Community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don't need a lot of money to be happy--in fact, the opposite.
Jean VanierRead
The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that love, forgiveness, and community are the appropriate responses to life's challenges and injustices.
Jean Vanier's quote reflects on the human experience and our responsibilities towards one another in times of hardship. He suggests that instead of responding to war, injustice, and despair with negativity, we should embrace brotherhood, share with others, maintain hope, and offer forgiveness, thereby cultivating a sense of community. The call to work for peace and inclusivity is seen as a pathway to achieving a greater understanding of our humanity, aligned with the principles of love and divinity.
Themes
LoveForgivenessCommunityPeaceHumanityHope
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech during community service events to inspire teamwork and compassion.
More from Jean Vanier
All quotes →One of the marvelous things about community is that it enables us to welcome and help people in a way we couldn't as individuals. When we pool our strength and share the work and responsibility, we can welcome many people, even those in deep distress, and perhaps help them find self-confidence and inner healing.
Jean VanierRead
We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.
Jean VanierRead
True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.
Jean VanierRead
In any case, community is not about perfect people. It is about people who are bonded to each other, each of whom is a mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.
Jean VanierRead
We have to remind ourselves constantly that we are not saviours. We are simply a tiny sign, among thousands of others, that love is possible, that the world is not condemned to a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, that class and racial warfare is not inevitable.
Jean VanierRead
Similar quotes
One is always at home in one's past.
Vladimir NabokovRead
Act in the moment, live in the present, slowly slowly don't allow the past to interfere And you will be surprised that life is such an eternal wonder, such a mysterious phenomenon and such a great gift that one simply feels constantly in gratitude. So this is my message for you: live in the moment, herenow. That's why I call it divine purity
RajneeshRead
Stubborn selfishness leads otherwise good people to fight over herds, patches of sand, and strippings of milk. All this results from what the Lord calls coveting "the drop," while neglecting the "more weighty matters." (D&C 117:8) Myopic selfishness magnifies a mess of pottage and makes thirty pieces of silver look like a treasure trove. In our intense acquisitiveness, we forget Him who once said, "What is property unto me?"
Neal A. MaxwellRead
Individual potential of life is cosmic potential. Individual is divine deep inside. Transcendental experience awakens that divinity in man. And when you kill a man you deprive him of that birthright of it.
Maharishi Mahesh YogiRead
So says the most ancient book of the Earth; thus it is written on its leaves of marble, lime, sand, slate, and clay: ... that our Earth has fashioned itself, from its chaos of substances and powers, through the animating warmth of the creative spirit, to a peculiar and original whole, by a series of preparatory revolutions, till at last the crown of its creation, the exquisite and tender creature man, was enabled to appear.
Johann Gottfried HerderRead
Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life.
Miep GiesRead