MESSAGES OF HOPE
From

The Impossible Will Take a Little While
 

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward.  There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.  That way lay defeat and death.”    
—Nelson Mandela

 

 “Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.”
—Jim Wallis

 

  “Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane—and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done.  To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.”
—Cornel West

"We have to be part of something larger than ourselves, because our dreams are often bigger than our lifetimes.”
        —Sister Rosalie Bertell

 

  “If tackling critical common problems seems a fool’s errand, it’s only because we’re looking at life through too narrow a lens.  History shows that the proverbial rock can be rolled, if not to the top of the mountain, then at least to successive plateaus.  And, more important, simply pushing the rock in the right direction is cause for celebration.  History also shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time.”
—Paul Rogat Loeb

 

“Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. If I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing”

—Arundhati Roy

 

   “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart.”
—Václav Havel

 

 “There is always a moment in any kind of struggle when one feels in full bloom.  Vivid. Alive.  One might be blown to bits in such a moment and still be at peace.  Martin Luther King, Jr., at the mountaintop.  Gandhi dying with the name of God on his lips.  Sojourner Truth baring her breasts at a women’s rights convention in 1851.  Harriet Tubman exposing her revolver to some of the slaves she had freed, who, fearing an unknown freedom, looked longingly backward to their captivity, thereby endangering the freedom of all.  To be such a person or to witness anyone at this moment of transcendent presence is to know that what is human is linked, by a daring compassion, to what is divine.”
—Alice Walker

 

 “With our lives we make our answers all the time, to this ravenous, beautiful, mutilated, gorgeous world.”
—Victoria Safford

 

“This is a moment in history that needs us to begin, each of us every day at her or his own pace, slowly and surely rediscovering how to be politically active, how to organize our disparate energies into effective group action—and I choose to believe we will do what is required.”
—Tony Kushner

 

  “The officials thought it was a cruel joke to leave us stranded in the desert with no way to get home. What they didn't realize was that we were home, soul-centered and strong, women who recognized the sweet smell of sage as fuel for our spirits.”
—Terry Tempest Williams

 

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and persistent work of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.  We must use time creatively, and forever realize that the time is always ripe to do right.”
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 “If nothing else is left, one must scream.  Silence is the real crime against humanity.”
—Nadezhda Mandelstam

 

“Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands.”
—Susan Griffin

 

 “Somehow, on this chasm between the conquerors and those who resist being finally conquered, the bridges and connections and meetings are happening that can tear down the walls of separation.”
—Starhawk

 

“Throughout history people have felt powerless before authority, but that at certain times these powerless people, by organizing, acting, risking, persisting, have created enough power to change the world around them, even if a little.” 
—Howard Zinn

 

“Nothing cripples the will like isolation.  By the same token, nothing buoys the spirit and fosters hope like the knowledge that others faced equal or greater challenges in the past and continued on to bequeath us a better world.  Even in a seemingly losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it.”
—Paul Rogat Loeb