Jim Wallis Quotes

Rule yourself. Love your neighbor. Do the duty that lies nearest you.

Charity begins at home, and justice begins next door.

There is an idea abroad among moral people that they should make their neighbors good. One person I have to make good: Myself. But my duty to my neighbor is much more nearly expressed by saying that I have to make him happy if I may.

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

We must learn for the sake of one another to make better choices guided by more holistic measures of the common good we share.

I guess the greatest cliché we've ever heard, but the most important words spoken, is, love, you know, love your neighbor and, as you would yourself. It's a biblical term, it's important, and it's embraced by every religion and yet it seems to be a far cry from what we're experiencing today.

What I believe in is love your neighbor as yourself and don't call him stupid because they don't agree with you politically.

If you love yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even so shall you love your neighbor.

Learning is not virtue but the means to bring us an acquaintance with it. Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Let these be your motives to action through life, the relief of the distressed, the detection of frauds, the defeat of oppression, and diffusion of happiness.

Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu, botho. It means the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humaneness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.

Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right.

Knowing there is a world that will outlive you, there are people whose well-being depends on how you live your life, affects the way you live your life, whether or not you directly experience those effects. You want to be the kind of person who has the larger view, who takes other people's interests into account, who's dedicated to the principles that you can justify, like justice, knowledge, truth, beauty and morality.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

Of course I believe in free will. Do we have a choice?

I can't think of anyone I've mistreated. I've always thought that I am my brother's keeper. And I believe there's a 'great spirit' that takes care of all of us.

Here in St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch wrote, “ I have been given the choice of playing God or leaving practically everything up to chance. It is my experience that practically everything is left up to chance much of the time; men who believe in good and evil, and who believe that good should win, should watch for those moments when it is possible to play God – we should seize those moments. There won’t be may

Christianity teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbor.

I do not believe that a man should be restrained in his daily actions by being afraid of punishment after death or that he should do things only because in this way he will be rewarded after he dies. This does not make sense. The proper guidance during the life of a man should be the weight that he puts upon ethics and the amount of consideration that he has for others.

Her hands quieted. "Yeah. Because even if the law says that no one is responsible for anyone else, helping someone who needs it is the right thing to do." I sat down beside her, close enough that the skin of her arm hummed right next to mine. "You really believe that?" She looked down at her lap "Yeah." Then how," I asked, "can you walk away from me?

I think in the end officials in each country's judicial system will do what they believe is right because if they do something bad to somebody it's on their conscience for the rest of their lives.

If you believe in free will, why don't you have confidence in people to use it? Why do you want a government, or whoever, regulating them, if you believe in it?

At the core of every religion is the belief that we care for everyone....It's not too late to help a neighbor in need and to do it with the swiftness, expertise, generosity and love that resides in the best of who we are.

The battle between good and evil is endlessly fascinating because we are participants every day.

The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.

We cannot be sure if we are loving God, although we may have good reasons for believing that we are, but we can know quite well if we are loving our neighbor. And be certain that, the farther advanced you find you are in this, the greater the love you will have for God.