Derrick Jensen Quotes

But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.

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

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

To wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect

Where there is life there is wishful thinking.

There is nothing anyone can do anyway. The public has no power. The government knows I'm not a criminal. The parole board knows I'm not a criminal. The judge knows I'm not a criminal.

Hope is merely another face of desire.

We dream to give ourselves hope. To stop dreaming - well, that’s like saying you can never change your fate.

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 is wanting something so eagerly that-in spite of all the evidence that you're not going to get it-you go right on wanting it.

Not Expecting, but hoping. Always hoping

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

"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?"

Don't wish,"said Rain, "don't start. Wishing only...

Without hope we live in desire.

He wanted to think of words that would make some difference but there were none in any language he knew that were sufficient to the moment or that would change a single thing.

True hope is swift, and flies with swallow's wings.

I felt a constant, low-flying desperation, the kind you feel when you are trying, trying, trying to get something you will never, ever get.

Like “love,” “hope” is one of those ridiculously disproportional words that by all rights should be a lot longer.

Like, I want the world to be better! All I want is positive! All I want is dopeness! Why would you want to control that?

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc - it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

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...

Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming -- weren't our dreams what gave us strength, hope, and desire?

The worst part a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing.