Quotations
Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men.
True Godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it.
The Golden rule is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. This ability to refuse will not descend upon us all of the sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions and the next immediate thing is to rearrange our lives as fast as possible, in accordance with that mentality.
Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment.
Economics without spirituality can give you temporary and physical gratification, but it cannot provide an internal fulfillment. Spiritual economics brings service, compassion and relationships into equal play with profit and efficiency. We need both and we need them simultaneously.
There are moments in your life when you must act even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.
In order to get power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness but with qualities that are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, and cruelty.
Never esteem people (including yourself) more because they have money, nor think less of anyone (including yourself) because they lack it. Virtue is the only just reason for respecting anyone, lack of virtue the only reason for holding anyone in low regard.
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.
Disappointments that aren’t a result of our own foolishness are a testing of our faith or a correction from heaven, and it is our own fault if these disappointments don’t work for our own good.
Love work: even if you don’t need it for food, you may for mental and spiritual health. It is wholesome for your body and good for your mind. It prevents the fruits of idleness, which come from having nothing to do and which too often lead to something worse than nothing.
Being different sexes makes no difference because there is no sex in the inner person where the substance of friendship lies.
If we better studied and understood God’s creation, this would do a great deal to caution and direct us in our use of it. For how could we find the impudence to abuse the world if we were seeing the great Creator stare us in the face through each and every part of it?
We are inclined to call things by wrong names. We call prosperity ‘happiness’, and adversity ‘misery’ eventhough adversity is the school of wisdom and often the way to eternal happiness.
Never esteem people (including yourself) more because they have money, nor think less of anyone (including yourself) because they lack it. Virtue is the only just reason for respecting anyone, lack of virtue the only reason for holding anyone in low regard.
We are told truly that meekness and modesty are the rich and charming garments of the soul. The less showy our outward attire is, the more distinctly and brilliantly does the beauty of these inner garments shine.
True Godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it.
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.
Those who produce should have, but we know that those who produce the most – that is, those who work hardest, and at the most difficult and most menial tasks, have the least.
We are heading for a world with three billion cars and a permanently brown sky unless we establish global rules limiting every country to a safe and equal level of consumption.
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.
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
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.
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.
When we look at the future we have three basic choices: we can continue as we are at present, short sightedly guzzling finite resources in a crazy rush of consumerism; we can attempt to mollify some of the grosser aspects of consumerism, and try still to hang on to our present ‘living standard’; or we can change, willingly, profoundly and radically.
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.
