Faith Curriculum Library: Tapestry of Faith: A Place of Wholeness: A Program for Youth Exploring Their Own Unitarian Universalist Faith Journeys

Handout 1: Hope Quotes

Make copies of this handout for all leaders and participants.

Quote 1: "Just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings." — Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), writer, activist and Holocaust survivor

Quote 2: "Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence." — Lin Yutang (1895-1976), Chinese writer and inventor

Quote 3: "The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism." — James Luther Adams (1901-1994), Unitarian minister and theologian

Quote 4: "Despair? Did someone say despair was a question in the world? Well then, listen to the sons of those who have known little else if you wish to know the resiliency of this thing you would so quickly resign to mythhood, this thing called the human spirit." — Lorraine Hansberry, African American playwright

Quote 5: "Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torment of man." —Freidrich Neitzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher

Quote 6: "Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges... ; nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of 'Everything is gonna be all right.'" — Victoria Safford, Unitarian Universalist minister

Quote 7: "No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There's too much work to do." — Dorothy Day (1897-1980), journalist, activist, and founder of the Catholic Worker movement

Quote 8: "Though the morning seems to linger

O'er the hill — tops far away,

Yet the shadows bear the promise

Of a brighter coming day." — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Iola Leroy (1892)

Quote 9: "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. — Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1952)