Notable Quotes 1999
Notable Quotes 2000
Notable Quotes 2002
Notable Quotes 2003
Notable Quotes 2004
Notable Quotes 2005
Notable Quotes 2006
Notable Quotes 2007



	"It's interesting that we stop bombing on Friday
	in respect for the Muslim holy day, but we keep
	bombing on Sunday.  Is that because Christians
	don't care?"
	
Pat Marrin
editor of Celebration



	"Sanctity is not a matter of being less human, but
	more human than other men.  This implies a greater
	capacity for concern, for suffering, for understanding,
	for sympathy, and also for humor, for joy, for
	appreciation of the good and beautiful things of life."
	
Thomas Merton
Trappist and monk and spiritual writer



	"Enough food is produced to feed every person in the
	world a 3,000 to 4,000 calorie diet per day--far
	more than recommended daily allowances in the United
	States.  Yet so many people still cope daily with
	hunger.  The problem is not the lack of food, but
	the cycle of poverty that prevents people from
	purchasing food, no matter how cheap.  The claim
	that more low-cost food is produced today means
	little to the world's 1.2 billion people who have
	less than one dollar daily for total expenses."
	
The Global Banquet: Politics of Food
Maryknoll World Productions video



	"Many parents try very hard to give their children
	'everything.'  But if 'everything' does not include
	their time and presence, they do their youngsters
	and themselves and injustice."   
	
Rev. Thomas J. McSweeney
columnist



	"The richest people are not those who have the most,
	but those who need the least."
	
Unknown



	"Women, much more than men, carry society's cross
	on their backs but the cross that disabled women
	are burdened with all through their lives is
	three times heavier because of their gender, their
	disability, and their being the most deprived group."
Action and Disability News



	"I find it difficult to conceive of a more concrete
	way to love than by praying for one's enemies.  It
	makes you conscious of the hard fact that, in God's
	eyes, you're no more and no less worthy of being
	loved than any other person, and it creates an
	awareness of profound solidarity with all other
	human beings.  It creates in you a world-embracing
	compassion and provides you in increasing measure
	with a heart free of the compulsive urge to coercion
	and violence.  And you'll be delighted to discover
	that you can no longer remain angry with people for
	whom you've really and truly prayed.  You will find
	that you start speaking differently to them or about
	them, and that you're actually willing to do well to
	those who've offended you in some way...."

	
Henri J. M. Nouwen
famous spiritual writer of our day



	"If economic forces are beyond criticism [as
	some economists seem to believe], we are driven
	to look elsewhere to explain the spreading ills
	of inequality and social decay.  Given the
	assumption that economic laws represent
	perfection, ills must be explained as caused by
	individuals or governments.  Both governments
	and individuals are then urged to improve
	themselves by adapting to the imperatives of
	the economic system.  Government should shrink;
	individuals should obtain retraining.  According
	to this view, it is human beings and their
	institutions that must adapt to the imperatives
	of the economic system, not the economy which
	must adapt to serve human beings."
	
Charles A. Reich
in Opposing the System



	"Ever bigger machines, entailing ever bigger
	concentrations of economic power and exerting
	ever greater violence against the environment,
	do not represent progress: they are a denial
	of wisdom.  Wisdom demands a new orientation
	of science and technology towards the organic,
	the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and
	beautiful."
	
E.F. Schumacher
in Small Is Beautiful



	"Each of us must come to care about everyone else's
	children. We must recognize that the welfare of our
	children is intimately linked to the welfare of all
	other people's children. After all, when one of our
	children needs life-saving surgery, someone else's
	child will perform it.   If one of our children
	is harmed by violence, someone else's child will be
	responsible for the violent act. The good life for
	our own children can be secured only if a good life
	is also secured for all other people's children."
	
Dr. Lilian G. Katz
professor of early childhood education



	"A reasonable estimate of economic organisation must
	allow for the fact that, unless industry is to be
	paralysed by recurrent revolts on the part of
	outraged human nature, it must satisfy criteria
	which are not purely economic."
	
R. H. Tawney
in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism



	"The orator's first test is his ability to create
	heroes (among his listeners) in response to his call.
	The orator's final test is his ability to create
	heroism in himself to match what he has been preaching.
	Here the artificial becomes the true in the most
	complete way.  Leaders and followers prod each other
	toward their shared goal."
	
Garry Wills
syndicated columnist, speaking of our innate distrust of real oratory



	"When there is no justice, what is the state but a robber
	band enlarged?"
	
St. Augustine
bishop



	"We do not lack leaders.  Various trumpets are
	always being sounded.  Take your pick.  We lack
	sufficient followers.  That is always the real
	problem with leadership.  Calls are always going
	down into the vasty deep; but what spirits will
	respond?
	
Garry Wills
syndicated columnist



	"Predictions are very difficult, especially when
	they are about the future."
	
Yogi Berra
baseball player and homespun philosopher



	"If your church doesn't have a place to feed the
	hungry, and a program to shelter the homeless, and
	people to visit the sick, just close it down.
	Liturgical music is that last thing you should be
	worrying about."
	
Bernadette Farrell
on an Internet mailing list dedicated to liturgical music



	"Show me your leader, and you have bared your soul.  You 
	respond only to one who has set certain goals.  You are
	responsible for that activity, for motion toward those
	goals.  If leadership is mysterious and often scary, so is
	followership.  That is why some would prefer not to follow
	at all."
	
Garry Wills
syndicated columnist



	"If a program offers permissible aid to the
	religious--including the pervasively sectarian--the
	a-religious, and the irreligious, it is a mystery
	which view of religion the government has estabished,
	and thus a mystery what the constitution violation
	would be."
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
ruling on the constitutionality of providing supplementary school materials to any and all schools



	"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime;
	therefore, we must be saved by hope.  Nothing we do,
	however virtuous, can be accomplished alone;
	therefore, we are saved by love."
Reinhold Niebuhr
theologian



	"Let's face it, prisons are the government's most
	successful housing program for poor people."
	
Rev. Patrick Delahanty
anti-capital punishment leader



	"Today, the operation of what are called 'free-market
	forces' is viewed as embodying a perfection similar
	to the laws of physics and in total contrast to the
	imperfection of human institutions such as governments.
	The economy is thought to have no failings so long as
	humans do not interfere.  Faith in free economic forces
	approaches the status of a secular religion.  The
	absence of restraint, which is frowned upon in the
	case of individuals and governments, is applauded
	when applied to the economy.  News that government
	grew is considered bad; news that economic institutions
	grew is uniformly hailed as good."
	
Charles A. Reich
author of Opposing the System



	"I think that the Church is meant to be small communties
	of people who live the gospel and bear prophetic witness
	to it in society challenging it to conversion.  The
	Church would not then think of 'christianizing' whole
	cultures, but of becoming present in every culture as a
	prophetic force.  Given the pluralistic world in which we
	are living today one can wonder whether if this is not
	what God wants us to do."

	
Amaladoss
Jesuit Asian theologian



	"If we focus only on what seems politically
	realistic at any given time, we are failing to
	give the church its prophetic role and voice.
	A major purpose of the church is to stand for,
	and give witness to, a different and
	better future which is bound to seem unrealistic
	in present-day terms.
	
Donal Dorr
theologian, in Mission in Today's World



	"in its drive for economic efficiency, the managerial
	system is single-minded: It has but one goal, the
	maximization of profit.   By contrast, a society
	must have multiple goals, must promote a thriving
	diversity, must seek a balance among many interests.
	The single-mindedness of a management seeking purely
	economic gain rejects all other social and human needs."
	
Charles A. Reich
author of Opposing the System



	"...It is time for the US electorate to be told
	the blunt truth: that the present situation of
	the US, with a part of its population able to
	enjoy a life of extraordinary comfort and
	privilege, is not tenable as long as an enormous
	portion of the world lives in abject poverty,
	degradation, and backwardness."
	
Mikhail Gorbachev
Last president of the former Soviet Union


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