Dorothy Day Quotes
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The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.
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Often we comfort ourselves only with words, but if we pray enough, the conviction will come too that Christ is our King, not Stalin, Bevins, or Truman. That He has all things in His hands, that 'all things work together for good for those that love Him.'
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A Jewish convert said to me once, 'The Communists hate God, and the Catholics love Him. But they are both facing Him, directing their attention to Him. They are not indifferent. Communists are not in so bad a case as those who are indifferent. It is the lukewarm that He will spew out of His mouth.'
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Marx... Lenin... Mao Tse-Tung... These men were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions.
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The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
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I believe that we must reach our brother, never toning down our fundamental oppositions, but meeting him when he asks to be met, with a reason for the faith that is in us, as well as with a loving sympathy for them as brothers.
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But I am sure that God did not intend that there be so many poor. The class structure is of our making and our consent, not His. It is the way we have arranged it, and it is up to us to change it. So we are urging revolutionary change.
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I have been disillusioned, however, this long, long time in the means used by any but the saints to live in this world God has made for us.
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Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.
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We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war.... The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.
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I too complain ceaselessly in my heart and in my words too. My very life is a protest. Against government, for instance.
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They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
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Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again.
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We are the nation the most powerful, the most armed and we are supplying arms and money to the rest of the world where we are not ourselves fighting. We are eating while there is famine in the world.
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The diocesan papers are full of stories about atrocities in China and the sufferings of the Church and I get a letter from Betty Chang from Tientsin about the communes and the full-employment, etc. When we see the migrant camps, and our factories in the fields, our system does not offer much.
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If we had had the privilege of giving hospitality to a Ho Chi Minh, with what respect and interest we would have served him, as a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders.
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It is easier to have faith that God will support each House of Hospitality and Farming Commune and supply our needs in the way of food and money to pay bills, than it is to keep a strong, hearty, living faith in each individual around us - to see Christ in him.
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The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.
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Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
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The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
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Our faith is stronger than death, our philosophy is firmer than flesh, and the spread of the Kingdom of God upon the earth is more sublime and more compelling.
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Love casts out fear, but we have to get over the fear in order to get close enough to love them.
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Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.
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We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists 'of conspiring to teach us to do,' but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.