I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

I often feel like saying, when I hear the question 'People aren't ready,' that it's like telling a person who is trying to swim, 'Don't jump in that water until you learn how to swim.' When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. And I think people have to have an opportunity to develop themselves and govern themselves.

When I am commanded to love, I am commanded to restore community, to resist injustice, and to meet the needs of my brothers.

If I sought to answer all of the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would be engaged in little else in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work.

A final victory is an accumulation of many short-term encounters. To lightly dismiss a success because it does not usher in a complete order of justice is to fail to comprehend the process of achieving full victory.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our present policies... True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. A true revolution of values will soon look on uneasily upon the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth with righteous indignation.

Liberalism provided me with an intellectual satisfaction that I never found in fundamentalism. I became so enamored of the insights of liberalism that I almost fell into the trap of accepting uncritically everything it encompassed.