The title of The Audacity of Hope was
derived from a sermon delivered by
Obama’s former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

Wright had attended a lecture by
Dr. Frederick G. Sampson in Richmond,
Virginia, in the late 1980s, on the
G.F. Watts painting Hope, which
inspired him to give a sermon in 1990
based on the subject of the painting.

“With her clothes in rags, her body
scarred and bruised and bleeding,
her harp all but destroyed and with
only one string left, she had the
audacity to make music and praise God …
To take the one string you have left
and to have the audacity to hope …
that’s the real word God will have us hear
from this passage and from Watt’s painting.”