QUOTES
CITIZENSHIP
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and
independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and
between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.
COMMUNITY
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am
willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us:
serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots
are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for
the whole.
CREATIVITY
I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire
structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions.
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has
a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich
people, he's really needed.
FREEDOM
Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there
can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace
among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee
of external peace.
HOPE
Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense,
is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in
enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work
for something because it is good.
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that
something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless
of how it turns out.
Isn't
it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps
hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never
find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.
LIVING
A LIFE OF COMPASSION
The salvation of this human world lies nowhere else
than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human meekness and
human responsibility.
WE
CAN CREATE A BETTER WORLD
There are good reasons for suggesting that the
modern age has ended. Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional
period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully
being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself,
while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble.