Dorothy Day Quotes

We are sons of the Mexican Revolution, a revolution of the poor seeking, bread and justice. Our revolution will not be armed, but we want the existing social order to dissolve, we want a new social order.

Every major social movement in our history was fueled in large part by religion and faith. Abolitionism, women’s suffrage, child labor law, and most famously, civil rights.

We are here to announce class warfare, in peace and for democracy.

Since the third century Christianity has always served simultaneously those who supported the social order and those who wished to overthrow it... .

It did not occur to us that the Marxists' solution was fraudulent or that their vision was distorted, that whatever the wrongs in our society it was not the ideology of theirs that will cure them.

In the Europe which was created by the Second World War, divided into two blocks, each in need of a revolution that would end the abuses and injustices of capitalism and the privileges of a bureaucratic caste, collective faith does not exist.

It's to be a person who's able to shoot little arrows into sacred cows and knock politicians off their pedestals, to look out for hypocrisy, advocate for all sorts of things from social justice to peace.

Remember, social progress only happens when those in society's privileged classes choose to give up their status.

When I first stepped into literature twenty-five years ago, I wanted to work on behalf of the oppressed, the working masses, and it seemed to me, mistakenly, that I would not find them among the Jews.

Your not going to change the hearts and minds. You have to change to law.

Religion is a clumsy sort of whiskey in which the slaves of capital drown their human being and their revenge for an existence little worthy of men.

No matter what fine speeches are delivered to inspire the workers to revolutionary deeds, revolutionary action does not spring from such words, but from the keen and hard necessity that leaves no other choice whatsoever.

Whom do I hate most, among all the rabble of to-day?' The Socialist who undermines the workingman's instincts, who destroys his satisfaction with his insignificant existence, who makes him envious and teaches him revenge.”

It takes a lot of punishment to be able to do anything to change the social order.

If reforms do not come when people are at peace, of course, they have to come through violent upheavals, so as I looked out I thought: "Thank God, that this nation has had the courage to face the need of changes before we reached the point where bloodshed was the only way to achieve a change.

Social stability is ensured, not by the cessation of the demand for change – for the needy and the restless will never cease to cry for it – but by the fact that change in its progress must at last hurt some class of men who are strong enough to arrest it.

What do we want the Church to do? We don't ask for more cathedrals. We don't ask for bigger churches of fine gifts. We ask for its presence with us, beside us, as Christ among us. We ask the Church to sacrifice with the people for social change, for justice, and for love of brother. We don't ask for words. We ask for deeds. We don't ask for paternalism. We ask for servanthood.

It is the tragic story of the cultural crusader in a mass society that he cannot win, but that we would be lost without him.

Every progressive movement has been built on the anger, needs, and aspirations of the emerging major class.

True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice.

Social conditions that spur large numbers of people into action are ignored in favor of a Hollywood version of history focusing on one conquering hero. Since a movement for social change is embodied in its leader, death of the leader means death of the movement.

The most powerful forces in economics are not numbers or facts. They are prejudices and preferences. No amount of evidence will ever change the degree to which many of the rich and powerful prefer themselves to be richer and more powerful and others poorer and weaker.

In a change of masters the poor change nothing except their master's name.

Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery.

The Occupy Wall Street project feels like a burning ember that might light the torch of justice and inflame our longing for freedom.