Dorothy Day Quotes
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I was always much impressed, in reading prison memoirs of revolutionists, such as Lenin and Trotsky … by the amount of reading they did, the languages they studied, the range of their plans for a better social order. (Or rather, for a new social order.) In the Acts of the Apostles there are constant references to the Way and the New Man.
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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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Words are as strong and powerful as bombs, as napalm.
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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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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.
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Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.
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As for ourselves, yes, we must be meek, bear injustice, malice, rash judgment. We must turn the other cheek, give up our cloak, go a second mile.
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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.
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When we have spiritual reading at meals, when we have the rosary at night, when we have study groups, forums, when we go out to distribute literature at meetings, or sell it on the street corners, Christ is there with us.
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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.
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Together with the Works of Mercy, feeding, clothing and sheltering our brothers, we must indoctrinate.
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When people are standing up for our present rotten system, they are being worse than Communists, it seems to me.
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I have long since come to believe that people never mean half of what they say, and that it is best to disregard their talk and judge only their actions.
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We have all known the long loneliness, and we have found that the answer is community.
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I firmly believe that our salvation depends on the poor.
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First of all, let it be remembered that I speak as an ex-Communist and one who has not testified before Congressional Committees, nor written works on the Communist conspiracy.
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We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy.
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It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over.
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When Dr. Stern wanted to know whether I was an alcoholic, when Dwight Macdonald asked me seriously whether I drank longshoremen under the table - I can only confess that yes, I did 'fling roses with the throng.'
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Women think with their whole bodies and they see things as a whole more than men do.