Quotes #16

Politics and Church: "The man who can't see the connection between Politics and The Christian Church, doesn't know the first thing about either one of 'em...!!! Mark Twain

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “To jolt the individual out of his natural laziness and the rut of habit, and also from time to time to break up the collective frameworks in which he is imprisoned, it is indispensable that he be shaken and prodded from outside. What would we do without our enemies?” P.164 The Phenomenon of Man

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “One could very well say that today, as was the case in Galilee, what we most need if we are to recognise the convergence of the universe is not so much new facts… as a new way of looking at and handling facts. A new way of seeing, combined with a new way of acting, That is what we need.”

Martin Buber: “The true meaning of love of one’s neighbour is not that it is a command from God, which we are to fulfil, but that through it and in it we meet God.”

Charles Peguy: “Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.”

Dick Sheppard: “There is a travesty of religion very common today, which suggests that, provided we are all very jolly together and very kind to Granny and the cat, it doesn’t much matter what we do besides…”

Sebastian Castellio (died 1563): “I have carefully examined what the word heretic means, and I cannot make it mean more than this; a heretic is a man with whom you disagree.”

Studdert Kennedy: “A pain in the mind is the prelude to all discovery… True life only begins when a man is troubled about life, troubled as to what it means. The difference between a man and an animal is just that capacity for being troubled.”

Prayer: “God was very good to us. We prayed and prayed, so all the bombs fell on the other side of town.” -Pious old lady after the war

Desmond Tutu: “If you want peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”

“Without forgiveness, there’s no future.”

“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.”

Chinese Saying:
I hear, and I forget -
I see, and I remember -
I do, and I understand.

Rudyard Kipling:
“Father, Mother and Me,
Sister and Auntie say,
All the people like us are We,
And everyone else is They.”

Defeat: “If you know only what it is to conquer and know not what it is to be defeated, woe unto you, it will fare ill with you.” Tokugawa Ieyasu, 1543-1616. First Tokugawa Shogun of Japan