Pope John Quotes

Be demanding of the world around you; be demanding first of all with yourselves. Be children of God; take pride in it!

The most faithful disciples of Christ have been builders of peace, to the point of forgiving their enemies, sometimes even to the point of giving their lives for them.

What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me. I spoke to him as a brother whom I have pardoned and who has my complete trust.

Love is a constant challenge, thrown to us by God.

Man's life comes from God: it is his image and imprint, as sharing in his breath of life. God therefore is the sole Lord of this life: Man cannot do with it as he wills.

Look, I can surely say by now that I've got the antibodies to communism inside me. But when I think of consumer society, with all its tragedies, I wonder which of the two systems is better.

Only faith in Christ gives rise to a culture contrary to egotism and death.

In Christ and through Christ man has acquired full awareness of his dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the surpassing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence.

Humanity looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.

But sometimes it is necessary to do that which is too much.

Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history.

There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best.

An angel of Paradise, no less, is always beside me, wrapped in everlasting ecstasy on his Lord. So I am ever under the gaze of an angel who protects and prays for me.

I am able to follow my own death step by step. Now I move softly towards the end.

The measure of your success will be the measure of your generosity.

When our whole life is one faith, hope, love, prayer and silence, a consecrated life always bound up in the Eucharist, then the 'urge' towards God springs.

The Church must breathe with her two lungs!

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

The Gospel of life must be proclaimed and human life defended in all places and all times.

In the designs of Providence, there are no mere coincidences.

The seriousness of ecological degradation lays bare the depth of man's moral crisis... Simplicity, moderation, and discipline as well as the spirit of sacrifice must become a part of everyday life.

There are many examples of this mistaken idea of freedom, such as the elimination of human life by legalized or generally accepted abortion.

Do not drink coffee in early A.M. It will keep you awake until noon. Do not go from the slavery of the Communist regime to the slavery of consumerism.

The Church must persist in the teaching transmitted to her by Christ.

Christ assigns as a duty to every man the dignity of every woman: and simultaneously... He also assigns to every woman the dignity of every man.

In the Eucharistic Sacrifice the Church venerates the memory of Mary the ever Virgin Mother of God and the memory of Saint Joseph, because he fed Him whom the faithful must eat as the Bread of Life

All are called to holiness, and holy people alone can renew humanity.

The Rosary is my favorite prayer. A prayer so simple and so rich; from deepest heart, I exhort all to recite it.

See everything. Ignore a lot. Improve a little.

For by his incarnation the Son of God united himself in a certain way with every man. He labored with human hands... and loved with a human heart. Born of Mary the Virgin, he truly became one of us.

There is no need to be dismayed if love sometimes follows torturous ways. Grace has the power to make straight the paths of human love.

We began by imagining that we are giving to the; we end by realizing that they have enriched us.

The enemy of the human race...invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God's word of Salvation to the people.

Young friends, do not hesitate to follow the example of Pedro, who 'pleased God and was loved by him' and who, having come to perfection in so short a time, lived a full life.

If you wish to be brothers, drop your weapons.

Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.

Do not be afraid to be the saints of the new mellineum!

The greatest gift you can give your child is another sibling.

It's too early for a Polish pope.

Hands are the heart's landscape.

To the family is entrusted the task of striving, first and foremost, to unleash the forces of good.

It would be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society.

The world [is] tired of ideology [and] is opening itself to the truth. The time has come when the splendor of this truth has begun anew to illuminate the darkness of human existence.

In the depths of the human soul... the desire to give meaning to one's own life is joined by the fleeting vision of beauty and of the mysterious unity of things.

Faith intervenese not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope for action, but solely to bring the human being to understand that in these events it is the God of Israel who acts.

In the life of husband and wife together, fatherhood and motherhood represent such a sublime "novelty" and richness as can only be approached "on one's knees".

Respect for life and for the dignity of the human person also extends to the rest of creation, which is called to join man in praising God.

Work bears a particular mark of man and of humanity, the mark of a person operating within a community of persons

Without wonder, men and women would lapse into deadening routine and little by little would become incapable of a life which is genuinely personal.

He was alone in his wonderment, amoung creatures incapable of wonder --for them it was enough to exist and go their way.