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"I think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic."
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"I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope."

"Are there not times, Ridley, when you yourself wish only to hear the best in people " and not to be dragged downwards into the underworld we all regularly inhabit?"

"I put my pen to the paper and began to write. I'd made so many wishes for so many couples quietly in my head as they drove away, but writing the words out made it seem more real, possible. For them, and maybe for me.FOR YOU, I WISH FOR SECOND CHANCES.I folded it shut, then put it on the wall before I could change my mind, right above Jilly's. As Michael Salem called out to her and she started his way, I crossed the backyard, moving toward the music. When I looked back at the wish wall from a distance, it was a sea of squares: I couldn't even find mine among them. So many things we ask for, hope for, prayers put out into a world so wide: there was no way they could all be answered. But you had to keep asking. If you didn't, nothing even had a chance of coming true."

"Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden."
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"Why are we born? We're born eventually to die, of course. But what happens between the time we're born and we die? We're born to live. One is a realist if one hopes."


"I want to praise activists through the years. I praise those of the past as well, to have them honored."


"That's why I wrote this book: to show how these people can imbue us with hope. I read somewhere that when a person takes part in community action, his health improves. Something happens to him or to her biologically. It's like a tonic."


"All the other books ask, 'What's it like?' What was World War II like for the young kid at Normandy, or what is work like for a woman having a job for the first time in her life? What's it like to be black or white?"


"People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are ready for single-payer health insurance.' We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not have national health insurance. We are the richest in wealth and the poorest in health of all the industrial nations."


"We are the most powerful nation in the world, but we're not the only nation in the world. We are not the only people in the world. We are an important people, the wealthiest, the most powerful and, to a great extent, generous. But we are part of the world."
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