Jim Wallis Quotes

Nobody is poor unless he stand in need of justice.

The poor man looks upon the law as an enemy, not as a friend. For him, the law is always taking something away.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us.

I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake.

I didn't wake up and decide to become an activist. But you couldn't help notice the inequities, the injustices. It was all around you.

The danger of success is that it makes us forget the world's dreadful injustice.

You see, Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice. It makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties. It doubts our concern. It questions our commitment. Because there is no way we can look at what's happening in Africa, and if we're honest, conclude that it would ever be allowed to happen anywhere else.

I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

I had a very comfortable life, but there were people who spent their life in prison, whose families were destroyed.

The hardest hit, as everywhere, are those who have no choice.

Jamaica has problems; America has problems; everywhere has problems.

Upon the state falls directly the ... burden of the demoralization of its citizenry and of the social unrest which attend destitution and the denial of opportunity.

Woe to them, that take away the right of the poor.

Too many things that happen in this country give the impression that our system is blind in the right eye.

There was no pity take of the poor people, who wrought never no manner of treason, yet they bought it dearer than the great personages, such as had done the evil and trespass

I will always be on the side of those who have nothing.

If you are on the wrong side of society you can’t win.

Once again the hopes of people of two nations are being smashed by weapons in the name of eliminating weapons. Let us abolish weapons of mass destruction at home. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction.

All men are equal before God, but all men are not equal before men because the differences are obvious.

No one has yet been found resolute enough in dogmatizing to deny that Nature made man equal; that society has destroyed this equality is a truth not more incontrovertible.

Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations

Viciousness and prejudice flow from economic dislocation, and in turn feed it.

Today's world is very cruel.

I can't help but believe that at some time in the not-too-distant future, there is going to be another movement to change these systemic conditions of poverty, injustice, and violence in people's lives. That is where we've got to go, and it is going to be a struggle.