Jean Vanier Quotes

Each of us brings with him an element, more or less important, of the life of humanity to come.

It is difficult to think of anything more important than providing the best education possible for our children. They will develop the next technologies, medical cures, and global industries, while mitigating their unintended effects, or they will fail to do these things and consign us all to oblivion.

Let us seize the special opportunity that is ours to act boldly and decisively at a time when the eyes of our fellow citizens, both present and future, are upon us.

There is the story in every man's heart of human progress. I believe every one of us knows that his major job on Earth is to make some contributions, no matter how small, to this inexorable movement of human progress.

We need not worry so much about what man descends from - it's what he descends to that shames the human race.

If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after it are the patients of that power.

While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities, and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them.

I'm not going to change the world. You're not going to change the world. But we can help - we can all help.

There's only so many guys on a football team that really have a voice. So anytime you have a microphone, you should use it for the betterment of humanity, for the betterment of this country, for the betterment of our kids coming up behind us, for the future of the world. Why not? Make the world a better place.

No one's more important than people.

The most important responsibility we have on this planet is to take care of one another.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good.

The power, indeed, of every individual is small, and the consequence of his endeavours imperceptible, in a general prospect of the world. Providence has given no man ability to do much, that something might be left for every man to do. The business of life is carried on by a general co-operation; in which the part of any single man can be no more distinguished, than the effect of a particular drop when the meadows are floated by a summer shower: yet every drop increases the inundation, and every hand adds to the happiness or misery of mankind.

We must remember throughout our lives that in God's sight there are no little people and no little places. Only one thing is important: to be consecrated persons in God's place for us, at each moment.

He that lays down precepts for the governing of our lives, and moderating our passions, obliges humanity not only in the present, but in all future generations.

My own share making contribution [to the the well-being of humanity]. So I never feel I am something special.

And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it; and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!

I believe a large part of humanity will draw appropriate lessons from what is the wave of the future in the 21st century.

I do not know of any divine commands. I do know of most important human ones. I do not know the needs of a god or of another world. . . . I do know that women make shirts for seventy cents a dozen in this one. I do know that the needs of humanity and this world are infinite unending constant and immediate. They will take all our time our strength our love and our thoughts; and our work here will be only then begun.

Every individual matters and has a role to play in this life on Earth.

When an individual fear or apathy would cause us to pass by the unfortunate, then life is of no account.

Make a commitment today to something bigger and more important than yourself.

I know that an important message is not a novel. To say that we should all be kind to our neighbors is an important statement; it's not a novel.

True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.

Those lucky enough to qualify as "intellectuals" have their own special responsibilities, deriving from their good fortune. Among these is the task that [Edward] Said describes, surely an important one.