Jean Vanier Quotes

We believe, in fact, that the one act of respect has little force unless matched by the other - in balance with it... The acting out of that dual respect I would name as precisely the source of our power.

Nature promotes mutualism. The flower nourishes the bee. The river waters quench the thirst of all living beings. And trees provide a welcoming home to so many birds and animals. There is a rhythm to this togetherness.

The sky is so close to the sea that it is difficult to tell which is reflected in the other, which one needs the other, which one is dominating the other.

In a perfect union the man and woman are like a strung bow. Who is to say whether the string bends the bow, or the bow tightens the string?

Fraternity without absorption, union without fusion.

Here's good advice for practice: go into partnership with nature; she does more than half the work and asks none of the fee.

The success of each is dependent upon the success of the other.

I need them as much as they need me.

One mouth doth nothing without another.

Come into our home, daughters of Earth; dwell in our tunnels, harvest our fields; what we cannot do, you are now our hands to do for us. Blossom, trees; ripen, fields; be warm for them, suns; be fertile for them, planets: they are our adopted daughters, and they have come home.

Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.

It occurred to me that if Africa needed us, sometimes we needed Africa a great deal more.

In truth the most striking figure for the relation of the two is that of the strong blind man carrying the sighted lame man on his shoulders.

For every giver there must be a receiver, and for every receiver there must be a giver.

There is no separation. We are all from the same place. As long as there is respect and acknowledgement of connections, things continue working. When that stops we all die.

Universe is synergetic. Life is synergetic.

The bee and the serpent often sip from the selfsame flower.

I saw science as being in harmony with humanity.

It was a mutual relationship.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

When a match has equal partners then I fear not.

The organization and the environment are in concert.

Perhaps we too seldom reflect how much the life of Nature is one with the life of man, how unimportant or indeed merely seeming, the difference between them.

Nature is an incredible cooperative. When things operate outside of that cooperative, they die off. It's a very simple rule that nature operates under.

Nature is based on harmony. So it says if we want to survive and become more like nature, then we actually have to understand that it's cooperation versus competition.