Quotes
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate.
So it goes.
Returning violence for violence multiplies violence,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness:
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
-MLK
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. -Desmond Tutu
Hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretensions of the present by calling into existence the possibility of something better. -Walter Brueggemann, adapted from Prophetic Imagination
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott
The poor tells us who we are,
The prophets tell us who we could be,
So we hide the poor,
And kill the prophets
– Phil Berrigan
Holiness is not found in separation from the world, but only through immersion in the world. Holiness is not about avoidance, it is about redemption. – Adapted from Holiness and Ecclesiology
I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night. -Tony Campolo
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, because we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. -MLK
I am not afraid that the people called Methodists should ever cease to exist either in Europe or America. But I am afraid lest they should only exist as a dead sect, having the form of religion without the power. And this undoubtedly will be the case unless they hold fast both the doctrine, spirit, and discipline with which they first set out. – John Wesley
And if I remain in the dark about our purpose here, and meaning of eternity, I have nonetheless arrived at an understanding of a few more modest truths: Most of us fear death. Most of us yearn to comprehend how we go here, and why – which is to say, most of us ache to know the love of our creator. And we will no doubt feel that ache, most of us, for as long as we happen to be alive. – Jon Krakauer