Quotes

Some quotes I’ve come across that I think are worth trying to live by:

Jesus of Nazareth

“Follow Me.”

“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave”

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.”

“For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that.”

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

“If all Christians acted like Christ, the whole world would be Christian.”

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

“An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

Desmond Tutu

“Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

“We may be surprised at the people we find in heaven. God has a soft spot for sinners. His standards are quite low.”

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.”

“Without forgiveness, there’s no future.”

“Do your little bit of good where you are; its those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

Mother Teresa

“Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.”

“Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.”

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

“I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.”

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

“I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

“If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

“It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish.”

“There are no great things, only small things with great love.”

“Following Jesus is simple, but not easy. Love until it hurts, and then love more.”

St. Francis of Assisi

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

“Lord, grant that I might not so much seek to be loved as to love.”

“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”

Dorothy Day

“Don’t call me a saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”

“Love is a harsh and dreadful thing to ask of us, but it is the only answer.”

“If we give to God what belongs to God, we will not find much left for Caesar.”
Nelson Mandela

“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones…”

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

“It always seems impossible until its done.”

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.”

“Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate….Costly grace is…the call of Jesus Christ…Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price, and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.”

Oscar Romero

“Aspire not to have more, but to be more.”

“A Christian who does not wish to live this commitment of solidarity with the poor is not worthy of the name Christian.” – Oscar Romero

“You say that you are Christian. If you are really Christian, please stop sending military aid to the military here, because they use it only to kill my people.” (Letter to US President Jimmy Carter)

“No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.”

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“An open hand does more than a closed fist.” – Anonymous

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
-G.K. Chesterton

“We read the gospel as if we had no money, and we spend our money as if we know nothing of the Gospel.” – John Haughney

“God did not send a check. He sent his son.”
-Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner

“O God, to those who have hunger give bread; and to us who have bread give the hunger for justice.” – A Latin American Prayer

“When I feed the poor they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist” – Dom Helder Camara

“First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” – Martin Niemoller

“If you can talk you can sing; if you can walk you can dance.” – A proverb from Zimbabwe

“Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West