Obama: ‘There Are Better Days Ahead ... the Crooked Road Can Be Made Straight’

OBAMA: “Hope is never a willful ignorance to the harshness and cruelties that so many suffer. Or the enormous challenges that we face in mounting progress in this imperfect world. And hope is certainly not the smug complacency of those who won life’s lottery and think it’s all because of their intelligence, or charm, or hard work on their own. Rather, hope is the insistence that, no matter how tough our circumstances, there are better days ahead. That the crooked road can be made straight. That out of the ashes a phoenix can rise. That if we persist despite all of our individual failings and all of our inadequacies, together we can overcome. Together, we can do better. A belief in goodness and human ingenuity. And, maybe most of all, our ability to connect with each other and see each other in ourselves. And then we summon our best selves, and maybe we can inspire others to do the same.”