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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.
Dorothy Day -
The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.
Dorothy Day
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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.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day
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They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.
Dorothy Day -
The legal battle against segregation is won, but the community battle goes on.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
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.'
Dorothy Day -
Don't call me a saint. I don't want to be dismissed so easily.
Dorothy Day
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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.
Dorothy Day -
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?
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
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.
Dorothy Day -
Certainly we disagree with the Communist Party, as we disagree with other political parties who are trying to maintain the American way of life.
Dorothy Day -
My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.
Dorothy Day
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Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate.
Dorothy Day -
We must recognize the fact that many Nazis, Marxists and Fascists believe passionately in their fundamental rightness, and allow nothing to hinder them from their goal in the pursuit of their mission.
Dorothy Day -
We believe in loving our brothers regardless of race, color or creed and we believe in showing this love by working for better conditions immediately and the ultimate owning by the workers of their means of production.
Dorothy Day -
We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war.... The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.
Dorothy Day