This is genuine, and it can be dated exactly. Anne Frank wrote it on Tuesday 6 June 1944 — D-Day — after the radio reached the annexe with news of the Normandy landings. The Dutch runs: “We weten het ook nu nog niet, maar de hoop doet ons herleven, maakt ons weer moedig, maakt ons weer sterk” — literally “we still do not know, but hope revives us, makes us brave again, makes us strong again.” It sits in the entry as published in Het Achterhuis (Contact, Amsterdam, 1947). One honest caveat: the English sentence in circulation is a translator’s rendering, and we could not establish which of the diary’s two English translations it comes from.
“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again” Anne Frank, diary entry of Tuesday 6 June 1944, the day of the Normandy landings. The Dutch original, in Het Achterhuis (Contact, Amsterdam, 1947), reads: "We weten het ook nu nog niet, maar de hoop doet ons herleven, maakt ons weer moedig, maakt ons weer sterk." The line is usually quoted without its opening "But," and usually with no date at all. Via Quotle.info
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In context
Evoking the world of Anne Frank — diarist · wrote in Dutch, in hiding in Amsterdam. Theme: "Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again". 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 "Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again". 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
The D-Day entry
Work
Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944
Entry
Dinsdag, 6 Juni 1944 — the day of the Normandy landings
First publication
Contact Publishing, Amsterdam, 1947 — read here in the full text of that edition
English translations
Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday, 1952 (Doubleday, US / Vallentine Mitchell, UK); Susan Massotty, 1995. Which one produced this exact wording is not established.
Het Achterhuis in opschudding! Zou dan nu werkelijk de lang verbeide bevrijding naderen, de bevrijding waarover zo veel gesproken is, maar die toch tê mooi is, tê sprookjesachtig om ooit werkelijkheid te kunnen worden? Zou dit jaar, 1944, ons de overwinning schenken? We weten het ook nu nog niet, maar de hoop doet ons herleven, maakt ons weer moedig, maakt ons weer sterk.
Dinsdag, 6 Juni 1944
The passage as printed in the 1947 first edition, read in the Internet Archive’s full text of Het Achterhuis ↗. In English: “The Annexe in uproar! Is the long-awaited liberation really coming now — the liberation that has been talked of so much, but which is too good, too much of a fairy tale, ever to come true? Will this year, 1944, give us victory? We still do not know, but hope revives us, makes us brave again, makes us strong again.”
The Dutch original. The sentence was located by searching the full text of the 1947 Contact edition of Het Achterhuis, where it reads “maar de hoop doet ons herleven, maakt ons weer moedig, maakt ons weer sterk” — three clauses matching the three clauses of the English line — the edition is on the Internet Archive ↗.
The date. The passage falls under the entry headed Dinsdag, 6 Juni 1944, and the surrounding text is unmistakably that day’s: it transcribes the BBC bulletins on the landings, counts 11,000 aircraft and 4,000 landing craft between Cherbourg and Le Havre, and lists the broadcasts by de Gaulle, King Haakon and Churchill.
What Wikiquote has. Wikiquote carries the English line in its sourced diary section but files it with the bare note “Date?” and no Dutch original — unlike every other 1944 entry on that page, which carries both — see the page ↗. The date above closes that gap.
The translation, honestly. The diary’s first English translation was Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday’s, published in 1952; Susan Massotty produced a new one in 1995 — both are documented here ↗. We could not confirm which of the two this exact English sentence comes from, so we do not claim one.
In copyright, and the English wording doubly so. Copyright in Anne Frank’s writings passed under Otto Frank’s will to the Anne Frank Fonds of Basel. The Dutch text of the 1947 edition entered the public domain in the European Union on 1 January 2016 ↗, seventy years after the author’s death — but that is an EU rule and does not decide United States status, and in any case the line quoted here is not the Dutch. It is an English translation, first published no earlier than 1952, and a translation carries its own copyright. Quoted here as short-extract commentary on the source’s provenance.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What the quote sites leave out
Nobody else is credited with this line — the problem is not a false name but a missing source. It circulates as a caption with no date, no entry and no translator, which is why it is worth pinning down.
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The opening word“But where there’s hope” Truncated
The Dutch sentence turns on a maar — “but” — because it answers the despairing question just before it: will this year give us victory? We still do not know, but… Quoted as a standalone inspirational line, the conjunction is normally dropped, and with it the doubt the sentence was written to push back against.
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The dateQuote aggregators circular
The line is printed undated across the quote-site ecosystem, and even Wikiquote files it with a bare “Date?” ↗ in a section where every neighbouring entry carries both a date and the Dutch. That is what made it look unsourced. It is not: it is the D-Day entry.
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The English wordingAn unidentified translator translation, not the original
Anne Frank wrote in Dutch. “Where there’s hope, there’s life” is a translator’s fairly free rendering of de hoop doet ons herleven (“hope revives us”), and “fresh courage” of maakt ons weer moedig (“makes us brave again”). The diary has two published English translations, from 1952 and 1995 ↗; we could not confirm which one this is, and we do not guess.
On the morning of 6 June 1944 the radio in the annexe carried the Normandy landings, and Anne Frank wrote the day down almost as a bulletin — 11,000 aircraft, 4,000 landing craft between Cherbourg and Le Havre, speeches by de Gaulle, King Haakon and Churchill. Then she stopped reporting and asked the question the whole entry is really about: is the liberation everyone keeps talking about actually coming, or is it “too much of a fairy tale ever to come true”?
This sentence is her answer, and read in place it is not a greeting-card sentiment at all. It is a correction she applies to herself after admitting she does not know. Two months later, on 4 August 1944, the annexe was raided.
It is not optimism. It is what she said to herself straight after admitting she did not know.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
12 June 1929 – February or March 1945 · diarist · wrote in Dutch, in hiding in Amsterdam
Annelies Marie Frank was born in Frankfurt on 12 June 1929 and moved with her family to Amsterdam in 1934. From July 1942 the Franks hid in a concealed annexe behind a bookcase in the building where her father Otto worked, and she kept a diary there for just over two years. She wrote this sentence on 6 June 1944, six days before her fifteenth birthday. The family were arrested by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944; Anne and her sister Margot were moved from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen that November, and she died there in February or March 1945. Her father was the only one of the eight to survive, and he published the diary in 1947.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
How to cite this page
Anne Frank, Het Achterhuis: Dagboekbrieven 14 Juni 1942 – 1 Augustus 1944 (Amsterdam: Contact, 1947), entry of Dinsdag, 6 Juni 1944 — “We weten het ook nu nog niet, maar de hoop doet ons herleven, maakt ons weer moedig, maakt ons weer sterk.” Full text at archive.org ↗. English translations: Barbara Mooyaart-Doubleday (New York: Doubleday, 1952) and Susan Massotty (1995); the translation behind the wording quoted here is not established.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again’?” Last verified 13 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/where-theres-hope-theres-life-it-fills-us-with-fresh/