At Good Good Good, we help you feel more hopeful and do more good.
For years — since printing the first issue of the Goodnewspaper — we've been slowly collecting quotes about hope. In fact, if you follow us on Instagram, you've probably heard us talk about hope a million times. And that's because we think it's incredibly important.
There's an interesting nuance to be found in the difference between hope and optimism — and there's power in pushing back against cynicism. (Despite how easy it is to feel cynical these days.)
We wanted to share our favorite short quotes about hopefulness (and the difference between hope and optimism) — in the hopes they'll leave you feeling more hopeful, and empowered to use that sense of hope as fuel to help you do more good.
The Best Inspirational Hope Quotes
Famous Hope Quotes
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”
— John Lewis
“To be optimistic is to assume things will work out. To be hopeful is to realize things can work out if you work at them. Hope requires responsibility and agency; optimism relieves us of both. In rooting for your sports team, choose optimism. In rooting for democracy, choose hope.”
— Eric Liu
“What I am trying to cultivate is not blind optimism… but radical hope.”
— Junot Diaz
“Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope.”
— Noam Chomsky
“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”
— Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train
“We choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort. We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs; we choose to work for the world as it should be, as our children deserve it to be.”
— Barack Obama
Hope For The Future Quotes
“In this moment, we can either choose despair or revolution.”
— Brittany Packnett Cunningham
“Understanding that this is America shouldn’t evoke hopelessness. Hope and truth are connected. Hope is not naïveté. It is bearing witness to truth, still believing in better and yielding the energy to contribute to better.”
— Bernice King
“I do have reasons for hope: our clever brains, the resilience of nature, the indomitable human spirit, and above all, the commitment of young people when they're empowered to take action.”
— Jane Goodall
“When we remember the stories of people power overcoming oppression in the past, it serves as the grounds for hope that it can happen again. For this reason, I define hope not as a feeling but as a conviction, based on the knowledge of all the ordinary people who have won against injustice before.”
— Andre Henry
“The fact that we have made progress is a proof point that progress is possible to make. And that’s exciting. That means you can do it. Whether or not you’re optimistic or pessimistic is beside the point. The point is that it’s possible.”
— Ezra Klein, in conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson
On Making a Difference
“Hopelessness is not hard. Hopelessness is a resignation – a luxury folks might have if their children were not being sacrificed on the altar of profits and power. Hopelessness is not the way of people who do hard things. Hope can do hard things.”
— Glennon Doyle
“Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”
— Barack Obama
“One of the greatest ways to maintain attention to an issue is to build, instill, and maintain hope.”
— Imani Barbarin
“We are in a time of crisis, but we are also in a time of hope. And it’s not passive hope. It’s let’s get out there, roll up our sleeves, and get the job done hope.”
— Jamie McLeod-Skinner
“No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do.”
— Dorothy Day
“But I do think it’s important that we stay hopeful about our capacity to overcome that bigotry. And I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice; that if we allow ourselves to become hopeless, we become part of the problem. I think you’re either hopeful, or you’re the problem. There’s no neutral place. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. And if I’ve inherited anything from the generation who came before me, I have inherited their wisdom about the necessity of hope.”
— Bryan Stevenson
“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
— Barack Obama
“History and data have convinced me that change, from the bottom up, is possible. I’m hopeful because I believe history is a story we’re writing together, not something happening to us — which means we all get a say in how the story ends.”
— Andre Henry
On Optimism
Explore our complete collection of the best quotes about optimism
“Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting.”
— Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
“In our culture, to say you’re optimistic is maybe not the right thing. But hope, optimism, this attitude is necessary political stance to take, because we are in a position of privilege, and the situation can be saved. And given those two, it’s dereliction of duty to be pessimistic, to be cynical. It’s just a chicken thing to do.”
— Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Ezra Klein Show
“Optimism doesn’t mean that you are blind to the reality of the situation. It means that you remain motivated to seek a solution to whatever problems arise.”
— The Dalai Lama
“Optimism isn’t a belief that things will automatically get better; it’s a conviction that we can make things better.”
— Melinda French Gates
“It turns out, somehow, there are a tremendous number of things to be optimistic about.”
— Hank Green
On Never Losing Hope
“Being truthful about the state of our nation and world does not equal losing hope. Hope sees truth and still believes in better. That which dismisses or does not seek truth, but grins, saying 'It will be okay,' is naivete, not hope.”
— Bernice King
“Hope confronts. It does not ignore pain, agony, or injustice. It is not a saccharine optimism that refuses to see, face, or grapple with the wretchedness of reality. You can't have hope without despair, because hope is a response. Hope is the active conviction that despair will never have the last word.”
— Cory Booker
“When too much cynicism threatens to engulf us, it is buoying to remember how pervasive goodness is.”
― Carl Sagan
“The world may be broken, but hope is not crazy.”
— John Green
“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.
On Waiting For Hope
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. ”
— Andy Dufresne, 'Shawshank Redemption'
“This conviction that we can win isn’t static. It’s a flame that must be fed and tended. We tend our hope by setting boundaries about how we consume news content that makes us feel despair.”
— Andre Henry
“Hope is a funny thing because in a way it’s everywhere. Like, people will say ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘It will all work out in the end’ — which are very hopeful sentiments — it’s just that they’re also, you know, bullshit. And for me anyway, they just don’t hold up in the face of real suffering. But I’ll tell you what does hold up for me. There’s an Emily Dickinson poem that starts out, ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers - That perches in the soul - And sings the tune without the words - And never stops - at all.’
And you’ll notice that Emily Dickinson doesn’t say that one never stops hearing the song of hope — only that it doesn’t stop playing.
I’m really sorry that you’re in so much pain, and your pain is real, but the song of hope is still singing. And I know you can’t hear it, but someday soon you will.”
— John Green
“Hope is the correct response to the strange, often terrifying miracle of consciousness. Hope is not easy or cheap. It is true.”
— John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
On Mental Health
Read our complete collection of quotes about mental health
“For me, finding hope is not some philosophical exercise or sentimental notion; it is a prerequisite for my survival.”
— John Green
”Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.”
— Jean Kerr
“Perhaps you have to have a little bit of hope to believe that beauty can be found, to believe that life does come back, that something can surprise you. And maybe hope and wonder are somehow related. Maybe wonder feeds hope and hope feeds wonder. You see something beautiful and it reminds you that it’s possible to see something beautiful.”
― Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For
“Hope exists all around us. Keep looking for the pockets of light that remind you life truly is worth living.”
— TWLOHA
On Love
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it — always.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“I still sometimes stop hearing the tune. I still become enveloped by the abject pain of hopelessness. But hope is singing all the while. It’s just that again and again, I must relearn how to listen.”
— John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
“We are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. We don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.”
― Jamie Tworkowski, If You Feel Too Much
Short Quotes
Read more short motivational quotes
“A single individual is enough for hope to exist. And that individual can be you.”
— Pope Francis
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
— Oscar Wilde
“Hope. I’ve got no problem with it.”
— Aleksei Navalny, in a letter
“Hope will never be silent.”
— Harvey Milk
“Can we overcome apathy? Yes, but only if we have hope.”
— Jane Goodall
“Hope is contagious!”
— Greta Thunberg
More Quotes About Hope
“It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.”
— Angela Davis
“I am highly suspicious of attempts to brightside human suffering, especially suffering that — as in the case of almost all infectious diseases — is unjustly distributed. I’m not here to criticize other people’s hope, but personally, whenever I hear someone waxing poetic about the silver linings to all these clouds, I think about a wonderful poem by Clint Smith called “When people say, ‘we have made it through worse before.’” The poem begins, “all I hear is the wind slapping against the gravestones / of those who did not make it.” As in Ibn Battuta’s Damascus, the only path forward is true solidarity — not only in hope, but also in lamentation.”
— John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed
“We need to be strong in a moment of crisis by saying, yes, it can be done. And if we’re in a race between bad catastrophe and some kind of beginning prosperity for all — when you’re in a race that intense, you don’t want to sit down on the ground and start crying. Oh, we’ve lost already. That would be a bad thing to do, because you’re in a race.
You actually need to run as hard as you can. If you lose the race, well, that is a dystopian novel. And I don’t really want to go there. If we lose the race, we’re in terrible trouble, and we’ll be in emergency mode for years. But if we win the race, it’s a big win for the biosphere, for the other creatures, for humanity. So it’s worth pretending to be optimistic, or using optimism as a club, and beating it. Yes, we can succeed. Bang, bang, bang.”
— Kim Stanley Robinson, on The Ezra Klein Show
