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In these dark times, I often take comfort from a quote that I read years ago in a book by Cornel West and Roberto Unger* that is about hope. They said, “Hope is more the consequence of action than its cause. As the experience of the spectator favors fatalism, so the action of the agent produces hope.”

To me, what that is about is, you are not born with a “hope gene” or “non-hope gene.” It is not hope that leads to action, but it is the other way around. It is action that leads to hope. It is also true that spectating and sitting back leads to fatalism. They both build on each other.

We have two choices: We can sit back and breed fatalism, or we can act and produce hope.

* The Future of American Progressivism, 1998