Peter Gomes distinguishes between hope (a long view) from optimism (the short view).

Question: What gives you hope?

Peter Gomes: Dealing with my students gives me the most hope. I see an enormous range of talent and opportunity in the students that pass through my courses, and through the church, and through the other settings in which I meet young people here and across the country. I have tremendous hope in the rising generation. I believe in them. I believe not only are they, in terms of the initial statistics, smarterme cause for encouragement. than their parents. I believe that they are less capable of being seduced by the talents and the treasures of this world. That they have a higher standard of what they want, and what they feel they deserve, and what the world requires. I look to them to … to produce, in some sense, this ideal world. Their parents have had their chance and they’ve squandered it. There’s not much there to be had, it seems to me. But in these young kids that we produce regularly each year out of college despite this one, I believe, is the world’s best chance, the world’s best hope. That gives

Recorded on: 6/12/07