Hoppet är ett skadedjur

[...] eftersom allt som existerar vill leva och hoppet inte är ett undantag. Det är ett skadedjur. Det äter och frodas på de oskyldigaste av vävnader. Dess överlevnad ligger i en välutvecklad förmåga att bortse från allt som inte gynnar dess växt men kasta sig över det som göder dess fortlevnad. Sedan idisslar det dessa smulor tills varje spår av näring har utvunnits.

Lena Andersson, Egenmäktigt Förfarande (Natur & Kultur, 2013) pp. 150-151

Optimism's tenacity

Optimism has one thing in its favor – its tenacity.

Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (University of Minnesota Press, 2003) p. 146

Don't start from the good old things but the bad new ones.

Don't start from the good old things but the bad new ones.

Berthold Brecht, cited in Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht (Verso, 2003) p. 121

True hope is an affirmation of the improbable and a wait for what is

Hope is to be reinvented. Would this mean that what this hope aims at is to be obtained through invention, a beautiful utopian future, or through the splendor of the imaginary that certain romantics are said to have had as their horizon? Not at all. The hope that passes by way of the ideal – the lofty heavens of the idea, the beauty of names, the abstract salvation of the concept – is a weak hope. Hope is true hope insofar as it aspires to give us, in the future of a promise, what is. What is is presence. But hope is only hope. There is hope when, far from any present grasp, far from any immediate possession, it relates to what is always yet to come, and perhaps will never come; hope says the hoped-for coming of what exists as yet only in hope. The more distant or difficult the object of hope is, the more profound and close to its destiny as hope is the hope that affirms it: I hope little when what I hope for is almost at hand. Hope bespeaks the possibility of what escapes the realm of the possible; at the limit, it is relation recaptured where relation is lost. Hope is most profound when it withdraws from and deprives itself of all manifest hope. But at the same time we must not hope, as in a dream, for a chimerical fiction. It is against this that the new hope appoints itself. Hoping not for the probable, which cannot be the measure of what there is to be hoped for, and hoping not for the fiction of the unreal, true hope – the unhoped for of all hope – is an affirmation of the improbable and a wait for what is.

Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (Minnesota University Press, 2008) pp. 40-41

Escaping nihilism

The great challenge, in fact, will be escaping nihilism. Nihilism is no revelation, it's just "Viva la muerte!" I believe that there's a hope beyond hope – Saint Paul's phrase – in finitude, in the magnitude of poverty. I believe there is something of the unknown, a terra incognita in the logic of poverty.

Paul Virilio, Pure War (Semiotext(e), 2008) pp. 224-225

Doomed by hope

"Men can imagine their own deaths, they can see them coming, and the mere thought of impending death acts like an aphrodisiac. A dog or a rabbit doesn't behave like that. Take birds – in a lean season they cut down on their eggs, or they won't mate at all. They put their energy into staying alive themselves until times get better. But human beings hope they can stick their souls into someone else, some new version of themselves, and live on forever."
"As a species we're doomed by hope, then?"
"You could call it hope. That, or desperation."
"But we're doomed without hope, as well," said Jimmy.
"Only as individuals," said Crake cheerfully.

Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (Virago Press, 2004) p. 139

To believe in God is, therefore, to doubt his existence, his manifestness, his presence. In fact, faith is the spiritual impulse which reveals the profoundest uncertainty about the existence of God (but it is the same with all theological virtues: hope is the spiritual impulse which betrays the deepest despair at the real state of things and charity the spiritual impulse which betrays the deepest contempt for others).

Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End (Polity Press, 1994) p.92

Love is what gives consistency to an ethical subject, which allows it to persevere with a process of truth.
Love binds itself to justice on the basis of hope. The hope is that justice will be done and the subjective maxim is [...] Beckett's 'Continuez!' That is, continue in your conviction and love your neighbour as yourself. That is, we might define hope as political love.

Simon Critchley, Infinitely Demanding; Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance (Verso, 2007) p. 44

There is always hope, but that must be combined with irony, and more important, skepticism. The context of knowledge is changing constantly.

Anselm Kiefer, "Heaven Is An Idea" in Anselm Kiefer, Heaven and Earth (Prestel: 2005) p. 166