Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters. - P13
Direct action is indirectly powerful: now the media scrutinizes those corporations as never before, and their names are widely known. - P16
A gift for embracing paradox is not the least of the equipment an activist should have. - P17
Those tens of millions worldwide constituted something unprecedented, one of the ruptures that have ushered in a new era. They are one reason to hope for the future. - P17
In his book The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch declares, "Fraudulent hope is one of the greatest malefactors, even enervators, of the human race, concretely genuine hope its most dedicated benefactor" and speaks of "informed discontent which belongs to hope, because they both arise out of the No to deprivation." - P19
Hope is not a door, but a sense that there might be a door at some point, some way out of the problems of the present moment even before that way is found or followed. - P21
Hope, Ernst Bloch adds, is in love with success rather than failure, and I’m not sure that’s true of a lot of the most audible elements of the left. - P22
Puritanical in that the point becomes the demonstration of one’s own virtue rather than the realization of results. - P22
The bleakness of the world is required as contrasting backdrop to the drama of their rising above. - P23
The outcome is usually uncertain, but for some reason tales of decline and fall have an authority that hopeful ones don’t. - P23
But beyond that is an entirely different sort of hope: that you possess the power to change the world to some degree or just that the world is going to change again, and uncertainty and instability thereby become grounds for hope. - P23
To be hopeful is to take on a different persona, one that risks disappointment, betrayal, - P23
Activism itself can generate hope because it already constitutes an alternative and turns away from the corruption at center to face the wild possibilities and the heroes at the edges or at your side. - P24
Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection. - P24
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