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

I thought, if ever there were a time to write a book about hope, it's now.

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.

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.

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

If solace is any sort of succor to someone, that is sufficient. I believe in the faith of people, whatever faith they may have.

I'm not up on the Internet, but I hear that is a democratic possibility. People can connect with each other. I think people are ready for something, but there is no leadership to offer it to them. People are ready to say, 'Yes, we are part of a world.'

Religion obviously played a role in this book and the previous book, too.

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.

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.

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

I hope for peace and sanity - it's the same thing.

Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.

I hope that memory is valued - that we do not lose memory.

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

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

I want a language that speaks the truth.

We use the word 'hope' perhaps more often than any other word in the vocabulary: 'I hope it's a nice day.' 'Hopefully, you're doing well.' 'So how are things going along? Pretty good. Going to be good tomorrow? Hope so.'

That's what we're missing. We're missing argument. We're missing debate. We're missing colloquy. We're missing all sorts of things. Instead, we're accepting.

When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

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?

So people are ready. I feel hopeful in that sense.

I always love to quote Albert Einstein because nobody dares contradict him.

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.

Nonetheless, do I have respect for people who believe in the hereafter? Of course I do. I might add, perhaps even a touch of envy too, because of the solace.

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.

But once you become active in something, something happens to you. You get excited and suddenly you realize you count.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. It's the most theatrically corrupt.

Chicago is not the most corrupt American city. Its the most theatrically corrupt.

Work is a search for daily meaning as well as for daily bread.

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

Although Alchemy has now fallen into contempt, and is even considered a thing of the past, the physicain should not be influenced by such judgements.

I do like to drive fast and I have gotten pulled over in the past. I use my skills to get out of tickets.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

The best prophet of the future is the past.

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

Philosophy finds it an easy matter to vanquish past and future evils, but the present are commonly too hard for it.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

Terrorism, ladies and gentlemen, in my eyes I have a very, very, very simple explanation. Gangs of criminals, killers, used unfortunately by certain governments in the past for political purposes, who are on their own now as gangs.

In the past 3-4 years I've developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I'm able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.

By this time it was past six, and the enemy's van and ours were at too great a distance to engage, I perceived some of their ships stretching to the northward; and I imagined they were going to form a new line.

Firms would be given initial entitlements to gross markup on the basis of past performance. These entitlements would be transferable and a market in them would be developed.

I mean that at least 80% of the Russian people feel destitute. It's the people who had their past and future taken from them - they don't get paid - many of them face a wall. They have nowhere to go.

They spend their time looking forward to the past.