As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.

Possibility is the oxygen upon which hope thrives.

History...shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time.

When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.

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.

None of us can predict when the causes we support will capture the public imagination, and our once-lonely quests become popular crusades.

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.