Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves.

The church should provide a setting in which people can express their questions.

There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right.

Suffering is easier to endure when shared.

It's not the job of government to help the poor. The church is the mechanism that God put on earth to help the poor.

I wrote these two songs ["Coming Out of the Dark" and "Always Tomorrow"] as a celebration of hope. And I want to send it out to all of those people who are suffering through this terrible disaster [Hurricane Katrina], and please know that you are not alone - and you will not be.

Today many politicians suggest that where the federal government does not act, there must be anarchy. That view is odd, blinkering out the work of state and towns, which until recently did much of our charitable and cultural work. That view also blinkers out the role of mutual societies and churches.

It's no use just by shouting out that it is bad or it's good. If someone feels bad about something, they should go and support the reins themselves.

The aim of the Church is to help the people to help themselves. Work is to be re-enthroned as the ruling principle of the lives of our Church membership

Hardship brings people closer together if you share it.

That's why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.

The church's final word is not 'church' but the glory of the Father and the Son in the Spirit of liberty

We also need to remember the enduring principles on which the National Party is based – individual responsibility, support for families and communities, and a belief that the State can't and shouldn't do everything.

You cannot train yourself. I feel the same way about Christianity and about what the church is: The church is the gym of the soul.

It is the church's job, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.

Each one of them [referring to her family] believed that hiding things is never good and that by sharing them, we could give hope to some people - because so many people we know have suffered some of the same things.

There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us.

As my mother says, You give back, you don't give up. You can always choose to help others. If you do, it will change you.

There are eight levels of charity.... The highest is when you strengthen a man's hand until he need no longer be dependent upon others.

A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — ​what gospel is that?

It's a hurtful place, the world, in and of itself. We don't need to add to it. And we're in a place now where we all need one another, and it's going to get rougher.

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.

Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.

I say if black people don't unite and begin to support themselves, their communities and their families, they might as well begin to go out of business as a people. Nobody's going to have any mercy. And nobody's going to have any compunction about making slaves out of them.

We are hardwired to connect with others, it's what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and without it there is suffering.