Derrick Jensen Quotes

Hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

"Hope, you see, Wal'r," said the Captain, sagely, "Hope. It's that as animates you. Hope is a buoy, for which you overhaul your Little Warbler, sentimental diwision, but Lord, my lad, like any other buoy, it only floats; it can't be steered nowhere. Along with the figure-head of Hope,' said the Captain, 'there's a anchor; but what's the good of my having a anchor, if I can't find no bottom to let it go in?"

You were supposed to have hope, right? You were supposed to respect its power and hold on. And so I did. I held, and held, and let hope fill me. But as the days went on, it seemed I could be holding for a long, long time. Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless

Hope is a gift. You can't choose to have it. To believe and yet to have no hope is to thirst beside a fountain.

Hope's interesting, isn't it? I can't turn hope off, it's hopeless.

Yes, it feels great to plan your life when you believe everything can turn out fine. But what about when you're shown, again and again, how little control you have over anything? No matter what I do to try to fix my future, it doesn't work.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

I'd like to say things are bound to get better, but I don't really believe it.

The devastating scale and frequency of my disappointment was proof of how much I still expected and wanted from the world, of what high hopes I still had for it.

It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.

I am of the opinion, and even more so the older I get, that it is more difficult to have hope than it is to despair. And I mean this in the sense that in order to have hope you must acknowledge the despair and then you have to get beyond it. Taken from a radio interview given on BBC Radio 4's Open Book

Hope is a dream deferred.

Everything was okay, as long as I could dream . Its amazing, really, the difference between having a dream and not having any left that can come true. It's the difference between living and dying .

to hope was to expect

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

Hope's one thing, expectation's quite another.

I feel helpless, hopeless, too low to call out, too weak to think. Impotent tears dribble down.

We just feel like we don't have the means, To rise above and beat it. So we keep waiting, Waiting on the world to change...

The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.

All this hoping for nothing-or someone-that's maybe hopeless

Hope could be the most powerful thing or the most useless.

How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.

He thought there was no hope for him. Me? I can't imagine a world without hope.

All which happens through the whole world happens through hope. No husbandman would sow a grain of corn if he did not hope it would spring up and bring forth the ear; how much more we are helped on by hope in the eternal life.