I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC), Agamemnon

He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960), The Rebel (1951)

Until the day when God shall deign¹ to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,--'Wait and hope'.

Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870), The Count of Monte Cristo

Hope doesn't come from calculating whether the good news is winning out over the bad. It's simply a choice to take action.

Anna Lappe, O Magazine, June 2003

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 a waking dream.

Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC), from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent² Philosophers

We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics. They will only grow louder and more dissonant³ in the weeks to come. We've been asked to pause for a reality check; we've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.

Barack Obama (1961 - ), New Hampshire Democratic Primary Speech, 01-08-08

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

While there's life, there's hope.

Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Ad Atticum

There are no hopeless situations; there are only men who have grown hopeless about them.

Clare Booth Luce (1903 - 1987)

Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches⁴ in the soul.

And sings the tune⁵

Without the words,

and never stops at all.

Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus (341 BC - 270 BC)

He who has never hoped can never despair.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) act 4

History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy.

George W. Bush (1946 - )

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Hope is only the love of life.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel

Even in the darkness, every color can be found. And every day of rain brings water flowing to things growing in the ground.

Joss Whedon, Zack Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jed Whedon, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, 2008

Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful.

Marshall Ganz, quoted by Sara Rimer in New York Times

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,

Adorns⁶ and cheers our way;

And still, as darker grows the night,

Emits a brighter ray.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774)

Take hope from the heart of man, and you make him a beast of prey⁷.

Quida

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

Robert H. Goddard (1882 - 1945)

To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)

Hope is necessary in every condition.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future.

Stephen Ambrose (1936 - 2002), in Fast Company

Cease, every joy, to glimmer⁸ on my mind,

But leave---oh! leave the light of Hope behind.

Thomas Campbell (1777 - 1844)

Appetite, with an opinion of attaining⁹, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.

Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)

Never lose hope.

Unknown, Polish Slogan

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings;

Kings it makes gods, and meaner creatures kings.

William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "King Richard III", Act 5 scene 2

I can endure my own despair,

but not another's hope.

William Walsh