Dorothy Day Quotes

It is only through religion that communism can be achieved, and has been achieved over and over.

We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists 'of conspiring to teach [us] to do,' but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.

We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.

Today's paper with its columns of description of the new era, the atomic era, which this colossal slaughter of the innocents has ushered in, is filled with stories covering every conceivable phase of the new discovery.

What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. And each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. Going to jail for distributing leaflets advocating war tax refusal causes a ripple of thought, of conscience among us all. And of remembrance too. …. There may be ever improving standards of living in the U.S., with every worker eventually owning his own home and driving his own car; but our modern economy is based on preparation for war. … The absolutist begins a work, others take it up and try to spread it. Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.

while here in the western hemisphere, we went in for precision bombing (what chance of precision bombing now?) while we went in for obliteration bombing, Russia was very careful not to bomb cities, to wipe out civilian populations. Perhaps she was thinking of the poor, of the workers, as brothers.

My whole life so far, my whole experience has been that our failure has been not to love enough. This conviction brought me to a rejection of the radical movement after my early membership in the Socialist Party, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Communist affiliates I worked with.

Now the creed to which I subscribe is like a battle cry, engraved on my heart - the Credo of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Before, in those former times, I could say, "I shall sleep in the dust: and if thou seek me in the morning, I shall not be" (Job 7:21). Now I can say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God. Whom I myself shall see and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom" (Job 19:25-27).

We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war.... The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.

The best thing to do with the best things in life is to give them up.

For some weeks now my problem is this: What to do about the open immorality (and of course I mean sexual morality) in our midst. It is like the last times--there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.... We have one young [prostitute], drunken, promiscuous, pretty as a picture, college educated, mischievous, able to talk her way out of any situation--so far. She comes to us when she is drunk and beaten and hungry and cold and when she is taken in, she is liable to crawl into the bed of any man on the place. We do not know how many she has slept with on the farm. What to do? What to do?

Marx... Lenin... Mao Tse-Tung... These men were animated by the love of brother and this we must believe though their ends meant the seizure of power, and the building of mighty armies, the compulsion of concentration camps, the forced labor and torture and killing of tens of thousands, even millions.

I too complain ceaselessly in my heart and in my words too. My very life is a protest. Against government, for instance.

When Dr. Stern wanted to know whether I was an alcoholic, when Dwight Macdonald asked me seriously whether I drank longshoremen under the table — I can only confess that yes, I did "fling roses with the throng."

The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.