Chasing Hope Quotes

“He argued that there may be a deep human yearning to find the One True Answer”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“The major figure in the international debt crisis was Bill Rhodes at Citibank, and I couldn’t even get him on the phone. Meanwhile, my counterpart at the Journal, S. K. Witcher, had been covering the debt crisis for years and seemed to know everybody. I imagined her on the phone shouting “Goddammit, Bill, you fucked me!”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“I also worried that the linguistic contortions embraced by highly educated liberals antagonized the 62 percent majority of the country that lacked a college degree and that resented being told to change their nomenclature. When The Lancet medical journal tried to avoid dehumanizing trans people by referring to "bodies with vaginas", many women felt dehumanized. I heard from an ICU nurse in Idaho who was told to ask each patient for their identity: male, female, both or neither. Some patients were bewildered, others offended or hurt. The nurse told of the unintended effect on one patient: "One woman, post hysterectomy with complications, burst into tears and said, "I hope I'm still a woman." The concern about stigmatizing trans people is legitimate, but overreach seems to me a fit to hard-right Republicans who campaign against wokeness; it's a self-inflicted error by Democrats.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“We are complicated, conflicted organisms, and solving one problem creates new ones. We're not easily reduced to race or class, and we have many ends that we aim to advance, some of them conflicting or incommensurate. That's the challenge of all who aim to build a better world.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“Scorn and fury go viral in a way that nuance does not.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“I think intentions and framing can matter, but it's absolutely true that good intentions are not enough. What matters is improving opportunities and quality of life, and that's achieved not by waving fists and shouting slogans but by a painstaking process of following evidence, building coalitions and solving problems.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“I wished we put less effort into renaming problems and more into solving them.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“Another lesson I've drawn from coverage of chaos and insecurity is that when stressed enough, human society is capable of unimaginable convulsions - and we shouldn't assume that any society is immune.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“I came to see civilization as a thinner veneer than we might like to admit.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life

“short, I remain a rationalist and an optimist at a time when the prophets of doom have the floor. My query is, if man has been able to create the arts, the sciences and the material civilization we know in America, why should he be judged powerless to create justice, fraternity and peace?”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Chasing Hope: A Reporter's Life