Jean Vanier famous quotes

Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.
-- Jean Vanier

#Love #Mean #Knowing

To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.
-- Jean Vanier

#Love #Importance #Shows

Each person is sacred, no matter what his or her culture, religion, handicap, or fragility. Each person is created in God’s image; each one has a heart, a capacity to love and to be loved.
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #Culture #Fragility

Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness
-- Jean Vanier

#Love Yourself #Learning #Acceptance

We don't know what to do with our own pain, so what to do with the pain of others? We don't know what to do with our own weakness except hide it or pretend it doesn't exist. So how can we welcome fully the weakness of another if we haven't welcomed our own weakness?
-- Jean Vanier

#Pain #Weakness #Welcome

In the end, the most important thing is not to do things for people who are poor and in distress, but to enter into relationship with them, to be with them and help them find confidence in themselves and discover their own gifts.
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Important #Helping

Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.
-- Jean Vanier

#Children #Self #Broken

Each human being, however small or weak, has something to bring to humanity. As we start to really get to know others, as we begin to listen to each other's stories, things begin to change. We begin the movement from exclusion to inclusion, from fear to trust, from closedness to openness, from judgment and prejudice to forgiveness and understanding. It is a movement of the heart.
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #Understanding #Humanity

All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.
-- Jean Vanier

#Children #Hero #Secret

It is only when we stand up, with all our failings and sufferings, and try to support others rather than withdraw into ourselves, that we can fully live the life of community.
-- Jean Vanier

#Live Life #Support #Community

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.
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Community #Way

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Profound #Lessons

When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.
-- Jean Vanier

#Wall #People #Love And Respect

Wisdom is something that comes, little by little, through a lot of listening.
-- Jean Vanier

#Listening #Littles

A society which discards those who are weak and non-productive risks exaggerating the development of reason, organisation, aggression and the desire to dominate. It becomes a society without a heart, without kindness - a rational and sad society, lacking celebration, divided within itself and given to competition, rivalry and, finally, violence.
-- Jean Vanier

#Kindness #Heart #Risk

The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God's design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently; they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we listen to them, they will bring us back to the essential.
-- Jean Vanier

#Mean #Broken #Design

Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.
-- Jean Vanier

#Ignorance #People #Envy

Every human being is a mixture of light and darkness, trust and fear, love and hate.
-- Jean Vanier

#Hate #Light #Darkness

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 Vanier

#Crush #Light #Shining

A Christian community should do as Jesus did: propose and not impose. Its attraction must lie in the radiance cast by the love of brothers.
-- Jean Vanier

#Christian #Brother #Jesus

To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.
-- Jean Vanier

#Lonely #Pain #Loneliness

I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: 'Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?
-- Jean Vanier

#Real #Believe #Understanding

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 Vanier

#Struggle #Love Is #Class

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 Vanier

#Fighting #Love Is #Opposites

The person in misery does not need a look that judges and criticizes but a comforting presence that brings peace and hope and life and says: 'you are a human person: important, mysterious, infinitely precious, what you have to say is important because it flows from a humn person; in you there are those seeds of the infinite, those germs of love... of beauty which must rise from the earth of your misery so humanity be fulfilled. If you do not rise then something will be missing... Rise again because we all need you... be loved beloved.'
-- Jean Vanier

#Judging #Missing #Comforting

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.
-- Jean Vanier

#Brother #War #Community

Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we most want, yet it is what we fear the most.
-- Jean Vanier

#Pain #Past #Love Is

When we begin to believe that there is greater joy in working with and for others, rather than just for ourselves, then our society will truly become a place of celebration.
-- Jean Vanier

#Believe #Joy #Our Society

If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.
-- Jean Vanier

#Choices #Effort #Ego

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.
-- Jean Vanier

#Quality #Weakness #Difficulty

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 Vanier

#Responsibility #Healing #Self Confidence

The strong need the weak as much as the weak need the strong
-- Jean Vanier

#Strong #Needs #Weak

People cannot accept their own evil if they do not at the same time feel loved, respected and trusted.
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Evil #Accepting

I have discovered the value of psychology and psychiatry, that their teachings can undo knots in us and permit life to flow again and aid us in becoming more truly human.
-- Jean Vanier

#Teaching #Psychology #Flow

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work -- hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss -- loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us.
-- Jean Vanier

#Hurt #Peace #Pain

The belly laugh is the best way to evacuate anguish.
-- Jean Vanier

#Laughing #Way #Belly Laughs

Community begins in mystery and ends in administration. Leaders move away from people and into paper.
-- Jean Vanier

#Moving #People #Leader

At the heart of the celebration, there are the poor. If [they] are excluded, it is not longer a celebration. [...] A celebration must always be a festival of the poor.
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #Festivals #Celebration

...Individualistic material progress and the desire to gain prestige by coming out on top have taken over from the sense of fellowship, compassion and community. Now people live more or less on their own in a small house, jealously guarding their goods and planning to acquire more, with a notice on the gate that says, 'Beware of the Dog.
-- Jean Vanier

#Dog #Taken #Compassion

I remember that throughout history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always...whenever you are in doubt that that is God's way - the way the world is meant to be. Think of that and then try to do His way.
-- Jean Vanier

#Truth #Fall #Thinking

Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we want them to be.
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Community #Want

Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.
-- Jean Vanier

#Brother #Love You #Giving

A community is only a community when the majority of its members are making the transition from 'the community for myself' to 'myself for the community'.
-- Jean Vanier

#Community #Majority #Transition

He who is or has been deeply hurt has a RIGHT to be sure he is LOVED.
-- Jean Vanier

#Hurt

Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal.
-- Jean Vanier

#Mean #Caring #People

So we need places, laboratories, the creation of places which could be each one of our homes, where we invite people who are different, and we listen to each other, people of different class groups.
-- Jean Vanier

#Home #Class #People

So many in our world today are suffering from isolation, war and oppression. So much money is spent on the construction of armaments. Many, many young people are in despair because of the danger...
-- Jean Vanier

#War #Our World #People

Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.
-- Jean Vanier

#Exercise #Community #Divine

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 Vanier

#Community #Born #Dialogue

When people love each other, they are content with very little. When we have light and joy in our hearts, we don't need material wealth. The most loving communities are often the poorest. If our own life is luxurious and wasteful, we can't approach poor people. If we love people, we want to identify with them and share with them.
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #Loving Life #Light

The friend of time doesn't spend all day saying: 'I haven't got time.' He doesn't fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.
-- Jean Vanier

#Fighting #Cherish #Accepting

When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers, we come closer to others.
-- Jean Vanier

#Forgiveness #Wall #Creating

Communion is mutual trust, mutual belonging; it is the to-and-fro movement of love between two people where each one gives and each one receives. Communion is not a fixed state, it is an...
-- Jean Vanier

#Love Is #Two #People

A community that is growing rich and seeks only to defend its goods and its reputation is dying. It has ceased to grow in love. A community is alive when it is poor and its members feel they have to work together and remain united, if only to ensure that they can all eat tomorrow!
-- Jean Vanier

#Community #Together #Dying

We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity
-- Jean Vanier

#Humanity #Important #Tiny

Jesus is the starving, the parched, the prisoner, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the dying. Jesus is the oppressed, the poor. To live with Jesus is to live with the poor. To live with the poor is to live with Jesus.
-- Jean Vanier

#Jesus #Sick #Dying

A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift.
-- Jean Vanier

#Prayer #Community #Listening

To invite others to live with us is a sign that we aren't afraid, that we have a treasure of truth and of peace to share.
-- Jean Vanier

#Treasure #Share

Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.
-- Jean Vanier

#Identity #Want #Who We Are

[...] We have to realize that this wound [of loneliness] is inherent in the human condition and that what we have to do is walk with it instead of fleeing from it. We cannot accept it until we discover that we are loved by God just as we are, and that the Holy Spirit in a mysterious way is living at the centre of the wound.
-- Jean Vanier

#Loneliness #Way #Fleeing

[Happiness] comes when we choose to be who we are, to be ourselves, at this present moment in our lives.
-- Jean Vanier

#Who We Are #Moments #Moments In Our Lives

Love is an act of endless forgiveness.
-- Jean Vanier

#Forgiveness #Love Is #Endless

We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.
-- Jean Vanier

#Exercise #Authority

We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.
-- Jean Vanier

#Powerful #Clever #Thinking

When children are loved, they live off trust; their bides and hearts open up to those who respect and love them, who understand and listen to them.
-- Jean Vanier

#Children #Heart #And Love

Every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. (23-24)
-- Jean Vanier

#Needs #Messages #Violence

But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #Our World #Sight

Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.
-- Jean Vanier

#Talking #People #Community

Look at your own poverty welcome it cherish it don't be afraid share your death because thus you will share your love and your life
-- Jean Vanier

#Looks #Poverty #Welcome

This evolution towards a real responsibility for others is sometimes blocked by fear. It is easier to stay on the level of a pleasant way of life in which we keep our freedom and our distance. But that means that we stop growing and shut ourselves up in our own small concerns and pleasures.
-- Jean Vanier

#Distance #Real #Mean

Power always has a direction. It is always downward, towards the weak but power is often confused with what is right
-- Jean Vanier

#Confused #Weak

People are longing to rediscover true community. We have had enough of loneliness, independence and competition.
-- Jean Vanier

#Loneliness #People #Community

The cry for love and communion and for recognition that rises from the hearts of people in need reveals the fountain of love in us and our capacity to give life.
-- Jean Vanier

#Heart #People #Giving

We who are rich are often demanding and difficult. We shut ourselves up in our apartments and may even use a watchdog to defend our property. Poor people, of course, have nothing to defend and often share the little they have. When people have all the material things they need, they seem not to need each other. They are self-sufficient. There is no interdependence. There is no love.
-- Jean Vanier

#Self #People #Needs

People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.
-- Jean Vanier

#People #Community #May

Our danger is to think that happiness will come from outside of us, from the things we possess or the power of our group, and not from within us, from the inner sanctuary of our being.
-- Jean Vanier

#Thinking #Groups #Sanctuary

A community which refuses to welcome - whether through fear, weariness, insecurity, a desire to cling to comfort, or just because it is fed up with visitors - is dying spiritually.
-- Jean Vanier

#Community #Insecurity #Dying

A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.
-- Jean Vanier

#Grace #Signals #Difficulty

It is my belief that in our mad world where there is so much pain, rivalry, hatred, violence, inequality, and oppression, it is people who are weak, rejected, marginalized, counted as useless, who can become a source of life and of salvation for us as individuals as well as for our world. And it is my hope that each one of you may experience the incredible gift of the friendship of people who are poor and weak, that you too, may receive life from them. For they call us to love, to communion, to compassion and to community.
-- Jean Vanier

#Pain #Compassion #Our World

We cannot grow spiritually if we ignore our humanness, just as we cannot become fully human if we ignore our spirituality.
-- Jean Vanier

#Spirituality #Grows #Humans

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 Vanier

#Hate #Light #People