A Quote by Ben Okri

What hope is there for individual reality or authenticity when the forces of violence and orthodoxy, the earthly powers of guns and bombs and manipulated public opinion make it impossible for us to be authentic and fulfilled human beings? The only hope is in the creation of alternative values, alternative realities. The only hope is in daring to redream one's place in the world - a beautiful act of imagination, and a sustained act of self becoming. Which is to say that in some way or another we breach and confound the accepted frontiers of things.

Ben Okri

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Accepted Act Alternative Another Authentic Authenticity Beautiful Becoming Beings Bombs Breach Confound Creation Daring Earthly Forces Frontiers Fulfilled Guns Hope Human Human Being Human Beings Imagination Impossible Individual Make Manipulated Only Opinion Orthodoxy Place Powers Public Public Opinion Realities Reality Say Self Some Sustained Things Us Values Violence Way Which World

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Ben Okri
Nigerian - Novelist
Born: March 15, 1959

Hope is the strongest driving force for a people. Hope which brings about change, which produces new realities, is what opens man's road to freedom. Once hope has taken hold, courage must unite with wisdom. That is the only way of avoiding violence, the only way of maintaining the calm one needs to respond peacefully to offenses.

Oscar Arias

I'd almost say hope isn't what it used to be. It's very difficult today to be a teacher. I speak to children. And tell them, look, no matter what, you must have hope. You must. When I invoke Camus, who said when there is no hope, you must invent hope. . .hope is something that is not what God gives us. It's like peace. It's a gift that one can give to one another. Only another person can push me to despair. And only another person can push me to hope. Its my choice.

Elie Wiesel

Blind hope. Blind hope is all we have. There's a Greek tragedy called Prometheus Bound; Prometheus is the [titan] that gave humans fire. He's chained to a rock and bemoaning his fate and saying, "I gave you everything. By giving you fire, I gave you blind hope. By giving you a little light that kept you warm at night, I let you believe that this was all going to be okay." For me, that's what art has been. Music and books, it's an act of hope to make them, and it's an act of hope to listen to them. That hope will be dashed, you will say goodbye.

Torquil Campbell

So it can be for us as we allow the stirrings of hope to motivate us to action; and then as we act so that our hope becomes faith, that faith gives us power and enthusiasm for the principles of the gospel, which leads us to further action. Soon, we are lifted out of the state of hopelessness, and we begin to aid those around us by working to make the world a better place, rather than languishing in misery watching the world go by without us.

David S. Baxter

In relation to the question of hope, I think the only hope we have is hope against hope. We hope for a better world. But of course we can do better than just hope.

Simon Critchley

Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life.

Cormac McCarthy

Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So instead of looking for hope, look for action. Then, and only then, hope will come.

Greta Thunburg

"How can you see Christ in people?" And we only say: It is an act of faith, constantly repeated. It is an act of love, resulting from an act of faith. It is an act of hope, that we can awaken these same acts in their hearts, too, with the help of God.

Dorothy Day

Writing... is an act of faith: I believe it's also an act of hope, the hope that things can get better than they are.

Margaret Atwood

And then the spirit brings hope, hope in the strictest Christian sense, hope which is hoping against hope. For an immediate hope exists in every person; it may be more powerfully alive in one person than in another; but in death every hope of this kind dies and turns into hopelessness. Into this night of hopelessness (it is death that we are describing) comes the life-giving spirit and brings hope, the hope of eternity. It is against hope, for there was no longer any hope for that merely natural hope; this hope is therefore a hope contrary to hope.

Soren Kierkegaard

Hope is to our spirits what oxygen is to our lungs. Lose hope and you die. They may not bury you for awhile, but without hope you are dead inside. The only way to face the future is to fly straight into it on the wings of hope....hope is the energy of the soul. Hope is the power of tomorrow.

Lewis B. Smedes

Hope. People want hope. We crave hope. We long for hope. Hope has been present since the very beginning. And almost in the worst situations of human history, you often find the greatest amount of hope. The very nature of the situation, the way stepped-on people created within them even more hope than when things were going fine. Hope has always been around.

Rob Bell

One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other.

T. S. Eliot

I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

To all of you, I repeat: Do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! Do not let yourselves be robbed of hope! And not only that, but I say to us all: let us not rob others of hope, let us become bearers of hope!

Pope Francis

I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, 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

A Quote by Ben Okri

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