The Witness Quotes & Sayings

I am so profoundly grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ, for a testimony of the Atonement of the Savior. I believe in it with all my heart, and I live for it, and I bear witness of it this day. Of all of the events of human history, none other approaches the Atonement of the Savior in its meaning and in its results. God be thanked for the gift of His precious Son, to whom we all owe thanks for His sacrifice in our behalf. — Gordon B. Hinckley

My witness is the empty sky. — Jack Kerouac

I am Crone, eldest of the Moon's Great Ravens, whose eyes have looked upon a hundred thousand years of human folly. Hence my tattered coat and broken beak as evidence of your indiscriminate destruction. I am but a winged witness of your eternal madness. — Steven Erikson

It was summer here and he wondered if there existed a different season for every corner of this world in this moment and the moments to come. Whether if you traveled fast and far enough you could witness a year passing in a single journey. — Paul Yoon

When we go ... to bear witness to life on the streets, we're offering ourselves. Not blankets, not food, not clothes, just ourselves. — Bernie Glassman

For the first time, she enjoyed the freedom of being a thirty-year-old spinster. This was a distinctly compromising situation that no schoolroom virgin would ever have been allowed to witness. However, she could do as she liked by sheer virtue of her age.
"I took care of my father during the last two years of his life," she said in response to Devlin's comment. "He was an invalid, and required assistance with his clothes. I served as valet, cook, and nurse for him, especially toward the end."
Devlin's face seemed to change, his annoyance vanishing. "What a capable woman you are," he said softly, with no trace of irony. — Lisa Kleypas

There is a fear of peace that I don't understand. Witness the old epithet "peaceniks," the association of peace with weakness. We mistake kindness for weakness in individuals, too. Gandhi found the essence of Christianity to be gentleness, the exaltation of means over ends. Using violence, against us or them, to achieve peace is like beating children to get them to be good. It only works in the short term. Believe in peace, think peace, live peace. Be a building-block of peace. Make it the center of your strength. — Jennifer James

The task of the Church, I suggest, is not to determine which is the theory of the atonement, or which theory of the atonement has pride of place among others. Rather, following Thomas (who stands clearly in line with the majority position of the history of theology), we ought to witness to the fittingness of the atonement: to demonstrate how the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ brings together a wide array of benefits for the sake of the reconciliation of all things to God, that we might have as full an understanding as possible of the work God accomplished in Christ. — Adam J. Johnson

The witness of the Holy Ghost is even more compelling than the witness of sight. As members of the Church, we become witnesses of the Savior and the truthfulness of this work not only in word but also in keeping our covenants and in how we treat others and in how we live our everyday lives. — Loren C. Dunn

[The heart is] really a fascinating organ. It's about the only organ in the body that you can really witness its function. Doing things. And so on. Some of the other organs you can witness, like the intestines, will have this sort of peristaltic motion. But nothing that can compare with the activity of the human heart. — Denton Cooley

[People of faith must] reassure them [atheists] that we share with them the core values of America, that our faith is not inconsistent with their freedom and our mission is not one of intolerance, but one of love ... I stand before you today as a witness to the goodness of God. For me, like you and like my running mate Al Gore, faith provided a foundation, order and purpose in my life. — Joe Lieberman

People say to someone they love: I'd die for you. They don't expect to, of course, have no plans to. They may believe it, or mean it, or it may simply be an expression of devotion. But I know what it means now, I understand that impossible depth of emotion now. And I know you would die for me. You'd put my life before yours to protect me. And that terrifies me. — Nora Roberts

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz. — Harold Pinter

Ernst Dwinger in his Siberian Diary
mentions a German lieutenant - for years a prisoner in a camp where cold and hunger were almost
unbearable - who constructed himself a silent piano with wooden keys. In the most abject misery,
perpetually surrounded by a ragged mob, he composed a strange music which was audible to him alone.
And for us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished
beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection
which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity. — Albert Camus

Apostolic and missionary fruitfulness is not principally due to programmes and pastoral methods that are cleverly drawn up and "efficient", but is the result of the community's constant prayer (cf. "Evangelii Nuntiandi," 75). Moreover, for the mission to be effective, communities must be united, that is, they must be "of one heart and soul" (cf. Acts 4:32), and they must be ready to witness to the love and joy that the Holy Spirit instils in the hearts of the faithful (cf. Acts 4:32). — Pope Benedict XVI

If there had been a moment when the hearts of his enemies were softened, when a throb of pity was felt even by Sydney Vane's elder brother, the implacable old General who had vowed that he would pursue Andrew Westwood to the death, it was when the prisoner's little daughter had been put into the witness-box to give evidence against her father. — Adeline Sergeant

He had to witness how a ginger German with a v-neck that almost went as low as his navel drew all the attention to himself. — John Duover

That's what pictures are for, after all: to stand in place of the things that weren't left behind, to bear witness to people and places and things that might otherwise go unnoticed. — John Darnielle

It proposed that human beings, by the act of making witness, warranted times and places for their existence other than the time and place they were living through. — E.L. Doctorow

The strength of the church is not the strength of its institutions but the authenticity of its witness. — Leonard Sweet

That happens a lot when people become parents, too. There's just so much at stake suddenly, and you're also witness to the total miracle of birth, and stuff like that. So I started reading tons of religious texts and checking everything out. One of the things I wanted to make sure of on the record is that it still has a "searching" vibe rather than an authoritative vibe. — Mason Jennings

Individuals bearing witness cannot do the work of social movements, but they can break a corrosive and demoralizing silence. — Ellen Willis

You could spend hours following the trail of a single dispute, through smoking battlefields of interlinked comments threads and screen shots and blogs where the message "this post has been deleted by its author" stands like a tombstone over the grave of the one witness who can tell you what really happened. I know, because I've wandered extensively over this blasted heath in the past couple of weeks. — Laura Miller

This age is truly crooked, perverse, and adulterous; it is full of fornication and immorality. People talk about immorality without one bit of shame. Who can stand in such a generation? Not one of us is able to stand. We all have a fallen nature within us, the same evil nature that all men have. We need grace. We must come to the throne of grace boldly and say, Lord, I am here. I need Your grace. I am not coming to ask You to give me good things. I am coming to find grace to meet my need. Lord, I cannot go to work or to school without Your presence. Lord, I cannot go to a department store without Your presence. Lord, I need You to stand with me. Come to be my strength. Lord, uphold me and sustain me. — Witness Lee

In a span of months she had present for birth and for death, the wondrous first breath and the horrible last. But wasn't it an honor to be there at the end of life as well as the beginning? To mark the extraordinariness of a lifetime, to bear witness to its completion? — Rae Meadows

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know ... From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. — Jacobo Timerman

Every kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom's imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every motion of worship, every struggle towards obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, which flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever-living heavenly order which will dawn at his coming. — Randy Alcorn

But - but the greatest way to witness is by walking that straight and narrow and also realizing that you're going to mess up. That's what grace is for. We're going to fall, but we've got to get back up. And you've got to improve. And that's what I'm all about. — Tim Tebow

Lord, we know that you will come again in glory to raise the living and the dead. Resurrect us now from the death of comfort, complacency, sloth, and shallowness that we might witness to your love in life and death. Amen. — Shane Claiborne

In retrospect I must confess that I do not know, or no longer know, what I wanted to achieve with my words. I only know that without this testimony, my life as a writer - or my life, period - would not have become what it is: that of a witness who believes he has a moral obligation to try to prevent the enemy from enjoying one last victory by allowing his crimes to be erased from human memory. — Elie Wiesel

Their example gives witness to the fact that baptism commits Christians to participate boldly in the spread of the Kingdom of God, cooperating if necessary with the sacrifice of one's own life ... This martyrdom of ordinary life is a particularly important witness in the secularized societies of our time. It is the peaceful battle of love that all Christians, like Paul, have to fight tirelessly; the race to spread the Gospel that commits us until death. May Mary, Queen of Martyrs and Star of Evangelization, help us and assist us in our daily witness. — Pope Benedict XVI

The way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit. — William Lane Craig

Havel had said that people struggling for independence wanted money and recognition from other countries; they wanted more criticism of the Soviet empire from the West and more diplomatic pressure. But Havel had said that these were things they wanted; the only thing they needed was hope. Not that pie in the sky stuff, not a preference for optimism over pessimism, but rather "an orientation of the spirit." The kind of hope that creates a willingness to position oneself in a hopeless place and be a witness, that allows one to believe in a better future, even in the face of abusive power. That kind of hope makes one strong. — Bryan Stevenson

There is no such thing as closure for soldiers who have survived a war. They have an obligation, a sacred duty, to remember those who fell in battle beside them all their days and to bear witness to the insanity that is war. — Harold G. Moore

Some poets travel to distant lands and bring back exotic sights and smells. But others go to witness turmoil or violence, to be at the center of political or social change and to bring back the news - not as journalists do, but shaped through language and image in ways that awaken our sensibilities and our emotions ["Yahya Frederickson in Yemen: The Gold of the Wayfarer," The Millions, December 5, 2014]. — Athena Kildegaard

Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness is an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant ... to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misfortune. — Augustine Of Hippo

The aim of all Christian education, moreover, is to train the believer in an adult faith that can make him a "new creation", capable of bearing witness in his surroundings to the Christian hope that inspires him. — Pope Benedict XVI

To act: that is what the writer would like to be able to do, above all. To act, rather than to bear witness. To write, imagine, and dream in such a way that his words and inventions and dreams will have an impact upon reality, will change people's minds and hearts, will prepare the way for a better world. — J.M.G. Le Clezio

As the witness testified before my Subcommittee on Immigration, that barriers magnify the ability of every Border Patrol agent to be more effective. And so if you make up your mind, you can build substantial mileage barriers. It will increase the ability of our officers to perform, and the most important thing is, it sends a message to the world, the border is closed. — Jeff Sessions

I, Malcolm William, son of William of clan MacKintosh, pledge my troth to thee, Alethia Grace Goodsky - " "Of clan Crane," she whispered. "Aye, well, I neglected to say that this morn. 'Twill be said when we take our vows again this spring." He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "With my hands, I shall provide for thee. With my body, I pledge to protect thee. With my heart, I shall cherish thee, and only thee, all the days of my life. As God is my witness and before my clan, from this day forward, we are husband and wife. — Barbara Longley

Vicarious traumatization. It can happen to those who bear secondary witness to the traumas of others. — Wally Lamb

The mere fact of an American being present could help save the lives of innocent people. That's why I believe in the importance of bearing witness, to become a voice for the voiceless. — Bianca Jagger

Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith. — Boyd K. Packer

The great number of the Jews furnishes us with a sufficient cloud of witnesses that attest the truth of the Bible. — Joseph Addison

If we partake of Christ as the real manna, we shall find it difficult to lose our temper ... This heavenly food causes our lusts to be restricted. It also deals with our selfish ambition. On the one hand, the heavenly manna nourishes us and heals us; on the other hand, it eliminates the negative things in us. Because eating is such a crucial matter, the regulating of man's diet is another basic concept in the Bible. — Witness Lee

Anger will come and go and the watcher abides. Sadness comes and passes by and the witness remains — Rajneesh

I took on a year of reading books for a reason. Because words are witness to life: they record what has happened, and they make it all real. Words create the stories that become history and become unforgettable. Even fiction portrays truth: good fiction is truth. — Nina Sankovitch

Do they know when we are well and happy? do they know when we recall their memories with the fondest love? In the silent hour of evening the shade of my mother hovers around me; when seated in the midst of my children, I see them assembled near me, as they used to assemble near her; and then I raise my anxious eyes to heaven, and wish she could look down upon us, and witness how I fulfil the promise I made to her in her last moments, to be a mother to her children. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this. — Gordon Cooper

The church is not simply a religious body looking for a safe place to do its own thing within a wider political or social world. The church is neither more nor less than people who bear witness, by their very existence and in particular their holiness and their unity (Colossians 3), that Jesus is the world's true lord, ridiculous or even scandalous though this may seem. — N. T. Wright

Preach My Gospel missionaries act in faith and are guided by the Spirit to help investigators learn truth. Please always remember Him, be worthy to represent Him, treasure up His word, allow the Holy Ghost to witness all truth, and observe, listen, and discern as you testify of Jesus Christ to honest seekers of truth. — David A. Bednar

The acrid odor of overloaded circuitry permeated the air, the horrid smell witness that at least one of his senses was working as sights and sounds became one with the unknown. Eventually he collapsed to the floor, wondering if he'd wake up in mortality. Then the muddled spectra went black, the silence that followed only possible in the deepest sectors of space. Or death. — Marcha A. Fox

Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it. Mind is only a machine. You are not. Meditation is the experience: "I am not my body, not my mind - I am the witness of it all." This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away. — Rajneesh

I wonder" he wrote, "if the day will ever come that the loveliest of hymns, Silent Night, will come into the minds of the people throughout the world to express the German heart. I belive it is the expression of the heart of many Germans ... [and]of most people throughout the world. That is the appalling tragedy of all that we witness today" Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in his diary during WWII during German occupation of the Netherlands. — Mackenzie King

The church has a double responsibility in relation to the world around us. On the one hand we are to live, serve and witness in the world. On the other hand we are to avoid becoming contaminated by the world. So we are neither to seek to preserve our holiness by escaping from the world nor to sacrifice our holiness by conforming to the world — John R.W. Stott

The pure products of America
go crazy ...
... [] No one
to witness
and adjust, no one to drive the car — William Carlos Williams

And here in Los Angeles, once again, I'm going to go down and be a witness. There's a guilty plea. I don't mind being on the witness stand, but I think they mind it a lot. — Patty Hearst

No matter what ugliness and destruction you may witness around you, I want you always to believe that the tiniest glimpse of beauty here and there is a reflection of the gods' abode. — Vaddey Ratner

Marriage is a million piece puzzle, a pristine and exciting pursuit at the beginning that gradually becomes a daunting task, usually more challenging than anticipated. It is only those truly committed to solving that puzzle who witness in the end the miraculous outcome of every tiny piece laid out and pressed together in an inspiring and envious creation - a treasure only time, resoluteness, and perseverance could create. — Richelle E. Goodrich

If you reflect often on how His Atonement has changed you, and if you give thanks often, you will find that your witness of Him gains power to touch the hearts of others. When those you invite out of your own testimony feel that witness, they will come to accept Him as their Lord and Savior. — Henry B. Eyring

As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it ... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson — Orson Scott Card

If the doctrine of a church is that people outside of Christ will face an eternity in hell, yet the culture is one that does not celebrate conversions or evangelistic witness, the culture of the church will contradict its doctrinal stance by continually focusing inward instead of outward. — Matt Chandler

Records subpoenaed from the state Liquor Authority proved that the bar was owned by someone else, not by the witness who had testified to be the owner. The real owner testified that he had closed the bar before the alleged kidnapping, that he had visited it every day during the period of time it has hosted the "kidnapping," and had locked the door as he left and had given no one permission to use it. The bar had been closed for one year before the alleged crime. The irrefutable and obvious conclusion was that, in fact, there was no bar, no "scene" of the alleged crime, and, therefore, no crime. — Assata Shakur

At Babel, men built a tower to make a name for themselves. At Shechem, Abraham did not build anything to make himself a name; he built an altar for calling on the name of the Lord (12:8). — Witness Lee

By 1998, members of the United States National Academy of Sciences, an elite elected group sponsored by the federal government, were approaching complete atheism. Only 10 percent testified to a belief in either God or immortality. Among them were a scant 2 percent of the biologists. In modern civilizations, there is no overwhelming importance in the general populace to belong to an organized religion. Witness, — Edward O. Wilson

Let me close by bearing witness (and my nine decades on this earth fully qualify me to say this) that the older I get, the more I realize that family is the center of life and is the key to eternal happiness. — L. Tom Perry

That day -- Monday, 25 February 1980 -- unfolded, in the context of British politics, much like any other day. Government, in those days, happened rather like a tree falling in a forest when there was no one there to witness it. For those among the Great British Public who wanted to believe that something was happening, the assumption was that something was indeed most probably happening, while for those who still needed to see it, or hear it, to believe it, there remained a high degree of doubt that anything was happening at all. — Graham McCann

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within ... underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions, and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, "the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This." from the Upanishad — Huston Smith

My memory often seems like a city of exiled poets afire with the astonishment of language, each believing in the integrity of his own witness, each with a separate version of culture and history, and the divine essential fire that is poetry itself. — Pat Conroy

For it is the business and duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and wholly free from passion, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, storehouse of deeds, witness for the past, example and counsel for the present, and warning for the future. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

... modern man no longer communicates with the madman [ ... ] There is no common language: or rather, it no longer exists; the constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence. — Michel Foucault

We Catholics have not only to do our best to keep down our own warring passions and live decent lives, which will often be hard enough in this odd world we have been born into. We have to bear witness to moral principles which the world owned yesterday and has begun to turn its back on today. We have to disapprove of some of the things our neighbors do, without being stuffy about it; we have to be charitable towards our neighbors and make great allowances for them, without falling into the mistake of condoning their low standards and so encouraging them to sin. Two of the most difficult and delicate tasks a man can undertake; and it happens, nowadays, not only to priests, to whom it comes as part of their professional duty, but to ordinary lay people...So we must know what are the unalterable principles we hold, and why we hold them; we must see straight in a world that is full of moral fog. — Ronald Knox

When sinners judge, God takes the stand. — Toba Beta

stepped into the witness box to be examined. The defense wanted jurors who empathized with Muybridge - a married man who had a runaway wife, on the one hand, and a man who confronted a sexual rival, on the other. — Edward Ball

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world. — Richard Misrach

Jehovah's Witness are welcomed into my home ... You gotta respect anybody who gets all dressed up in Sunday clothes and goes door-to-door on days so hot their high heels sink a half-inch into the pavement.
The trick is to do all the talking yourself. Pretty soon, they'll look at their watches and say, 'Speaking of end times, wouldja look at what time it is now! — Celia Rivenbark

Sentences are made wonderfully one at a time. Who makes them. Nobody can make them because nobody can what ever they do see.
All this makes sentences so clear I know how I like them.
What is a sentence mostly what is a sentence. With them a sentence is with us about us all about us we will be willing with what a sentence is. A sentence is that they cannot be carefully there is a doubt about it.
The great question is can you think a sentence. What is a sentence. He thought a sentence. Who calls him to come which he did.
... What is a sentence. A sentence is a duplicate. An exact duplicate is depreciated. Why is a duplicated sentence not depreciated. Because it is a witness. No witnesses are without value. — Gertrude Stein

Will bear witness to Your merciful acts; throughout the day I will speak of all the ways You deliver, although, I admit, I do not know the entirety of either. — Anonymous

What various scenes, and O! what scenes of Woe,
Are witness'd by that red and struggling beam!
The fever'd patient, from his pallet low,
Through crowded hospitals beholds it stream;
The ruined maiden trembles at its gleam,
The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and jail,
The love-lorn wretch starts from tormenting dream;
The wakeful mother, by the glimmering pale,
Trims her sick infant's couch, and soothes his feeble wail. — Walter Scott

I was sent there by the Free Congress Committee, headed by Paul Weyrich. Fred Smith and I were sent down as observers, with reporters' credentials, so we could witness the events. — Dixie Lee Ray

Should a conflict arise between the witness of the Holy Spirit to the fundamental truth of the Christian faith and beliefs based on argument and evidence then it is the former which must take precedence over the latter. — William Lane Craig

The Christian needs to walk in peace, so no matter what happens they will be able to bear witness to a watching world. — Henry Blackaby

I'm just a living witness that you can be an imperfect soldier and still be in the army fighting for God Almighty. Don't you think you got to be perfect 'cause I ain't. — Steve Harvey

Redtail was a brave warrior. His loyalty to ThunderClan could never be doubted. I always relied on his judgment, for it bore witness to the needs of the Clan, and was never swayed by self-interest or pride. He would have made a fine leader. — Erin Hunter

Seemingly by design, the American legal system encourages defense counsel to be as mendacious as possible. As Monroe Freedman, a legal ethicist and former dean of Hofstra Law School, has written, "The attorney is obligated to attack, if he can, the reliability or credibility of an opposing witness whom he knows to be truthful." It's an essential component of our adversarial system of justice, based on the theory that justice is best achieved not through a third-party investigation directed by an impartial judge but, instead, through vigorous disputation by the interested parties: trial by verbal combat. The — Jon Krakauer

I had once read, in one of those pre-plague books in the library, that love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: you're life is worth seeing. — Anna Carey

For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. — Michael Hayden

Love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: your life is worth seeing. — Anna Carey

He imagines the plane exploding as it touches down, ignited by one of its glints, in a ball of red flame shadowed in black like you see on TV all the time, and he is shocked to find within himself, imagining this, not much emotion, just a cold thrill at being a witness, a kind of bleak wonder at the fury of chemicals, and relief that he hadn't been on the plane himself but was instead safe on this side of the glass, with his faint pronged sense of doom. — John Updike

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

I witness the reality and divinity of our Eternal Father, of His Only Begotten Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost. I testify that our Father hears and answers our prayers. May each of us strive with greater resolve to ask in faith and thereby make our prayers truly meaningful. — David A. Bednar

The demands of our reality function require that we adapt to reality, that we constitute ourselves as a reality and that we manufacture works which are realities. But doesn't reverie, by its very essence, liberate us from the reality function? From the moment it is considered in all its simplicity, it is perfectly evident that reverie bears witness to a normal useful irreality function which keeps the human psyche on the fringe of all the brutality of a hostile and foreign non-self. — Gaston Bachelard

To be good Christians you have to contemplate the suffering humanity of Jesus. "How can we bear witness? Contemplate Jesus. How can we forgive? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we not hate our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we avoid gossiping about our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. There is no other way". These virtues are the those of the Father, who forgives us always, and Our Lady, Our Mother, shares in these virtues too. — Pope Francis

What courage must a human possess to stand at ease and witness the birth of the sun. — Bo Bryan

We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frownLet no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified and aflame with the fire of the Holy Ghost. — Samuel Chadwick

You witness the artists acting as witnesses, but they provide a point of view that's less monolithic. It's less official in a certain way. Many artists are speaking in the first person singular, as a reaction to dubbed-over media commentary. The thought is: "Enough with how we're represented by the media. Let me tell the story." — Massimiliano Gioni

I suspect it is for one's self-interest that one looks at one's surroundings and one's self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles come together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaws can encompass and what the light will stain. — Lee Friedlander

People witness the end of their small worlds every day: when somebody's marriage ends, when his only son dies, when a husband/wife dies, when he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, when your party is erased from the political map, when a leader faces a coup, when your town is bombed and your house is hit... — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I mean,' he said with increasing vehemence, 'that if there be a house for me in heaven it will either have a green lamp-post and a hedge, or something quite as positive and personal as a green lamp-post and a hedge. I mean that God bade me love one spot and serve it, and do all things however wild in praise of it, so that this one spot might be a witness against all the infinities and the sophistries, that Paradise is somewhere and not anywhere, is something and not anything. And I would not be so very much surprised if the house in heaven had a real green lamp-post after all. — G.K. Chesterton

God likes to appear to us in this way. He does not come in the form of God but in the form of man, without making any declaration that He is Jehovah God. — Witness Lee