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The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear QUOTES

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear QUOTES

1 " Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

2 " Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

3 " Hope isn't an abstract theory about where human aspirations end and the impossible begins; it's a never-ending experiment, continually expanding the boundaries of the possible. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

4 " Possibility is the oxygen upon which hope thrives. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

5 " Moments of doubt are inevitable, especially in a culture that embraces cynicism and mocks idealism as a fool’s errand. But if we look at life through a historical lens, we find that the proverbial rock can be rolled, if not to the top of the mountain, then at least to successive plateaus. Indeed, simply pushing the rock in the right direction is cause for celebration. History also shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time. For every Desmond Tutu, there are thousands of anonymous men and women who have been equally principled, equally resolute in the same causes. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

6 " Even in a seemingly futile moment or losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who could go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Mandela called this process “the multiplication of courage. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

7 " Sometimes we achieve the impossible sooner than we expect. Knowing that can stiffen our resolve. But it can also tempt us to place too much emphasis on outcomes; it can cause us to become unduly impatient, brittle, setback easily breaking our will. A deeper, more farseeing hope, by contrast, combines realism with resilience, acknowledging terror and suffering without giving in to them. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear

8 " Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope — not the prudent gates of Optimism, which are somewhat narrower; nor the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense; nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness, which creak on shrill and angry hinges (people cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through); nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna be all right.” But a different, sometimes lonely place, the place of truth-telling, about your own soul first of all and its condition, the place of resistance and defiance, the piece of ground from which you see the world both as it is and as it could be, as it will be; the place from which you glimpse not only struggle, but joy in the struggle. And we stand there, beckoning and calling, telling people what we are seeing, asking people what they see. "

― Paul Rogat Loeb , The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear