Quotes

Christians whose loyalty to the Prince of Peace puts them out of step with today’s nationalistic world, because they are willing to love their nation’s friends but not to hate their nation’s enemies, are not unrealistic dreamers who think that by their objections they will end all wars. On the contrary, it is the soldiers who think they can put an end to wars by preparing for just one more. Christians love their enemies because God does so, and commands his followers to do so. That is the only reason, and that is enough. — John Howard Yoder

An interviewer once asked singer-songwriter-poet Leonard Cohen about his “concerns.” “Leaning forward, picking up steam as he spoke, Cohen replied. ‘I’m bothered,’ he said, ‘when I get up in the morning, my real concern is to discover whether or not I’m in a state of grace. And I make this investigation, and if I’m not in a state of grace, I try to go to bed.’ ” — Ruth Rosen

I find that it is better to love badly and faultily than not to try to love at all. God does not have to have perfect instruments, and the Holy One can use our feeble and faltering attempts at love and transform them. My task is to keep on trying to love, to be faithful in my continuing attempt, not necessarily to be successful. — Morton Kelsey

There is often more wisdom to be found at the edges of life than in its middle. Life-threatening illness may shuffle our values like a deck of cards. Sometimes a card that has been on the bottom of the deck for most of our lives turns out to be the top card, the thing that really matters. — Rachel Naomi Remen

God’s life and our lives are bound together, as a vine with branches, as a body with members. So corporate are we that no one can give a cup of cold water to the least person in the world without giving it to God. — Rufus Jones

No, it is not easy to grasp that the only way to suffer less is to love more, especially in politics. At the risk of seeming weaker. Yes, at the risk of seeming weaker I shall not build an atomic bomb, I shall not give my enemy a whack in the eye to show that I am stronger, I shall not make war, I shall not squash my tomatoes and apples with a tractor to keep the price up, I shall not destroy forests to build factories, I shall not poison the sea. If love is the rule of my politics and the thrust of my action, yes, I really shall suffer less and I shall cause less suffering in others. — Carlo Carretto

If you want to get something said, ask a man. If you want to get something done, ask a woman. — Olympia Snowe

It all comes down to the same thing: life is beautiful, and I believe in God. And I want to be there right in the thick of what people call horror and still be able to say: life is beautiful. Yes, I lie here in a corner, parched and dizzy and feverish and unable to do a thing. Yet I am also with the jasmine and the piece of sky beyond my window. There is room for everything in a single life: for a miserable end and for belief in God. — Etty Hillesum

Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people. The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living. — US President Franklin D. Roosevelt

We may toss a buck or two in the church offering plate to fund a community-feeding program now and then. But until we get serious about addressing the systemic issues that keep people locked in pockets of hopeless poverty, we’re just whistling Dixie about poverty and thinking Jesus doesn’t know the tune. — Glen Schmucker