"Despair is a black leather jacket in which everyone looks good, while hope is a frilly pink dress few dare to wear. Rebecca Solnit thinks this virtue needs to be redefined.

Here she takes to our pulpit to deliver a sermon that looks at the remarkable social changes of the past half century, the stories the mainstream media neglects and the big surprises that keep on landing.

She explores why disaster makes us behave better and why it's braver to hope than to hide behind despair's confidence and cynicism's safety.

History is not an army. It's more like a crab scuttling sideways. And we need to be brave enough to hope change is possible in order to have a chance of making it happen."

"There were people who believed that only a strong, longtime authoritarian ruler could keep a country stable in a risky world governed by emperors, kings, and czars. They felt the United States deserved no less.<br />
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But Washington remembered that he had asked his men to fight for a republic. And when he stepped down, he put his young country's future into the hands of every man with a vote.<br />
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We've seen many countries rise up and hold free elections, only long enough for a charismatic, autocratic ruler to win them and hold on to power, like Hosni Mubarak did for so long, like a man afraid to let go of the throat of a snake.<br />
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We all know that democracy can be messy, corrupt, and disappointing. But every few years an event like the revolution in Egypt reminds us why people are willing to struggle and die for it.<br />
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George Washington could have been a king. He decided to be a citizen."