"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacriļ¬ce, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places ā and there are so many ā where people have behaved magniļ¬cently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we donāt have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an inļ¬nite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in deļ¬ance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."
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Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress, p. 270.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Future
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