Quotes about Individuals

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit.

Divine love is not humanity but neighbor, the concrete, unique individual. You can only ever love individuals, because only individuals ever exist. Classes and collections are abstract objects of thought, not concretely real things. We group people into groups, but real people are concrete individuals.

All suffering is suffering. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as "the sum of the world's suffering," an abstraction of the philosophers. There are simply individual people who hurt. And who wonder why God permits it.

Paul Tillich once defined forgiveness as remembering the past in order that it might be forgotten—a principle that applies to nations as well as individuals.

A God unbound by our rules of time has the ability to invest in every person on earth. God has, quite literally, all the time in the world for each one of us.

Individuals initiate mass evil, but they need the collaboration of many people to carry it out.

The best way to combat racism is to have blacks and whites relate to one another as individuals, rather than as racial abstractions.... It becomes much harder to make a nasty generalization about another group after you have spent time in the home of one if its members.

Paul embodied principles of leadership that he also described in his letters. He certainly thought the life of individual believers and churches ought to resemble a solid foundation on Christ (see 1 Corinthians 3:9-17). Looking at Paul's life, we can see leadership all the more clearly.

When you like people and treat them like individuals who have value, you begin to develop influence with them. You develop trust.

Grace releases and affirms. It doesn't smother. Grace values the dignity of individuals. It doesn't destroy. Grace supports and encourages. It isn't jealous or suspicious.

There is little discipline in government, in school, in the home, or in most individuals. The rebellion against authority is also alive in the apostate church that has thrown discipline overboard and no longer mentions the necessity of submitting to spiritual and civil leadership. The alternative to discipline is mayhem where the nation has become an asylum, and the inmates are in charge.

All we hear is "What's the matter with the country?" "What's the matter with the world?" There ain't but one thing wrong with every one of us in the world, and that's selfishness.