible chemistry which we call life and personality, and, knowing that it is quite vain to hope to gainsay it, save by greater subtlety, put the best face they can upon the matter and call a truce until they can think. We all know that life is unsolvable—we who think. The remainder imagine a vain thing, and are full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Source: The Financier (1912), Ch. XXVI

Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
E.M. Forster photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“The path was new, and there was thrown
A sweet veil over pleasure's ray;
But ignorance is happiness,
When young Hope is to show the way;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(12th January 1822) Ten Years Ago.
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

John Angell James photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Fritz Leiber photo

“I’ve never found anything in occult literature that seemed to have a bearing. You know, the occult—very much like stories of supernatural horror—is a sort of game. Most religions, too. Believe in the game and accept its rules—or the premises of the story—and you can have the thrills or whatever it is you’re after. Accept the spirit world and you can see ghosts and talk to the dear departed. Accept Heaven and you can have the hope of eternal life and the reassurance of an all-powerful god working on your side. Accept Hell and you can have devils and demons, if that’s what you want. Accept—if only for story purposes—witchcraft, druidism, shamanism, magic or some modern variant and you can have werewolves, vampires, elementals. Or believe in the influence and power of a grave, an ancient house or monument, a dead religion, or an old stone with an inscription on it—and you can have inner things of the same general sort. But I’m thinking of the kind of horror—and wonder too, perhaps—that lies beyond any game, that’s bigger than any game, that’s fettered by no rules, conforms to no man-made theology, bows to no charms or protective rituals, that strides the world unseen and strikes without warning where it will, much the same as (though it’s of a different order of existence than all of these) lightning or the plague or the enemy atom bomb. The sort of horror that the whole fabric of civilization was designed to protect us from and make us forget. The horror about which all man’s learning tells us nothing.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“A Bit of the Dark World” (pp. 261-262); originally published in Fantastic, February 1962
Short Fiction, Night's Black Agents (1947)

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo

“A convincing demonstration of correctness being impossible as long as the mechanism is regarded as a black box, our only hope lies in not regarding the mechanism as a black box.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

Dijkstra (1970) " Notes On Structured Programming http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD249.PDF" (EWD249), Section 3 ("On The Reliability of Mechanisms"), p. 5.
1970s

Aimee Mann photo
Sherman Alexie photo
Mark Hawthorne (author) photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ethan Hawke photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Nelson Mandela photo

“Let's hope that Ken Oosterbroek will be the last person to die.”

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

Spoken shortly after Inkatha announced that they would participate in the 1994 elections, as quoted in The Bang-Bang Club : Snapshots from a Hidden War (2000) by Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva, p. 168
2000s

Arthur Cecil Pigou photo
H. G. Wells photo
Maria Bamford photo

“I've never really thought of myself as depressed so much as I am paralyzed by hope.”

Maria Bamford (1970) American actress and comedian

The Now Show (2006)

Alexander Maclaren photo
Nick Bostrom photo
George E. P. Box photo
David Hume photo

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.”

Part I, Essay 18: The Sceptic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

Charles M. Schulz photo

“I just draw what I think is funny, and I hope other people think it is funny, too.”

Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American cartoonist

Address to the Sonoma County Press Club as quoted in the Sonoma County Press Democrat (13 February 2000)

Ilana Mercer photo

“Jews like presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders have forgotten that riches are a reward for work well done. In the Jewish faith's infinite wisdom, wealth justly acquired is a sign of God's blessing.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Burn-the-Wealth Bernie & His Partial Enslavement System," http://www.quarterly-review.org/burn-the-wealth-bernie/The Quarterly Review, October 16, 2015
2010s, 2015

Pat Condell photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“I hope that you will be in agreement with me when I beg you to do everything possible to prevent Hindenburg's retirement. We must under no circumstances bear the responsibility before the bar of history for having overthrown Hindenburg. I feel that even the abdication of the Kaiser would be easier to bear than the retirement of Hindenburg.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Letter to the Chief of the National Liberal Party in Prussia, quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 208, n. 2
1910s

Swami Vivekananda photo
Thomas Gray photo

“Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,
Less pleasing when possest;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 5
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Thou blessed season of our spring,
When hopes are angels on the wing;
Bound upwards to their heavenly shore,
Alas! to visit earth no more.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Poetical Portrait II
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“I hope I have just had simply an artist's freak, and then a lot of fever after very considerable loss of blood, as an artery was severed, but my appetite came back at once. My digestion is all right, and so from day to day serenity returns to my brain.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, Jan. 1889; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 569), p 24
Vincent wrote this letter about two weeks after his first attack, during which he had cut off his ear
1880s, 1889

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

"Social Justice and the Emerging New Age" http://www.wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/MLK.pdf address at the Herman W. Read Fieldhouse, Western Michigan University (18 December 1963)
1960s
Context: There are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize — I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to — segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self-defeating effects of physical violence. But in a day when sputniks and explorers are dashing through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. It is no longer the choice between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…

John Fante photo
Tom Petty photo
Arnold Toynbee photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Neil Strauss photo
Amitabh Bachchan photo
Will Eisner photo

“Pobedonostev: Aha! You are very well recommended Golivinski. You are just what we need here! Russia’s bureaucracy and its state apparatus have been infiltrated by Jews. Believe me. I’ve been studying the Jewish threat.
As guardians of Christina Russia we must deal with them… but it will not be easy…they’re more intelligent and smarter than the average Russian. So how?? How??
Golivinski: Jews are clever but it can be done by means of their own methods… by philisophical writings, news items…and such!
Pobedonostev: Precisely!
Golivinski: For example, we could influence the readers of our Russian newspapers by planting anti-jew articles in their columns…written in the paper’s style,’’’ of course!
and we could even publish a fake newspaper that will print news about Jewish activity!
Pobedonostev: Brilliant, my boy…come, I will assign you at once to my press chief, Mikhail Soloviev!
Soloviev, I have a young assistant for you, his name Mathieu Golovinski!
Soloviev: I can use help!
I hope he’s clever. Thank you, Pobedonostev…
Now, Golovinski, to begin with…I hate jews. They are a sly race whop will creep in and destroy the purity of our Russian culture!
So, I want you to write me a piece on this subject…and make sure it makes a clear case!
Golivinski: Excuse me sir!
Soloviev:Back so soon? What is it Golovinski?
Golovinski: Here is the article you asked for
Soloviev: In only one hour? Let em read it.
Where did you get these official statistics?
Golivinski: Oh, I made them up! No one would dare to challenge them.
Soloviev: Good work! From here on you will write for our regular campaign against the new modernization!
Golvinski: Why that?
Soloviev: All liberal, capitalistic, socialistic movements are directed by jews. We must expose them.
They are the anti-christ!
Golivinski: But sir, shouldn’t we keep this political?
Soloviev: In Russia religion and politics are the same!
Our people will believe anything negative about the Jews! Go ahead boy!”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

Source: The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005), pp. 42-48

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Stephen King photo
Eugéne Ionesco photo

“Pray to the I don't-know-who
I hope : Jesus Christ.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

Prier le Je Ne Sais Qui
J'espère : Jesus-Christ.
Inscription on his tombstone.
Variant translation: Pray to the I don't-know-who: Jesus Christ, I hope.
As quoted in Parasuicidality and Paradox : Breaking Through the Medical Model (2007) by Ross D. Ellenhorn, p. 55

Howard Dean photo

“I was hoping to get a reception like this, I'd just hoped that it would be on Thursday night instead of Tuesday night.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

2004 Democratic National Convention speech, after the audience cheered enthusiastically while he politely asked them to let him speak.

Karl Kraus photo
George Chapman photo

“Our hopes, I see, resemble much the sun,
That rising and declining cast large shadows;
But when his beams are dressed in's midday brightness,
Yields none at all: when they are farthest from
Success, their guilt reflection does display
The largest shows of events fair and prosperous.”

George Chapman (1559–1634) English dramatist, poet, and translator

Revenge for Honour (1654), Act II, scene i. Attributed, probably falsely, to Chapman. The play may have been written by Henry Glapthorne.
Disputed

Jozef Israëls photo
Zach Galifianakis photo

“Hello, my name is Zach Galifianakis, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right.”

Zach Galifianakis (1969) American actor and comedian

Live at the Purple Onion (2007)

Sharron Angle photo
Alexander Hamilton photo
Ba Jin photo
Howard F. Lyman photo
Gardiner Spring photo

“On Thee alone my hope relies,
Beneath Thy cross I fall;
My Lord! my Life! my Sacrifice!
My Saviour! and my All!”

Anne Steele (1717–1778) English hymn writer, essayist

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 82.

Omar Khayyám photo

“Oh, threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain — This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
FitzGerald's first edition (1859).
The Rubaiyat (1120)

Phillis Wheatley photo
Edwin Lefèvre photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“I could never have signed this treaty. I hope that that is clear to all who have heard me.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the House of Lords http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=108314 rejecting the Maastricht Treaty (7 June 1993)
Post-Prime Ministerial

Daniel Berrigan photo

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

“Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all, but He has made a great difference between His white and His red children. He has given us different complexions and different customs. To you He has given the arts. To these He has not opened our eyes. We know these things to be true. Since He has made so great a difference between us in other things, why may we not conclude that He has given us a different religion according to our understanding? The Great Spirit does right. He knows what is best for His children; we are satisfied. Brother, we do not wish to destroy your religion or take it from you. We only want to enjoy our own. … Brother, we are told that you have been preaching to the white people in this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We will wait a little while and see what effect your preaching has upon them. If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said.
Brother, you have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at present. As we are going to part, we will come and take you by the hand, and hope the Great Spirit will protect you on your journey and return you safe to your friends.”

Quoted from The World’s Famous Orations, Vol. VIII., Red Jacket on the Religion of the White Man and the Red https://www.bartleby.com/268/8/3.html, Speech delivered at a council of chiefs of the Six Nations in the summer of 1805 after Mr. Cram, a missionary, had spoken of the work he proposed to do among them.

Jean Cocteau photo

“Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility

Alexander McCall Smith photo
Frederik Pohl photo

“Don Kayman was too good a scientist to confuse his hopes with observations. He would report what he found. But he knew what he wanted to find.”

Source: Man Plus (1976), Chapter 14, “Missionary to Mars” (p. 190)

Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Paul Tsongas photo
Max Frisch photo

“What we call unfaithfuless: our attempt for once to get out from behind our own face, our desperate hope of eluding the definitive.”

Max Frisch (1911–1991) Swiss playwright and novelist

Sketchbook 1946-1949