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Hope Quotes

Hope is a small page with almost no controversy. At the time of writing, no quote on it is flagged as misattributed or disputed; three are marked attributed. The authors are mostly poets (Milton, Shelley, Byron, Samuel Johnson, T. S. Eliot), and the best-sourced entries are the older ones.

Coleridge, in “Work without Hope” (1825): “Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, / And Hope without an object cannot live.” Bertrand Russell, in Political Ideals (1917), thought that hope for the world was to be found only in the deeds of love. Jane Goodall appears three times, which makes her a rare modern name among the poets.

Random quote on Hope

Most quoted on hope:

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

Samuel Johnson Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.

Samuel Johnson The Rambler (1750)

No matter how bad the wicked world has hurt you, in the long run, there is something gained, and it is all for the best … The note of hope is the only note that can help us or save us from falling to the bottom of the heap of evolution, because, largely, about all a human being is, anyway, is just a hoping machine, a working machine, and any song that says, the pleasures I have seen in all of my trouble, are the things I never can get — don't worry — the human race will sing this way as long as there is a human to race.
The human race is a pretty old place.

Woody Guthrie

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