“Hope criticizes what is, hopelessness rationalizes it. Hope resists, hopelessness adapts.”

“Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world. If your heart's full of hope, you can be persistent when you can't be optimistic. You can keep the faith despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing. So while I'm not optimistic, I'm always very hopeful.”

“i'm not always optimistic but i am always hopeful.”

“We must guard against being too individualistic.... Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people--the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced.”

“...in home after home I have seen Jesus change beer into furniture, sinners into saints, hate-filled relations into loving ones, cowardice into courage, the fatigue of despair into the buoyancy of hope.”

“[When things go badly] Instead of becoming alienated from their faith in God, wouldn't it make more sense for them to become alienated from their mislaid hopes in human beings, alienated from shallow notions of automatic progress, from sentimental notions about the 'nobility of man'?”

“Prophets from Amos and Isaiah to Gandhi and King have shown how frequently compassion demands confrontation. Love without criticism is a kind of betrayal. Lying is done with silence as well as with words.”