Notable Quotes 1999
Notable Quotes 2001
Notable Quotes 2002
Notable Quotes 2003
Notable Quotes 2004
Notable Quotes 2005
Notable Quotes 2006
Notable Quotes 2007



	"Peace is not just the absence of war but rather
	in sharing the goodness of life together; peace
	must be built and not declared."
	
From the CRS Visionary Direction Statement
Pursuing the Right to Peace



	"Houses should have four walls."
	
priest aid worker
observing the houses of rural Cambodian families too poor to have even four palm-leaf walls



	"The church is nothing if it is not missionary."
	
Pope John Paul II



	"Rights are inefficient.  Fair procedures are
	inefficient.  Constitutional limitations are
	inefficient.  Democratic dialogue is inefficient.
	Self-government is inefficient.  Nonconformity
	is inefficient.  The managerial system is
	impatient with all of these.  If the cheap
	labor of an authoritarian country can lower
	the cost of a product, management prefers
	that choice to the work of individuals endowed
	with rights and dignity."
	
Charles A. Reich
author of The Greening of America



	"To work for peace requires that we speak truth
	to power.  Therefore, advocacy must play an
	important role in who we are and what we do."
	
from the Caritas vision paper Pursuing the Right to Peace



	"We are to keep talking about justice issues,
	about the economy as it affects people around
	the world and in our own nation, about the role
	of women, about abortion and other life issues
	like capital punishment, about immigration and
	about human rights.

And sometimes, when others are silent, the church must assume a stance that is counter- cultural and prophetic."

Archbishop Thomas Kelly, O.P.
speaking to a Jubilee celebration in Louisville, Kentucky



	"Government is a teacher, for good or for bad, but
	government should set the example.  I do not believe
	that government engaging in violence or retribution
	is the right example.  You don't solve violence by
	committing violence."
	
John O'Hair
Detroit district attorney, on the death penalty



	"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly
	are, far more than our abilities."
	
Professor Albus Dumbledore
in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets



	"We must learn to trust the believers with their
	'sensus fidelium' and the creative Spirit that
	animates them, being open to the future in hope
	rather than continually looking to the past in
	the name of tradition.   Faith and hope do
	not contradict each other."
	
Amaladoss
Asian theologian



	"The real evil in the world is not the spectacular, the
	occasional, the vividly catastrophic.  The real evil
	lies in our neglect of causes, our indifference to
	conditions, our unwillingness to give the time, the
	money, and the effort to stop preventable disaster."
	
Sydney Harris
syndicated columnist



	"Justice will be achieved only when those, who are
	not injured, feel as indignant as those who are."
	
Anonymous



	"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail.
	He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an
	inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit
	capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.  The
	poet's, the writer's, duty is to write about these things.
	It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his
	heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and
	hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice
	which have been the glory of his past."
William Faulkner
winner of Nobel Prize for literature



	"It would be a better world if more people got more sleep,
	or at least spent more time in bed."
	
Robert Fulghum
author and theologian



	"The greatest myth or misunderstanding (about the true nature
	of the Catholic Church) is imagining the church as having all
	the answers or accusing the church of thinking that it has
	all the answers.  The first view is idolatrous; the second,
	as superficial as the view it rejects.  The church lives by
	faith, not by answers.  So, of course, must its members:
	They must take the risk of faith and not seek another
	security."
	
Rev. James Dallen
theology professor



	"Who we listen to determines what we hear.
	Where we stand determines what we see.
	What we do determines who we are." 
	
Robert McAffee Brown
theologian



	"The Indians have never taken kindly to the Christian religion as
	preached and practiced by the whites….   We pay no lawyers or
	preachers, but we have not one-tenth part of the crime that you do.
	If our Messiah does come, we shall not try to force you into our
	belief.  We will never burn innocent women at the stake or pull
	men to pieces with horses because they refuse to join in our ghost
	dances….  The white man's heaven is repulsive to the Indian nature,
	and if the white man's hell suits you, why, you keep it. I think
	there will be white rogues enough to fill it."
	
An American Indian
in a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune near the turn of the 19th century



	"You are graduating into a nation and world teetering on the brink
	of moral and economic bankruptcy. Since 1980 our president and
	congress have been bringing good news to the rich at the expense
	of the poor….  Children are the major victims….  Yet governments
	throughout the world, led by our own, spend over $600 billion a
	year on arms….  Where are the strong political voices speaking out
	for investing in children rather than bombs; mothers rather than
	missiles?  …Pick a piece of the problem that you can help solve."
	
Marian Wright Edelman
in a commencement speech in 1983



	"We live in a slum neighborhood.  It is becoming ever more
	crowded with Puerto Ricans, those who have the lowest wages in
	the city, who do the hardest work, who are small and
	undernourished from generations of privation and exploitation….
	I am sure that God did not intend that there be so many poor.
	The class structure is of our making and by our consent, not
	His, and we must do what we can to change it.  So we are urging
	revolutionary changes."
	
Dorothy Day
Catholic justice and peace activist, writing in the 1950s



	"There are many bitter memories (between Christians and Muslims).
	But we cannot deny the existence of one another.  We cannot try
	to wipe each other out--we tried that and it failed.  We must
	now find ways to live with each other."
	
Kamel Al-Sharif
Secretary-general of the International Islamic Council



	"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead
	to political prosperity, religion and morality
	are indispensable supports.  Reason and experience
	both forbid us to expect that National morality can
	prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
	Morality cannot be maintained without religion."
	
George Washington
Father of the United States of America



	"Be patient with everyone, but above all with yourself.
	I mean, do not be disturbed because of your imperfections,
	and always rise up bravely after a fall."
	
St. Francis de Sales



	"Reconciling means becoming liberated from the
	confining obsessive desires to keep score, to
	seek revenge, to prolong hostility."
	
Martin Marty
Theologian



	A gospel that doesn't unsettle,

	a Word of God that doesn't get under anyone's skin,

	a Word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the
	society in which it is being proclaimed,

	what Gospel is that?
	
Archbishop Oscar Romero
El Salvador martyr, assassinated during mass



	"People who pray for miracles usually don't get
	miracles....  But people who pray for courage, for
	strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to
	remember what they have left instead of what they
	have lost, very often find their prayers answered.
	Their prayers helped them tap hidden reserves of
	faith and courage that were not available to them
	before."
	
Harold Kushner
author of The Best of Bits and Pieces



	"If we really care about someone, we do something that
	shows it.  Anything else is talk."
	
Joan Chittister, OSB
spirituality author


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