“The title of Reverend Wright’s sermon that morning was “The Audacity of Hope.”

“Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope! In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us...A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.”

“We are a people of improbable hope.”

“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.”

“While we breathe, we will hope.”

“America will rise again. And hope will rise again.”

“I've never been more hopeful about our future. I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I'm not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight. I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.”