You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.

Action is the antidote to despair.

The only thing that's been a worse flop than the organization of non-violence has been the organization of violence.

You don't get to choose how you are going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live.

Nonviolence is a flop. The only bigger flop is violence.

I've never had a humble opinion. If you've got an opinion, why be humble about it?

Hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers.

That's all nonviolence is - organized love.

Instead of getting hard ourselves and trying to compete, women should try and give their best qualities to men - bring them softness, teach them how to cry.

It seems to me that those songs that have been any good, I have nothing much to do with the writing of them. The words have just crawled down my sleeve and come out on the page.

The easiest kind of relationship for me is with ten thousand people. The hardest is with one.

If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?

As we know, forgiveness of oneself is the hardest of all the forgivenesses.

During the 'ballad' years for me, the politics was latent; I was just falling in love with the ballads and my boyfriend. And there was the beauty of the songs.

I didn't go through the routine of singing in small clubs and doing open mics and working so hard the way a lot of people do and did. It was just an overnight kind of thing.

I have hope in people, in individuals. Because you don't know what's going to rise from the ruins.

I see a young man playing 'Plaisir d'Amour' on guitar. I knew I didn't want to go to college; I was already playing a ukulele, and after I saw that, I was hooked. All I wanted to do was play guitar and sing.

I think music has the power to transform people, and in doing so, it has the power to transform situations - some large and some small.

I've never been an optimist.

If people have to put labels on me, I'd prefer the first label to be human being, the second label to be pacifist, and the third to be folk singer.

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.

The foundation of my beliefs is the same as it was when I was 10. Non-violence.

The hardest song to write is a protest song, a topical song with meaning.

The longer you practice nonviolence and the meditative qualities of it that you will need, the more likely you are to do something intelligent in any situation.

We were raised with that discussion about violence and non-violence, and we all pretty much came up on the side of non-violence. That became my foundation with politics and my livelihood.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.

Noise is an imposition on sanity, and we live in very noisy times.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

If pessimism is despair, optimism is cowardice and stupidity. Is there any need to choose between them?

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.

You may not know it, but at the far end of despair, there is a white clearing where one is almost happy.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

If I were a girl, I'd despair. The supply of good women far exceeds that of the men who deserve them.

This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.

Her pupils were at once her salvation and her despair. They gave her the means of supporting life, but they made life hardly worth supporting.

It is not enough to tackle the mechanics of terror organizations. We must also tackle the situations that create terrorists. We desperately need to address the frustration, the loss and the despair that drive some to these actions.

Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.

God gave you not a spirit of faithlessness, not a spirit of despair.

If you don't love it, you can't suffer thru all the despair that comes with it. Keep doing it because you love it.

The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.