Hope quotes

Words about looking ahead and believing things can improve.

• From the experience of the past we derive instructive lessons for the future.

• The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

• I can only hope, therefore, that some of the fun of flying the Atlantic has sifted into my pages and that some of the charm and romance of old ships may be seen to cling similarly to the ships of the air.

• Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for.

• Now, this is where I learned that change only happens when ordinary people get involved and they get engaged and they come together to demand it.

• Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

• After a period of confrontation, we are entering an era of negotiation.

• To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.

• The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.

• In the end, all the world's wealth and a thousand armies are no match for the strength and decency of the human spirit.

• In serving, we recognize a simple but powerful truth: We need each other, and we must care for one another.

• There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.

• But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over.

• Strong hearts and helpful hands are needed, and, fortunately, we have them in every part of our beloved country.

• The bold enterprises are the successful ones. Take counsel of hopes rather than of fears to win in this business.

• At no period of our political existence had we so much cause to felicitate ourselves at the prosperous and happy condition of our country.

• Our work is a work of restoration.

• I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.

• A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.

• No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

• The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.

• Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.

• Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

• He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.

• The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.

• Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her.—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.

• We have it in our power to begin the world over again.

• The sun never shined on a cause of greater worth.

• Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

• No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

• The rapid Progress true Science now makes, occasions my Regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the Height to which may be carried in a 1000 Years the Power of Man over Matter.

• Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good Use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.

• I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine.

• …that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

• We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, streching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

• To be shut up entirely to the past and present, is abhorrent to the human mind; it is to the soul—whose life and happiness is unceasing progress—what the prison is to the body; a blight and mildew, a hell of horrors.

• The thought of only being a creature of the present and the past, troubled me, and I longed to have a future—a future with hope in it.

• Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.

• I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

• However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is.