Paul Rogat Loeb famous quotes

Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Believe #Men #Fire

We become human only in the company of other human beings. And this involves both opening our hearts and giving voice to our deepest convictions. ...When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Heart #Voice #Giving

Hope isn't an abstract theory about where human aspirations end and the impossible begins; it's a never-ending experiment, continually expanding the boundaries of the possible.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Impossible #Boundaries #Abstract

Possibility is the oxygen upon which hope thrives.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Oxygen #Possibility #Thrive

When we shrink from the world, our souls shrink, too,
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Soul #World

History...shows that even seemingly miraculous advances are in fact the result of many people taking small steps together over a long period of time.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#People #Long #Together

None of us can predict when the causes we support will capture the public imagination, and our once-lonely quests become popular crusades.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Inspirational #Lonely #Imagination

As Joanna Macy reminds us, "Information by itself can increase resistance [to engagement], deepening the sense of apathy and powerlessness." Stories about particular individuals and specific situations usually have the opposite effect. By giving unwieldy problems a human face, they also bring them down to a human-and thus manageable-scale.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Opposites #Giving #Environmental

Simply unleashing our imaginations can be empowering.
-- Paul Rogat Loeb

#Imagination #Empowering #Unleashing

The Christian that is bound by his own horizon, the church that lives simply for itself, is bound to die a spiritual death and sink into stagnancy and corruption. We never can thank God enough for giving us not only a whole Gospel to believe, but a whole world to give it to.

I cannot understand how any man or woman can believe in the Lord's coming and not be a missionary, or at least committed to the work of missions with every power of his being.

I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.

I believe it was the great ogre philosopher Gary who observed that complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled 'complex,' that's just a roundabout way of saying you're not observant enough to understand it.

This is our high calling, to represent Christ, and act in His behalf, and in His character and spirit, under all circumstances and toward all men.

Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.

Men have presented their plans and philosophies for the remedying of earth's ills, but Jesus stands alone in presenting not a system, but His own personality as capable of supplying the needs of the soul.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, But young men think it is, and we were young.

Therefore, since the world has still Much good, but much less good than ill, And while the sun and moon endure Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure, I'd face it as a wise man would, And train for ill and not for good.

There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration.