‘Scilla Elworthy is the founder of the Oxford Research Group, a
non-governmental organisation she set up in 1982 to develop effective
dialogue between nuclear weapons policy-makers worldwide and their
critics.’ Wikipedia.

‘To be hopeful in bad times is not foolishly
romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not
only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What
we choose to emphasise in this complex history will determine our
lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do
something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so
many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the
energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top
of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in
however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian
future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live
now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad
around us, is itself a marvelous victory.’

Howard Zinn