"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"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
"When there is no justice, what is the state but a robber band enlarged?"St. Augustine
"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
"Predictions are very difficult, especially when they are about the future."Yogi Berra
"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
"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
"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
"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
"Let's face it, prisons are the government's most successful housing program for poor people."Rev. Patrick Delahanty
"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
"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
"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
"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
"...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
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