From GeorgeWashington.blogspot.com
September 11, 2007
Several long-time activists have told me recently they are overwhelmed, worried,
and think that we may be losing the struggle to end the imperial wars, save our
Constitution, and stop false flag terrorism.
One very smart friend asked me if there is any basis for hope.
But hope is an act of will, not a passive mood. Admittedly, things
are easier when circumstances bring hope to us, and we can just receive the
hopeful and inspiring news.
But if we care about winning, we have to be able to decide to have hope even
when outer circumstances aren’t so positive.
I have children who are counting on me to leave them with a reasonably safe
and sane planet. As I’ve said elsewhere,
“I care too much about my kids and my freedom to be afraid. I care enough
about them that it gets my heart beating, connects me to something bigger than
myself, and that gives me courage, even when the chips are down.”
If I allowed myself to lose hope about exposing false flag terror, about protecting
our freedom, about preventing World War III, I would be dropping the ball for
my kids. I would be condemning them to a potentially very grey world where bigger
and more violent false flags are carried out, where their liberties and joys
are wholly stripped away, where every ounce of vitality is beholden to “the
war effort”.
Many of us may be motivated by other things besides kids in our fight against
fascism, propaganda, perennial war, and government-sponsored terrorism. Only
you can know what that is. But we each must dig down deep, and connect
with our most powerful motivations to win the struggle for freedom and truth.
I don’t know about you . . . but I don’t have the luxury of giving up hope.
When I get depressed, overwhelmed or exhausted by the stunning acts of savagery,
treason, and disinformation carried out by the imperialists, or the willful
ignorance of many Americans, I will myself into finding some reason to have
hope.
Because the struggle for liberty is too important for me to give up.
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.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless
swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not
let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved,
but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.
The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it
is yours.
– Ayn Rand
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
Hope is passion for what is possible.
– Soren Kierkegaard
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.
– Maori Proverb
I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed
sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.
– Thomas Jefferson
He who does not hope to win has already lost.
– Jose Joaquin Olmedo
When you do nothing, you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get
involved, you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing
you are working to make things better.
– Pauline R. Kezer
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful
sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to
invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an
ability to work for something because it is good.
– Unknown
We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take
you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
– William James
Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without
hope and confidence.
– Helen Keller
The capacity for hope is the most significant fact of life. It provides
human beings with a sense of destination and the energy to get started.
– Norman Cousins
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and
love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they
seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so
powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow.
– Orison Marden
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to
grow by conflict.
– William Ellery Channing
Hope is medicine for a soul that’s sick and tired.
– Eric Swensson
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger
at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they
are.
– Augustine of Hippo
What oxygen is to the lungs, such is hope to the meaning of life.
– Emil Brunner
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for.
And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance
but live right in it, under its roof.
– Barbara Kingsolver
Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty
that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
– Vaclav Havel
Hope is the companion of power, and mother of success; for who so hopes
strongly has within him the gift of miracles.
– Samuel Smiles
Of all ills that one endures, hope is a cheap and universal cure.
– Abraham Cowley
Every area of trouble gives out a ray of hope; and the one unchangeable
certainty is that nothing is certain or unchangeable.
– John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Let perseverance be your engine and hope your fuel.
– H. Jackson Brown Jr
Develop sincere desire for the goal. Out of fire of desire comes success.
– Unknown
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops
of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
– Mohandas Gandhi
Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Don’t lose hope. When it gets darkest the stars come out.
– Unknown
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people
who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
– Dale Carnegie
The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the
opportunity in every difficulty.
– Winston Churchill
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed
ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One
should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined
to make them otherwise.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history
is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot
of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of
hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and
daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls
of oppression and resistance.
– Robert F. Kennedy