Straight from today’s Quotle — here’s who really said it, and the story behind it. Play again

Who really said it

Once you choose hope, anything is possible

Attributed to Christopher Reeve 1952–2004 · American actor, director & spinal-cord-injury advocate
Credited to Reeve by his own foundation and consistent with everything he wrote — but the exact wording is sourced to nothing. In copyright

Reeve is credited with this line everywhere — including on the homepage of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation ↗, the organisation he founded. But no book page, speech, interview or letter documents this exact wording. The closest sentence anyone can actually source, from his 2002 book Nothing Is Impossible, runs “Once we choose hope, everything is possible” — the same thought, not the same words.

Last verified 15 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“Once you choose hope, anything is possible” Once you choose hope, anything's possible. —Christopher Reeve (attributed; no primary source documents this exact wording. His 2002 book Nothing Is Impossible has the related sentence "Once we choose hope, everything is possible.") Via quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The Estate of Christopher Reeve; Random House (for Nothing Is Impossible, 2002)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Christopher Reeve — American actor, director & spinal-cord-injury advocate. Theme: "Once you choose hope, anything is possible". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Once you choose hope, anything is possible". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What can actually be sourced

Attributed to
Christopher Reeve (1952–2004)
Documented source
None located — no page, speech or date
Closest sourced wording
Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life
First published
Random House, September 2002

Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. wording unpinned

This is the form that circulates, and the form Reeve’s own foundation uses. The sentence that is documented — in the closing chapter of Nothing Is Impossible, titled “Hope” — is a different one: “Once we choose hope, everything is possible.” Two pronouns and one adjective apart, and no citation bridges them.

Nothing Is Impossible — Internet Archive catalogue record

How we verified this

  • Reeve’s own foundation leads with the line. The homepage of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation ↗ displays “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” — with no source date attached. That is institutional endorsement, not a citation.
  • Wikiquote doesn’t carry it at all. The Christopher Reeve page on Wikiquote ↗ contains no “once you choose hope” entry in any section — though it does source his 1996 Democratic National Convention line about dreams that “at first seem impossible.”
  • The closest documented sentence is in the 2002 book. LibQuotes ↗ reproduces a passage ending “Once we choose hope, everything is possible,” citing Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life (Random House, 2002).
  • The Reeve archive lists the short form undated. CapedWonder ↗ carries “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible” with no date, while separately sourcing the “lighthouse is hope” passage to Nothing is Impossible (2002) — a telling split.
In copyright

We could not pin this exact wording to a specific work, but that does not make it free to reuse: Christopher Reeve died in 2004, and every candidate source — Still Me (1998), Nothing Is Impossible (2002), his speeches and interviews — is a modern work published well after 1931 and firmly in copyright. Treat the line as in-copyright and quote it with attribution.

Fact-check

The wording, not the man

Nobody is stealing this line from Reeve — the attribution to him is almost certainly right. What has gone soft is the wording, and the confident sourcing that quote sites bolt onto it.

Christopher Reeve — but with “we” and “everything” sourced

The passage that can be cited to a book ends: “Once we choose hope, everything is possible.” LibQuotes ↗ attributes it to Nothing Is Impossible (Random House, 2002), and CapedWonder ↗ independently sources the same passage to that book.

Christopher Reeve — “you” and “anything’s” no source

The popular form appears on his foundation’s homepage ↗ and across every quote aggregator — but always bare. Goodreads ↗ gives the name and a “hope” tag and nothing else: no book, no page, no date.

“From Nothing Is Impossible (2002)” unconfirmed

Search engines and quote pages routinely assign the short line to the 2002 book. No source we could fetch gives a page for it, and the book sentence they point to is worded differently — so this is an inference being passed off as a citation. The Internet Archive copy ↗ is access-restricted, so the text cannot be searched to settle it.

“anything is possible” vs “anything’s possible” variant

Both forms circulate freely. The contracted version is the one Reeve’s own foundation ↗ prints, which makes it the better default of the two.

The thought is unmistakably Reeve’s, and his family’s foundation stands behind these exact words — but the words themselves are the one thing nobody can source. Quote it as attributed, and if you need a sentence you can cite to a page, use the book’s: “Once we choose hope, everything is possible” (Nothing Is Impossible, 2002 ↗).

Context

Why this one is different

Most feel-good lines pinned on famous names are drifting away from their source. This one is drifting within it. Reeve wrote an entire closing chapter called “Hope” for Nothing Is Impossible, published in September 2002 — seven years after the 1995 riding accident that left him paralysed from the neck down. The book is saturated with this exact argument. The problem isn’t whether he believed it; it’s that the sentence everyone quotes isn’t the sentence he printed.

What makes the case unusual is the endorsement. The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation ↗ — founded by Reeve, carried on by his family — puts the popular wording on its front page. That’s about as close to an authorised text as an unsourced quote ever gets. It still isn’t a citation, and we won’t pretend otherwise.

Reeve’s foundation prints these exact words. His book prints different ones. Nothing bridges the gap.

Read the full story

The verb matters more than it looks. “Choose” is the whole argument: Reeve’s claim was that hope is not a mood that arrives but a decision you make, and that the decision comes first and the possibility second. Both versions of the line carry that; the drift is only in pronoun and scale.

Wikiquote ↗ does source a related and firmly documented Reeve line, from his speech to the Democratic National Convention on 26 August 1996: “So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.” If you want a Reeve sentence on hope with a date and a podium attached, that is the one.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Hope

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundationchristopherreeve.org

The foundation Reeve founded. Its homepage displays the quote in its popular form — with no source date given.
Christopher Reeve — Wikiquoteen.wikiquote.org

Notably does not carry this line in any section. Does source his 1996 Democratic National Convention speech on dreams that seem impossible.
Nothing Is Impossible — Internet Archivearchive.org

Catalogue record for the 2002 book (this copy: Arrow, 2003). Access-restricted, so the full text cannot be searched to settle the wording.
Nothing Is Impossible — publisher recordpenguinrandomhouse.com

Publisher's record confirming Reeve's Nothing Is Impossible, Random House/Ballantine, first published September 2002.
The 'lighthouse is hope' passagelibquotes.com

Reproduces the fuller book passage ending 'Once we choose hope, everything is possible', cited to Nothing Is Impossible (Random House, 2002).
CapedWonder Reeve quotes archivecapedwonder.com

Reeve imagery archive. Lists the short form undated while separately sourcing the 'lighthouse is hope' passage to the 2002 book.

The man who meant it

Who was Christopher Reeve?

Christopher Reeve

1952–2004 · American actor, director & spinal-cord-injury advocate

Christopher Reeve (25 September 1952 – 10 October 2004) was the American actor who defined Superman on screen across four films, and who in May 1995 was thrown from a horse and left paralysed from the neck down. He spent the nine years that followed as the most visible advocate for spinal-cord-injury research in the world, founding what is now the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and co-founding the Reeve-Irvine Research Center. He wrote two books about that second life — Still Me (1998) and Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life (2002) — and directed for television from a wheelchair. The line about choosing hope is credited to him because it is precisely what he spent a decade arguing, in print and from podiums; the irony is that the version the world memorised is not quite the version he published.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

No source documents the popular wording. Closest documented: Christopher Reeve, Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life (New York: Random House, 2002), closing chapter “Hope” — “Once we choose hope, everything is possible.”

MLA (9th ed.)

Reeve, Christopher. Nothing Is Impossible: Reflections on a New Life. Random House, 2002.

APA (7th ed.)

Reeve, C. (2002). Nothing is impossible: Reflections on a new life. Random House.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Once you choose hope, anything is possible’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/once-you-choose-hope-anything-is-possible

Copied