Helder Quotes & Sayings

The freedom he gave himself to work and change shape and change ideas and work all the time with joy, the joy of painting was in [Publo] Picasso, which I found beautiful. — Agnes Varda

and by mid-1781 it had caused him to conclude that France now sought a graceful exit from this stalemated war. Although he did not know it - nor would he ever learn the truth - his judgment was correct. Vergennes was prepared to consent to a long term truce uti possidetis; a diminutive United States would have existed, but Great Britain almost certainly would have retained Maine, northern Vermont, the Carolinas, Georgia, the tramontane West, and portions of New York, including New York City, and New England doubtless would be denied access to the Newfoundland fisheries.53 — John Ferling

Keep your language. Love its sounds, its modulation, its rhythm. But try to march together with men of different languages, remote from your own, who wish like you for a more just and human world. — Helder Camara

When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality. — Helder Camara

Anytime, day or night, at home or in the street, wherever we are, we are bathed in God. — Helder Camara

In the developed countries of the capitalist world, the mass media are beginning to become businesses, and huge businesses at that. The freedom of journalists is now becoming, in most cases, a very relative thing: it ends where the interests of the business begin ... In socialist areas, it is enough to recall that the means of social communication are the monopoly of the party. — Helder Camara

I much condole with you on your late loss ... pains and diseases of the mind are only cured by Forgetfulness;
Reason but skins the wound, which is perpetually liable to fester again. — Erasmus Darwin

The capitalist empires, with their affirmations of sacrifice for the free world, of defence of private enterprise, of safeguarding order from subversion and chaos, are in fact defending their political prestige and the economic interests arising from it; they are indeed at the service of economic power and the international trusts. The socialist empires for their part are hard and intransigent, they do not allow pluralism, they impose dialectical materialism, demand blind obedience to the party, set up a regime of total and permanent insecurity and fear, just like the fascist dictatorships of the extreme right. — Helder Camara

I stand for something. I stand for light. Even when I sleep! — Matthew Maher

God looks unjust but is not. God asks more from those who more is given. They are not greater or better; they have greater responsibility. They must give more service. Live to serve. — Helder Camara

Not by talking, but by praying And becoming something good, Can we offer peace to the world. — Sri Chinmoy

If there is some corner of the world which has remained peaceful, but with a peace based on injustices the peace of a swamp with rotten matter fermenting in its depths - we may be sure that that peace is false. Violence attracts violence. Let us repeat fearlessly and ceaselessly: injustices bring revolt, either from the oppressed or from the young, determined to fight for a more just and more human world. — Helder Camara

Being embodied as such is no insurance against feelings of hopelessness or meaningslessness. Beyond his body, he still has to know who he is. — R.D. Laing

How, I asked, could I have gone my whole life not knowing about my mother? How could I have not known what Keith knew when he saw our house? "It's your mom," Helder said. "Because it's Mom." He sounded firm and knowing and clear. "When a child has an alcoholic father, he sees him drink all day long but he doesn't have a label, a concept. You just know that at night, when the tires make a certain sound in the driveway and the doors slam a certain way, with a certain sound, you just know you need to hide. — Heather Sellers

When I thought about it, though, what I liked best about the session was that Helder said fuck. A good, hard word, a word with a life of its own, a fearless word. A rent in the dry elegance. Fuck. — Heather Sellers

And that's when things get messy. When people begin moving beyond charity and toward justice and solidarity with the poor and oppressed, as Jesus did, they get in trouble. Once we are actually friends with the folks in struggle, we start to ask why people are poor, which is never as popular as giving to charity. One of my friends has a shirt marked with the words of late Catholic bishop Dom Helder Camara: "When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist." Charity wins awards and applause but joining the poor gets you killed. People do not get crucified for living out of love that disrupts the social order that calls forth a new world. People are not crucified for helping poor people. People are crucified for joining them. — Shane Claiborne

I can't die now, I have so much work to do. — John Gresham Machen

Helder said the goal of therapy was to make a container to hold all the disparate selves. I was going to need a big container. One that could hold hordes. — Heather Sellers

Don't get sucked in, Dave was always saying to me. Kind of like Helder's container idea: Notice everything, but don't buy into it. Hold it. — Heather Sellers

I love looking at you, hundred-year-old tree, loaded with shoots and boughs as though you were a stripling. Teach me the secret of growing old like you, open to life, to youth, to dreams, as somebody aware that youth and age are merely steps towards eternity. — Helder Camara

Meanwhile: consider that time is a weapon. — Laurie Penny

When they're small, they're part of you, on you in bed, showering with you, climbing onto your lap, holding on to your leg. Slowly, slowly, they start to move away, and if you love them, if you want them to feel safe and free to explore the world, you have to let them go. Mostly. — Lisa Unger

Without justice and love, peace will always be a great illusion. — Helder Camara

I think that what Donald Trump is doing, the way in which racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim belief and the like are being expressed through the campaign of Donald Trump, calls for, I think, a very vigorous and aggressive response to what he's saying. — Michael Eric Dyson

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. — Helder Camara

I'm thinking about Carol and Grace, my two best friends. At the same time I can't remember exactly what they look like. Did I really sit on the floor of Grace's bedroom, on her braided bedside rug, cutting out pictures of frying pans and washing machines from the Eaton's Catalogue and pasting them into a scrapbook? Already it seems implausible, and yet I know I did it. — Margaret Atwood

There's a time for caution,' I said, 'and a time to just kill the bastards. — Bernard Cornwell

Dom Helder Camara, a twentieth-century bishop in Brazil, said, When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a Communist. — Shane Claiborne

Our responsibility as Christians makes us tremble. The northern hemisphere, the developed area of the world, the 20% who possess 80% of the world's resources, are of Christian origin. What impression can our African and Asian brethren and the masses in Latin America have of Christianity, if the tree is to be judged by its fruits? For we Christians are largely responsible for the unjust world in which we live. — Helder Camara

The music began, and it was one of those life-changing moments. I saw an artist, Janis Joplin. She was exhilarating. She was vibrating. And she was like no other artist that I had ever seen before ... It struck me that hard. Maybe the word is epiphany, when you get that special sensation. — Clive Davis

In the Father's house we shall meet Buddhists and Jews, Muslims and Protestants ... — Helder Camara

Down the steep track into the village a car was coming. A car so fantastically powerful, so superlatively beautiful that it had all the nature of an apparition. — Agatha Christie