Tim Nicodemus > Tim's Quotes

“All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe.”
― Shane Claiborne

“And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“The more I get to know Jesus, the more trouble he seems to get me into.”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.”
― Shane Claiborne

“Christianity is at its best when it is peculiar, marginalized, suffering, and it is at its worst when it is popular, credible, triumphal, and powerful.”
― Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals

“I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
― James Baldwin

“justice is something for which every generation has to strive.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“God has always wanted the vulnerable in society to be cared for. He never intended for them to languish in poverty, abuse, slavery, homelessness, or other types of devastation. When we care for individuals who are trapped in these ways, when we show them love and help them move toward freedom and wholeness, we participate in bringing a little part of God's Kingdom back into alignment with His greater plan. We do justice and God smiles.”
― John M. Perkins, Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

“The difference between relocation and gentrification is motive, plain and simple. When we decide to move into an inner-city neighborhood we should always ask ourselves the question, Is this good for my new neighbors? Moving into inner-city neighborhoods for merely selfish reasons with no regard as to how it will affect the community residents will probably eventually do harm to your neighbors.”
― John M. Perkins, Beyond Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they'd die for.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“There comes a time when silence is betrayal.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“The courageous have fears that cowards never know.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“The basis for the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount is not what works, but rather who God is.”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“A social order bent on producing wealth as an end in itself cannot avoid the creation of a people whose souls are superficial and whose daily life is captured by sentimentalities. They will ask questions like “why does a good God let bad things happen to good people ” such people cannot imagine that a people once existed who produced and sang the psalms. If we learn to say “God ” we will do so with the prayer “My God my God why have you forsaken me?”
― Stanley Hauerwas

“The church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, In Good Company: The Church as Polis

“Peace is a deeper reality than violence."
p. 231”
― Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

“As long as it is assumed that war is always an available option, we will not be forced to imagine any alternative to war.”
― Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child: A Theologian's Memoir

“I have already moved away from being a moderate, a liberal. My frustrations at trying to operate through channels and following the prescribed procedures, and failing to get any action, have radicalized me.”
― Shirley Chisholm, Unbought And Unbossed

“We must reject not only the stereotypes that others hold of us, but also the stereotypes that we hold of ourselves.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“I am and always will be a catalyst for change.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“If they don't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.”
― Shirley Chisholm

“We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity.”
― Fred Hampton, I Am A Revolutionary: Fred Hampton Speaks

“If you walk through life and don't help anybody, you haven't had much of a life”
― Fred Hampton

“If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win.”
― Fred Hampton

“Black people need some peace, white people need some peace, and we're gonna have to fight, we're gonna have to struggle, we're gonna have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we're asking for peace, they're a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers and they don't even understand what peace means.”
― Fred Hampton