Neither tired reformism nor pseudo-radical adventurism is an expression of hope. To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born,

The trouble is that most people who think they are very active are not aware of the fact that they are intensely passive in spite of their “busyness.” They constantly need the stimulus from the outside,

What is dreaded is the moment in which you have really nothing “to do.”

We will nothing, nor do we not-will anything.

Our social pattern is such that the successful man is not supposed to be afraid or bored or lonely.

Indeed, this kind of expectation could be hope; but it is non-hope if it has the quality of passiveness, and “waiting for”-until the hope becomes, in fact, a cover for resignation, a mere ideology.

The concept of “activity” rests upon one of the most widespread of man’s illusions in modern industrial society. Our whole culture is geared to activity-activity in the sense of being busy, and being busy in the sense of busyness

They need to be prompted, to be “turned on,” tempted, seduced. They always run and never stand. They always “fall for” and never get up. And they imagine themselves to be immensely active while they are driven by the obsession to do something in order to escape the anxiety that is aroused when they are confronted with themselves. Hope is a psychic

the abstraction and vagueness of worn-out coins which are taken for adequate representations of human experience.