Notable Quotes 1999
Notable Quotes 2000
Notable Quotes 2001
Notable Quotes 2002
Notable Quotes 2003
Notable Quotes 2004
Notable Quotes 2005
Notable Quotes 2006
Notable Quotes 2007
Notable Quotes 2008
Notable Quotes 2009



	"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves
	alone--we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives
	merely by study and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning
	of our life is a secret that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we
	love. And if this love is unreal, the secret will not be found, the meaning
	will never reveal itself, the message will never be decoded. At best, we will
	receive a scrambled and partial message, one that will deceive and confuse us.
	We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love--either with
	another human person or with God."	
Thomas Merton
Trappist monk and spiritual writer



	"What can be more important than science and religion? Science gives
	us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites
	of the decent existence.”	
Professor Michael
priest, cosmologist, philosopher



	"Those of us who have been hollering about America's descent into torture
	for the past nine years didn't do so because we like terrorists or secretly
	hope for more terror attacks. We did it because if a nation is unable to decry
	something as always and deeply wrong, it has tacitly accepted it as sometimes
	and often right. Or, as President Bush now puts it, damn right."	
Dahlia Lithwick
journalist for Slate



	"Courage is not the absence of fear.  It is feeling afraid
	to do something but finding the strength to do it.”	
Fr. Walter J. Burghardt
spiritual writer and theologian



	"It is hard for me to forgive someone who has really offended me,
	especially when it happens more than once. I begin to doubt the
	sincerity of the one who asks forgiveness for a second, third, or
	fourth time. But God does not keep count. God just waits for our
	return, without resentment or desire for revenge."
Henri Nouwen
spiritual writer, in The Road to Daybreak



	"The number of priests is not the primary issue.  Leadership is,
	and a  certain kind of leadership:  American Catholicism needs
	priest leaders for a church of lay leaders.  Without effective
	priestly leadership, parishes can survive, but it is unlikely
	that they will remain vital."
Peter Steinfels
in A People Adrift



	"We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming."
		
Wernher von Braun
commenting on bureaucracy



	"To be a follower of Jesus means in the first place to enter by compassion 
	into his experience, with all that it expresses of the divine and of the human. 
	And it means in the second place to enter with him into the suffering and the 
	hope of all human persons, making common cause with them as he does, and seeking 
	out as he does the places of his predilection among the poor and despised and oppressed."	
Monika K. Hellwig
Theologian



	"A bifurcation of loyalties that requires religious to put canon law 
	above civil law and moral law puts us in a situation where the keepers 
	of religion may themselves become one of the greatest dangers to the 
	credibility — and the morality — of the church itself."   		
Joan Chittister
Benedictine sister and spiritual writer



	"The movement had a way of reaching inside me and bringing out things 
	that I never knew were there. Like courage, and love for people. It was 
	a real experience to be seeing a group of people who would put their bodies 
	between you and danger. And to love people that you work with enough that 
	you would put your body between them and and danger."

Diane Nash
organizer for the Freedom Rides during the civil rights movement in the United States



	"Thinking of hope as a virtue, in a world that thinks of hope as the fancy
	of dreamers and children, turns religion upside down. Without hope, evil is
	a state of life and failure is a given. With hope, no amount of failure is
	an excuse to despair. 'Constant has been my hope in you,' the psalmist says.
	'Constant.' Whatever you regret in life, whatever you have done that you fear,
	put it down; hope in God, be at peace. Constantly."	
Joan Chittister
Benedictine sister and spiritual writer



	"Whoever is on a journey towards God goes from one beginning to another beginning. 
	 Will you be among those who dare to tell themselves:  "Begin again!  Leave discouragement 
	behind!  Let your soul live!" 
Brother Roger of Taize
founder of Taize community in France



	"Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone—
	we find it with another. We do not discover the secret of our lives merely by study 
	and calculation in our own isolated meditations. The meaning of our life is a secret 
	that has to be revealed to us in love, by the one we love. And if this love is unreal, 
	the secret will not be found, the meaning will never reveal itself, the message will 
	never be decoded. At best, we will receive a scrambled and partial message, one that 
	will deceive and confuse us. We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall 
	in love—either with another human person or with God."
Thomas Merton
Trappist monk and spiritual writer



	"I no longer believe that you can fix the death penalty ... I learned 
	that the death penalty throws millions of dollars down the drain -- 
	money that I could be putting directly into crime fighting -- while 
	dragging victims' families through a long and tortuous process that 
	only exacerbates their pain."
James Abbott
a 29-year veteran Republican police chief who served on a New Jersey panel that recommended abolishment of capital punishment



	"Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are anger and courage. 
	Anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain 
	as they are."
St. Augustine


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