Quotes About Hope

One wishes for a better outcome, for wiser heads, for a more compassionate public. Yet one wishes in vain. The only comfort, if we can call it that, is that a knowledge of our past failings may equip us to confront evil without delay when evil comes again. For it will.

Costly grace…is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Therein lies a lesson: If sufficiently developed and organized, public sentiment, as manifested in Congress, can prevail over presidential intransigence. Lincoln offered a case study in the leadership of hope and progress; Andrew Johnson's is an unhappier story of willfulness and single-minded service to a favored constituency—in this case, to white Southerners.

The opposite of fear is hope, defined as the expectation of good fortune not only for ourselves but for the group to which we belong.

The world is full of illegitimate children. The world is full of folk whose taste was educated in the gutter. The world is full of people born hating and despising their fellows. To these I love to say: See this man. He was one of you and yet he became Abraham Lincoln.

The question was no longer slavery, but white supremacy, which Pollard described as the "true cause of the war" and the "true hope of the South.

Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace….The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.

In the final analysis, we are one people, one family, one house—not just the house of black and white, but the house of the South, the house of America," Lewis said. "We can move ahead, we can move forward, we can create a multiracial community, a truly democratic society. I think we're on our way there. There may be some setbacks. But we are going to get there. We have to be hopeful. Never give up, never give in, keep moving on.

solemn faithfulness, courage that cannot be daunted, hopefulness that cannot be dashed

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? —Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural Address

The saga of race in America is a tragic one—and it unfolds still. In Lincoln's hour upon the stage, many hoped he would go farther along the road toward equality than he did; many feared any step at all. But on he walked.

Mr. Lincoln had no faith and no hope in the usual acceptation of those words," Mary Lincoln recalled. "He never joined a Church; but still, as I believe, he was a religious man by nature.

God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.

The message of the civil rights movement was straightforward, and it was a message grounded in hope: We are one people; we are one family; we all live in the same house—the American house, the world house.

And the tragedy of America is that we can imagine justice but cannot finally realize it.

Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every country, and left free, it would be better than as it now is.

tag from Virgil: "Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis." The line means "Carry on, and preserve yourselves for better times."59

And, critically, Jackson had spoken in the vernacular of hope and of unity to combat fear and disunion. To him it was a father's role—and a president's.

And you know, my friends," King said, "there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. There comes a time, my friends, when people get tired of being plunged across the abyss of humiliation, where they experience the bleakness of nagging despair. There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life's July, and left standing amid the piercing chill of an Alpine November.

Thou seest, not only the stains and scars of past sins, but the mutilations, the deep cavities, the chronic disorders which they have left in my soul. Thou seest the innumerable living sins…living in their power and presence, their guilt, and their penalties, which clothe me….Yet Thou comest. Thou seest most perfectly….Yet Thou comest.

Jefferson referred to the Federalists as madmen: "Their leaders are a hospital of incurables, and as such entitled to be protected and taken care of as other insane persons are."84,85 Still, there was hope—for to Jefferson, where there was freedom, there was always hope. "The times have been awful," he said, "but they have proved a useful truth that the good citizen must never despair of the commonwealth." Priestley

Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian…black and yellow…how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God….What is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labor and look forward!

Every hope and every fear of his fellow citizens, almost every aspect of their wealth and activity, falls within the scope of his concern—indeed, within the scope of his duty," Harry Truman said. "Only a man who has held the office can really appreciate that.

that we shall go forward instead of halting and falling back, because I have an abiding faith in the generosity, the courage, the resolution, and the common sense of all my countrymen.