Quotations
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighbouring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
Man is supposed to be an intelligent species, yet we keep polluting. We seem to want to wipe ourselves right off the earth, and no one is doing anything about it. That bothers me. Everyone seems to have given up hope on trying. I haven’t. It isn’t easy and it isn’t supposed to be, but I’m accomplishing something. How many people give up a lot to do something good? I’m sure we would have found a cure for cancer twenty years ago if we had really tried.
Somewhere the hurting must stop. I am determined to take myself to the limit for this cause.
I got satisfaction out of doing things that were difficult. It was an incredible feeling. The pain was there, but the pain didn’t matter. But that’s all a lot of people could see; they couldn’t see the good that I was getting out of it myself.
The radical will not work through the power structure in order to take it over. Neither will he wait until the establishment is ready to accept his ideas, for he may very well spend his whole life waiting as so many have done. He begins to act now on the vision. He is building a new society which will replace the old.
Legitimately cool people instinctively understand that the psychology of subservience – getting corporately seduced – is a chicken ass way to live. Today such people are an endangered species.
Revolution is an attempt to close the gap between the ideal and the real. It is a struggle to move from the ‘is’ to the ‘ought’. It is motivated by both a revulsion at the injustice of the present and a feeling of loyalty to something higher. Thus it is an attempt to move beyond the present to a future that seems within reach.
We need to incorporate within our own lives the revolution we seek. We need not only a theory of a liberated society, but the practice of it. We need the experience of living a new reality. Instead of talking about abstract ideals, we need to live a new life. The time has come for a change and it must begin with me.
It is not with your own wealth that you give alms to the poor, but with a fraction of their own which you give back; for you are usurping for yourself something meant for the common good of all. The earth is for everyone, not only for the rich.
What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor, and God receives it.
If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
When someone steals a man’s clothes we call him a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry man; the coat hanging unused in your closet belongs to the man who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the man who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.
All possessions are by nature unrighteous; when one possesses them for personal advantage and does not bring them into the common stock for those in need.
Man is supposed to be an intelligent species, yet we keep polluting. We seem to want to wipe ourselves right off the earth, and no one is doing anything about it. That bothers me. Everyone seems to have given up hope on trying. I haven’t. It isn’t easy and it isn’t supposed to be, but I’m accomplishing something. How many people give up a lot to do something good? I’m sure we would have found a cure for cancer twenty years ago if we had really tried.
I think of the world and what’s going on. Because man’s gone through history with so much death, killing, stealing, I don’t think man can do it on his own. It’s obvious what’s going to happen on this earth unless man changes. I, for one, need something to grab on to, to hold on to.
Somewhere the hurting must stop. I am determined to take myself to the limit for this cause.
What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.
Peace, in the sense of the absence of war, is of little value to someone who is dying of hunger or cold. It will not remove the pain of torture inflicted on a prisoner of conscience. It does not comfort those who have lost their loved ones in floods caused by senseless deforestation in a neighbouring country. Peace can only last where human rights are respected, where the people are fed, and where individuals and nations are free.
Somewhere the hurting must stop. I am determined to take myself to the limit for this cause.
There is a bomb ticking away under the whole world. We accidentally built it ourselves, out of too many people and too much consumption and too much pressure on the environment.
Were it not for the presence of the unwashed and the half-educated, the formless, queer and incomplete, the unreasonable and absurd, the infinite shapes of the delightful human tadpole, the horizon would not wear so wide a grin.
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor, and God receives it.
In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.
If the nature of work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the human body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best he is capable of. It directs his free will along the proper course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values and develop his personality.
In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.
