“In fact, there are many unique satisfactions here. One is that Americans seem to outstrip every nation for hope. Perhaps because so many of us came in flight from something worse, or rose from poverty here, or absorbed the fact and fiction of the “land of opportunity,” or just because optimism itself is contagious—whatever the reason, hopefulness is what I miss the most when I’m not here. It’s the thing that makes me glad to come home. After all, hope is a form of planning.”

“When people ask me why I still have hope and energy after all these years, I always say: Because I travel.” 

“If you want people to listen to you, you have to listen to them. If you hope people will change how they live, you have to know how they live. If you want people to see you, you have to sit down with them eye-to-eye.” 

 “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.”

“Charity means pardoning the unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And faith means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all.”

“In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.”

Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.

Don’t be sad! Because God sends hope in the most desperate moments. Don’t forget, the heaviest rain comes out of the darkest clouds.

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

There is little hope for us until we become tough-minded enough to break loose from the shackles of prejudice, half-truths, and downright ignorance. The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of soft mindedness.

The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood.

Hope is a waking dream.

An open heart is an open mind.

I, an old man, greet you Japanese schoolchildren from afar and hope that your generation may some day put mine to shame.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

The students at our universities have ceased as completely as their teachers to enshrine the hopes and ideals of the nation.

Women marry men hoping they will change. Men marry women hoping they will not. So each is inevitably disappointed.

As long as the people don't fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn't stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful... but so frightening.