John Paul II

"Faced with today's problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility. Escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape."

"The term 'person' has been coined to signify that a man cannot be wholly contained within the concept 'individual member of the species', but that there is something more to him, a particular richness and perfection in the manner of his being, which can only be brought out by the use of the word 'person'."

"Life is entrusted to man as a treasure which must not be squandered, as a talent which must be used well."

"Truth can prevail only in virtue of truth itself."

"There is no dignity when the human dimension is eliminated from the person. In short, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little."

"The human being is single, unique, and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by name"

"Learning to think rigorously, so as to act rightly and to serve humanity better."

"Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create."

"A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."

"The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations."

"A person is an objective entity, which as a definite subject has the closest contacts with the whole (external) world and is most intimately involved with it precisely because of its inwardness, its interior life."

"Whenever a person is the object of your activity, remember that you may not treat that person as only the means to an end, as in instrument, but must allow for the fact that he or she, too, has or at least should have, distinct personal ends."

"Humankind, which discovers its capacity to transform and in a certain sense create the world through its own work, forgets that this is always based on God's prior and original gift of things that are. People think that they can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to their wills, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which human beings can indeed develop but must not betray."

"~Have NO fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with YOU, therefore NO harm can befall YOU; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence~"

"Men are like wine-some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age."

"Yesterday was a dark day in the history of humanity, a terrible affront to human dignity. After receiving the news, I followed with intense concern the developing situation, with heartfelt prayers to the Lord. How is it possible to commit acts of such savage cruelty? The human heart has depths from which schemes of unheard-of ferocity sometimes emerge, capable of destroying in a moment the normal daily life of a people. But faith comes to our aid at these times when words seem to fail. Christ’s word is the only one that can give a response to the questions which trouble our spirit. Even if the forces of darkness appear to prevail, those who believe in God know that evil and death do not have the final say. Christian hope is based on this truth; at this time our prayerful trust draws strength fro"

"When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society."

"Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."

"Real peace is not just a matter of structures and mechanisms. It rests above all on the adoption of a style of human coexistence marked by mutual acceptance and a capacity to forgive from the heart. We all need to be forgiven by others, so we must all be ready to forgive. Asking and granting forgiveness is something profoundly worthy of every one of us,"