Dorothy Day Quotes

An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.

They charge me with fanaticism. If to be feelingly alive to the suffering of my fellow creatures is to be a fanatic, I am one of the most incurable fanatics ever permitted to be at large.

Help and you will abolish apathy-the void that is so quickly filled by ignorance and evil.

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one’s fellows, their responsibilitie s as children of God, heirs of heaven.

To repay evils with kindness is the religion I was taught to practise, and this will forever be my rule.

We need leadership that can elevate religion and morality to their position of paramount importance and thus eliminate growing selfishness, immorality and materialism.

If men were basically evil, who would bother to improve the world instead of giving it up as a bad job at the outset?

Where were the saints to try and change the social order, not just to minister to the slaves, but do away with slavery?

You can't build a new society by violating the rights of others.

Reason perhaps teaches certain bourgeois virtues, but it does not make either heroes or saints.

In the 19th century, some people looked at the condition of slavery and said that it was monstrous and unconscionable; that it must be abolished. ... Today the condition of hunger in a world of plenty is equally monstrous and unconscionable and it too must be abolished. We must become the 'new abolitionists'.

I believe that to have interfered as I have done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right.

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

Property has its duties as well as its rights…. To the neglect of these duties in times past is mainly to be attributed to that diseased state of society in which such crimes can take their rise…. It is not in the enactment of statutes of extraordinary severity, but chiefly in the better and more faithful performance of those duties … that a permanent remedy … is to be sought.

To the New England mind, roads, schools, clothes, and a clean face were connected as part of the law of order or divine system. Bad roads meant bad morals. The moral of this Virginia road was clear, and the boy fully learned it. Slavery was wicked, and slavery was the cause of this road’s badness which amounted to [a] social crime.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That's not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

I will be O.K. without football. I want to fight for the people who won't be O.K.

I think the greatest gift we can give our children is to show them that devotion to God's purposes - love for all beings - is the center of all right living.

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight While little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight While there is a drunkard left, While there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, While there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end!

I hope to leave my children a sense of empathy and pity and a will to right social wrongs

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

Apart from letters, it is the vulgar custom of the moment to deride the thinkers of the Victorian and Edwardian eras; yet there has not been, in all history, another agewhen so much sheer mental energy was directed toward creating a fairer social order.

It is for the poor people's sake, above all, that we urgently need more unity and better organization and need to concentrate our reform efforts in order to really to achieve reforms, one by one.

Justice is merely incidental to law and order. Law and order is what covers the whole picture. Justice is part of it, but it can't be separated as a single thing.