Quotes about Outsiders

Love is banality to all outsiders.

Nowhere in the New Testament is the privileged position of turkeys, nobodies, and marginal people on the fringes of society disclosed more dramatically than in Jesus' ministry of meal sharing. In modern times it is scarcely possible to appreciate the scandal Jesus caused by His table fellowship with sinners.

Another favorite hymn mourns Israel's lonely exile from the Son of God. Another years for a future in which every knee will bow to Jesus. Another urges Christian soldiers onward, marching as to war. When I imagined singing it with a Muslim or Hindu student sitting next to me, my voice dried up. It was a song for insiders, not outsiders. If I had learned anything from going on all of those class field trips, it was how religious language sounds to outsiders, and how much that matters.

Not only that, Jesus finds all the "wrong" people on God's side and all the "right" people against God.

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

It's all right to have our mite boxes for the heathen, and send missionaries to them. They're far away and we don't have to associate with them. But I don't want to have to sit in a pew with a hired boy.

If we all got kicked off the staff and the board, and an outside group (a group of leaders who were fearlessly committed to the mission of this church) took our place, what changes would they introduce?68 What's the first thing they would do? Who would they replace? What would they refuse to fund?

Outsiders aren't about to take our faith seriously as long as they wonder if we do.

One of the primary reasons that you have to listen to outsiders: If you don't, you will be driven by the complaints and demands of the insiders.

Fremen possessed a highly evolved conscience which centered on their own welfare as a people. It was only to outsiders that they seemed brutish—just as outsiders appeared brutish to Fremen. Every Fremen knew very well that he could do a brutal thing and feel no guilt.

It is the storytellers task to elicit sympathy and a measure of understanding for those who lie outside the boundaries of State approval.

Don't we all, at some level, want to join the outsiders? Their stories tear at our hearts and uplift our souls. The lessons they learned took the human race down unknown roads. One could do worse than to jump the track of everyday life and follow them. Deepak Chopra April 2012