Let My People Hope
Ten quotes about hope from people with far less privilege than me
I’ll keep my statement brief since this post should include as little of my voice as possible. I’m not here to “Doomsplain.”
I’m here to chuck out a little hope, in the midst of the avalanche of doomsayers we find ourselves drowning in.
At the end of the day, my issue with doomsayers is that they discourage and stomp down the fundamental human right of hope. It’s a bit of a played-out cliche, but people still fall for their rhetoric. It gets clicks.
And it’s the same nonsense that it’s always been.
Pessimism and optimism are both delusional. One delusion leads to lethargy and anger, and the other leads to action against larger forces that try to keep us down.
Throughout human history, no matter how dark things have gotten, they’ve only gotten better through the grand delusions of people who dared to hope for — then create, a better future.
That’s my two cents.
All I’d like from this exchange is for you to come away feeling a bit more hopeful.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.”
–Desmond Tutu
“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
–Anne Lamott
“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh
“Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.”
–Laini Taylor
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
–Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.”
–Emily Dickinson
“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
–Maya Angelou
“Our human compassion binds us one to the other — not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.”
–Nelson Mandela
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”
–Barbara Kingsolver
“A positive statement propels hope toward a better future, it builds up your faith and that of others, and it promotes change.”
–Jan Dargatz
No matter how dark the world gets, there is light. No matter how delusional it is to believe in that light, it’s just as delusional to believe in darkness.
No matter how bad it gets, we still have chocolate, kittens, and ice cream. Those continue to exist alongside all the frustrating nonsense!
Hope. Forgive. Love.
It’s the only way any of this gets better.
“Forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past.”
-Rev. Kathianne Lewis (learned by the author through Buddy Wakefield’s TED talk, Free Air).