"Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment."
— Warhammer 40,000, "Thought for the Day"
"The pessimists went into exile; the optimists went to the Death Camps."
"Even in the darkness
Every color can be found,
And every day of rain brings water flowing
To things growing in the ground."
Every color can be found,
And every day of rain brings water flowing
To things growing in the ground."
— Penny, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, "Penny's Song"
"I heard it was you
Talkin' 'bout a world where all is free
It just couldn't be,
And only a fool would say that"
Talkin' 'bout a world where all is free
It just couldn't be,
And only a fool would say that"
— Steely Dan, "Only a Fool Would Say That"
"If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing
And always look on the bright side of life"
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle, that's the thing
And always look on the bright side of life"
"Hope is what keeps us strong. It is why we are here. It is what we fight with when all else is lost."
— Pandora, God of War III
"If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time. I could tell them that countless times!"
— Madoka, Puella Magi Madoka Magica
"You could say that. A knight serves their lord, but a king serves their ideal. If Arthur hadn't focused too much on pursuing his utopia, things would have been different."
— Archer, Our Avatars Are in a Room Together
"'Cause anyone that tells you
What it's all about
Is selling you something
You haven't worked that out..."
What it's all about
Is selling you something
You haven't worked that out..."
— Patrick Park, "Hell If I Know"
I don't know if... I can ever let Papyrus into the Royal Guard. Don't tell him I said that! He's just, well... I mean, it's not that he's weak. He's actually pretty freaking tough! It's just that... he's too innocent and nice! I mean, look, he was SUPPOSED to capture you, and he ended up being friends with you instead! I could never send him into battle! He'd get ripped into little smiling shreds.
— Undyne, Undertale
"I still think in the end, we'll all be okay."
— Earth, Nebula
"This may not be a happy musical, Officer Lockstock, but it's still a musical. And when a little girl has been given as many lines as I have, there's still hope for dreams!"
— Little Sally, Urinetown
Ryubi Gundam: Is power such as this the future you envisioned for yourself, King Sakomizu?!
Sousou Gundam: A man who is bound by his past, who would harm his own people, is wholly incapable of leading the way to any future whatsoever!
Sonken Gundam: What the people pray for is not a raging flame, but a guiding light!
Shinjiro Sakomizu: Then muster your justice, your ideals, your courage, and try to stop my march, ye idealists of the Three Kingdoms!
Sousou Gundam: A man who is bound by his past, who would harm his own people, is wholly incapable of leading the way to any future whatsoever!
Sonken Gundam: What the people pray for is not a raging flame, but a guiding light!
Shinjiro Sakomizu: Then muster your justice, your ideals, your courage, and try to stop my march, ye idealists of the Three Kingdoms!
(Django takes Remy to a storefront window filled with poisons, traps and dead rats)
Django: Take a good, long look, Remy. This is what happens when a rat gets a little too comfortable around humans. The world we live in belongs to the enemy. We must live carefully. We look out for our own kind, Remy. When all is said and done, we're all we got.
Remy: (long pause) No.
Django: ...What?
Remy: No! Dad, I don't believe it! You're telling me that the future is, can only be, more of this?
Django: This is the way things are. You can't change nature.
Remy: Change is nature, Dad. The part that we can influence. And it starts when we decide. (starts walking away)
Django: Where are you going?
Remy: With luck... forward.
Ascalante: He sees in Conan a red-handed, rough-footed barbarian who came out of the north to plunder a civilized land. He idealizes the king whom Conan killed to get the crown, remembering only that he occasionally patronized the arts, and forgetting the evils of his reign, and he is making the people forget. Already they openly sing The Lament for the King in which Rinaldo lauds the sainted villain and denounces Conan as 'that black-hearted savage from the abyss.' Conan laughs, but the people snarl.
Thoth-Amon: Why does he hate Conan?
Ascalante: Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people.
Thoth-Amon: Why does he hate Conan?
Ascalante: Poets always hate those in power. To them perfection is always just behind the last corner, or beyond the next. They escape the present in dreams of the past and future. Rinaldo is a flaming torch of idealism, rising, as he thinks, to overthrow a tyrant and liberate the people.
—The villains discussing "hare-brained minstrel" Rinaldo, The Phoenix on the Sword
"I am wearied and at times heartsick of the wretched politics of this country…. The last ten or twelve years of my life, passed among sordid speculators in the United States, and political adventurers in Spain, has shewn me so much of the dark side of human nature, that I begin to have painful doubts of my fellow man; and look back with regret to the confiding period of my literary career, when, poor as a rat, but rich in dreams, I beheld the world through the medium of my imagination and was apt to believe men as good as I wished them to be."
