Hope is more than just wishful thinking or a far-off fantasy of a better future. It’s the confidence that the beautiful life and events you dream of are achievable with some persistence and even in the face of adversity. This powerful sentiment is what carries us through difficult times, providing us with a guiding light at the end of the tunnel.
But, we don’t call on hope only in moments of hardship. It also acts as a catalyst for everyday motivation and well-being. Without hope, we lose our way in life.
The following sayings about hope help us better define the word’s meaning in all its forms. Use these hopeful quotes to fuel your optimism and fire as you continue to push towards whatever it is you’re pursuing, whether it be a new job, new skills, deeper relationships or even just a happier existence.
Good Historical Hope Quotes to Remember
Some of the world’s most prominent leaders and thinkers embody hope. Throughout our history, many have campaigned for a more hopeful tomorrow and spoken of its power to affect change. Here, we are highlighting just a few famous quotes about hope. We’ll start with a hope quote by Martin Luther King Jr., the Civil Rights activist who also notoriously said “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
- “If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you to go on in spite of all.” —Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” —Desmond Tutu
- “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.” —Albert Einstein
- “Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live.” —Jurgen Moltmann
- “I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.” —Dalai Lama
- “There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” —Henry Matisse
- “Hope is the thing with feathers – / that perches in the soul – / and sings the tune without the words – / and never stops at all.” —Emily Dickinson
- “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us. —Samuel Smiles
- “Thus a dream becomes for us the bearer of a new possibility, the enlarged horizon, the great hope.” —Howard Thurman
- “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.” —Helen Keller
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Inspirational Hope Quotes to Uplift & Encourage
Hope is often thought of as an innate trait that most people possess— ust to varying degrees based on environment, experiences, etc. But, there often comes a time in our lives when we need a little bit of a push to get us back to that positive headspace. Use these hopes and dreams quotes as your inspiration.
- “Nature has fixed no limits on our hopes.” —Björk
- “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” —Walt Whitman
- “Auspicious Hope! in thy sweet garden grow / Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe.” —Thomas Campbell
- “Just as man cannot live without dreams, he cannot live without hope. If dreams reflect the past, hope summons the future.” —Elie Wiesel
- “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, / And you’ll never walk alone!” —Oscar Hammerstein II
- “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” —Anatole France
- “When you feel like hope is gone, look inside you and be strong and you’ll finally see the truth—that a hero lies in you.” —Mariah Carey
- “Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible.” —Corrie ten Boom, Jesus Is Victor
- “Where there are bees there are flowers, and wherever there are flowers there is new life and hope.” —Christy Lefteri
- “Courage is like love, it must have hope for nourishment.” —Napoleon Bonaparte
Related Link: 75 Joy Quotes That Will Brighten Your Day and Lift Your Spirit
Quotes About Hope In Hard Times
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn—an adage that dates all the way back to 1650 in a poem written by Thomas Fuller. This means that things often seem the worst right before they improve. If you find yourself going through a low place of sorrow or misfortune, lean on the following quotes about hope and strength. Better days are ahead. Don’t lose faith.
- “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
- “Hold fast to dreams / for if dreams die / life is a broken-winged bird / that cannot fly.” —Langston Hughes
- “The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.” —Marion Zimmer Bradley
- “The very least you can do in your life is 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
- “We need hope from a much deeper Source. We need a hope larger than ourselves.” —Richard Rohr
- “Wherever you are tonight you can make it. Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender. Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith. In the end faith will not disappoint.” —Reverend Jesse Jackson
- “As a student of history, what gives me hope in these tenuous times is the knowledge that there is precedent for change and there’s precedent for hope. Hope has bred change again and again. To be hopeless is to disregard history.” —Ava DuVernay
- “Our inner fire is the spark of hope that drives us through even the darkest times. Do not be so quick to dismiss it.” —Dave Roman
- “Hope makes itself every day / springs up from the tiniest places / No one gives it to us / we just notice it / quiet in the small moment” —Naomi Shihab Nye
- “To be hopeful in bad times is not being foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is not only a history of competition and cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.” —Howard Zinn
Related Link: 50 Reassuring Quotes For A Stressful Day
Short Quotes About Hope
It doesn’t necessarily take excessive verbiage to express the importance of hope. Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith’s quotes on hope and statements from other influential people purvey their own definition of the word, leaving us with much food for thought.
- “On another occasion, the question was put to him, what hope is? And his answer was, ‘The dream of a waking man.’” —Aristotle
- “The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.” —Samuel Johnson
- ”Hope will never be silent.” —Harvey Milk
- “A good hope is better than a bad possession.” —Thomas Fuller
- “The door will be opened for everyone who knocks.” —Luke 11:10
- “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” —Colin Powell
- “Where there is no vision, there is no hope.” —George Washington Carver
- “A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you.” —Pope Francis
- ”Humor is a petal on the flower of hope, and hope blossoms on the vine of faith.” —Dean Koontz
- “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear.” —Suzanne Collins
Motivational Hope Sayings For A Better Tomorrow
Looking ahead in our lives can be daunting, especially when we’re not sure where the road will lead. These encouraging quotes about hope help us to see that even in uncertainty, there’s still beauty. If you treat each day as another opportunity to find success and happiness, you can look forward to the good.
- “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
- “Hope makes a mockery of our weighty statistics, our probability charts, our prognostications about the future; it goes its own way despite our forecasts.” —Leon Joseph Suenens
- “Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the 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.” —Barack Obama
- “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act.” —Rebecca Solnit
- “I don’t think then of all the misery, but think of the beauty that still remains.” —Anne Frank
- “Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.” —John Wayne
- “It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism.” —Angela Y. Davis
- “We have always held to the hope, the belief, the conviction, that there is a better life, a better world, beyond the horizon.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.” —T.S. Eliot
- “Tough times never last, but tough people do. If you want to succeed, if you want to conquer, then hope–praying expectantly!” —Robert Schuller
- “Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.” —Nelson Mandela
Encouraging Quotes to Keep You From Losing Hope
Learning how to maintain hope is just as important as cultivating it in the first place. But, it takes discipline. You’ll need to focus on what you can control, be grateful for what you have and strive to preserve an optimistic outlook. You can also refer to the following inspirational hope quotes when you need an extra dose of encouragement.
- “You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once. But don’t ever underestimate the impact you can have, because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.” —Michelle Obama
- “Never lose faith in yourself, and never lose hope; remember, even when this world throws its worst and then turns its back, there is still always hope.” —Pittacus Lore
- “A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success.” —Elbert Hubbard
- “We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreparably broken.” —John Green
- “We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming – well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.” —Amy Tan
- “Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.” —Roy T. Bennett
- “It’s always something, to know you’ve done the most you could. But, don’t leave off hoping, or it’s of no use doing anything. Hope, hope, to the last!” —Charles Dickens
- “If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.” —Thomas Fuller
- “I think for me hope is a choice. And I am much more inspired by the idea of being hopeful, and I would rather live in that headspace. There’s so much evidence of beauty and magic in this world— you turn on the television and you can watch it, or you can be living it. But I think that life is about both things.” —Riley Keough
- “In every circumstance, there is something for which to be thankful. Even when there seems to be nothing else, there is hope.” —Ralph Marston
“Hope Is” Sayings to Stay Positive
The below quotes (including a quote from English theologian N.T. Wright) remind us that hope can be defined in many different ways. It doesn’t always look or feel the same for everyone. As you navigate your own journey to a brighter future, consider these words and create your own unique interpretation of hope.
- “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons.” —Vaclav Havel
- “Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” —Dr. Jonas Salk
- “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” —Stephen King
- “Hope is what you get when you suddenly realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.” —N.T. Wright
- “Hope means to take charge, / Hope means unsubmission. / Hope means to not lose sight, / Hope means to cause illumination.” —Abhijit Naskar
- “Hope is a passion for the possible.” —Søren Kierkegaard
- “Hope is the magic carpet that transports us from the present moment into the realm of infinite possibilities.” —H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Hopeful Words Inspire Tenacity And Healing
As humans, hope is one of our greatest superpowers—an invaluable tool that motivates us, carries us through adversity, and helps us navigate life’s stormy waters. More importantly, hope is healing. The inner peace that we gain from the belief that things will work out in our favor is transformative and fuels unwavering perseverance.
From hope is a good thing quotes to losing hope quotes, the above list acts as a reminder that a brighter future is possible. Use it as a resource when you’re going through a rough patch or simply need a more sanguine perspective to achieve your dreams, no matter how big or small.
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