268 Inspiring Quotes by Pope John Paul II

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become, in a special way, the servant of the others.

From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can survive.

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.

I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.

The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.

Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard.

Love is never defeated.

There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you in silence, I entrust them to you in the way that you know best.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on whose stage of death and pain only remain standing the negotiating table that could and should have prevented it.

When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.

The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a proof of the priest's inner maturity; it is the expression of his personal dignity.

Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

You are priests, not social or political leaders. Let us not be under the illusion that we are serving the Gospel through an exaggerated interest in the wide field of temporal problems.

Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimately futile.

The cemetery of the victims of human cruelty in our century is extended to include yet another vast cemetery, that of the unborn.

The future is in your hearts and in your hands. God is entrusting to you the task, at once difficult and uplifting, of working with Him in the building of the civilization of love.

Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.

Do not be afraid to take a chance on peace, to teach peace, to live peace…Peace will be the last word of history.

Life with Christ is a wonderful adventure.

We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other's dignity, rights and responsibilities makes the world a better place to live.

Much of the violence that humanity suffers in our times is rooted inmisunderstanding as well as in the rejection of the values and identityof foreign cultures. Tourism improves relationships between individualsand peoples; when they are cordial, respectful, and based on solidarity theyconstitute, as it were, an open door to peace and harmonious coexistence.

Opting for peace does not mean a passive acquiescence to evil or compromise of principle. It demands an active struggle against hatred, oppression and disunity, but not by using methods of violence. Building peace requires creative and courageous action.

Never tire of firmly speaking out in defense of life from its conception and do not be deterred from the commitment to defend the dignity of every human person with courageous determination. Christ is with you: be not afraid!

To reach peace, teach peace.

When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ, who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ, who is the fulfillness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world look to Christ.

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

Let us remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm, and look forward to the future with confidence.

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

Do not be afraid to be holy! Have the courage and humility to present yourselves to the world determined to be holy, since full, true freedom is born from holiness.

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world's expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

Radical changes in world politics leave America with a heightened responsibility to be, for the world, an example of a genuinely free, democratic, just and humane society.

The aesthetic value of creation cannot be overlooked. Our very contact with nature has a deep restorative power; contemplation of its magnificence imparts peace and serenity. The Bible speaks again and again of the goodness and beauty of creation, which is called to glorify God.

It's better to cry than be angry, because anger hurts others while tears flow silently through the soul and cleans the heart.

The earth will not continue to offer its harvest, except with faithful stewardship. We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.

Man always travels along precipices... His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

What have I done with my baptism and confirmation? Is Christ really at the center of my life? Do I have time for prayer in my life? Do I live my life as a vocation and mission?

United with the angels and saints of the heavenly Church, let us adore the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Prostrate, we adore this great mystery that contains God's new and definitive covenant with humankind in Christ.

What really matters in life is that we are loved by Christ and that we love Him in return. In comparison to the love of Jesus, everything else is secondary. And, without the love of Jesus, everything is useless.

In the life of husband and wife together, fatherhood and motherhood represent such a sublime "novelty" and richness as can only be approached "on one's knees."

The fear of making permanent commitments can change the mutual love of husband and wife into two loves of self-two loves existing side by side, until they end in separation.

Contraception contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love.

I encourage Christians regularly to visit Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament, for we are all called to abide in the presence of God.

We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.

There is no peace without justice, and no justice without forgiveness.

America you are beautiful ... and blessed ... The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest and most defenseless. If you want equal justice for all and true freedom and lasting peace, then America, defend life.

Deep within yourself, listen to your conscience which calls you to be pure...a home is not warmed by the fire of pleasure which burns quickly like a pile of withered grass. Passing encounters are only a caricature of love; they injure hearts and mock God's plan.

There is a growing threat to the environment, to the vegetation, animals, water and air. Sacred Scripture hands us the image of Cain who rejects his responsibility: 'Am I my brother's keeper?' The Bible shows the human person as his brother's keeper and the guardian of creation which has been entrusted to him.

What does our generation owe to generations yet unborn? ...there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and... the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.

You are called to stand up for life! To respect and defend the mystery of life always and everywhere, including the lives of unborn babies, giving real help and encouragement to mothers in difficult situations. You are called to work and pray against abortion.

Give us the grace -- When the sacredness of life before birth is attacked, to stand up and proclaim that no one ever has the authority to destroy unborn life.

An effective proclamation of the Gospel in contemporary Western society will need to confront directly the widespread spirit of agnosticism and relativism which has cast doubt on reason's ability to know the truth, which alone satisfies the human heart's restless quest for meaning.

Christians will want to be in the vanguard in favoring ways of life that decisively break with the exhausting and joyless frenzy of consumerism.

How can such episodes of such savage cruelty happen? The heart of man is an abyss out of which sometimes emerge plots of unspeakable ferocity capable of overturning in an instant the tranquil and productive life of a people.

The ultimate test of your greatness is the way you treat every human being.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus the anti-Gospel.

The sacraments infuse holiness into the terrain of man's humanity: they penetrate the soul and body, the femininity and masculinity of the personal subject, with the power of holiness.

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body.

We emphasize the transcendent worth of the human person. We insist that the human person must never be treated as an object; he must always be considered the subject. That is the basis for our teaching, the absolute standard.

Furthermore, because God created it, The human body can remain nude and uncovered and preserve its splendour and its beauty.

To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate the face of Christ with Mary.

The Rosary is a prayer both so humble and simple and a theologically rich in Biblical content. I beg you to pray it.

Rediscover the Rosary in the light of scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives.

How beautiful is the family that recites the Rosary every evening.

The Rosary is my favorite prayer.

God of our fathers,
you chose Abraham and his descendants
to bring your Name to the Nations:
we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those
who in the course of history
have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves
to genuine brotherhood
with the people of the Covenant.

It would be a sad thing if the religious and moral convictions upon which the American experiment was founded could now somehow be considered a danger to free society.

Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude.

The Church has a special duty to safeguard and strengthen the sacredness of the Eucharist. In our pluralistic and often deliberately secularized society, the living faith of the Christian community -- a faith always aware of its rights vis-a-vis those who do not share the faith -- ensures respect for this sacredness.

The Eucharist is the heart of the Church. Where Eucharistic life flourishes, there the life of the church will blossom.

If humanity today succeeds in combining the new scientific capacities with a strong ethical dimension, it will certainly be able to promote the environment as a home and a resource for...all...and will be able to eliminate the causes of pollution and to guarantee adequate conditions of hygiene and health for small groups as well as for vast human settlements.

We must reflect the light of Christ through lives of prayer and joyful service to others.

Real love is demanding. I would fail in my mission if I did not clearly tell you so. For it was Jesus -- our Jesus himself -- who said: 'You are my friends if you do what I command you'. Love demands effort and a personal commitment to the will of God. It means discipline and sacrifice, but it also means joy and human fulfilment.

Man must reconcile himself to his natural greatness.... he must not forget that he is a person.

Economic activity, especially the activity of a market economy, cannot be conducted in an institutional, juridical or political vacuum. On the contrary, it presupposes sure guarantees of individual freedom and private property, as well as a stable currency and efficient public services.

There cannot be forgotten the great possibilities of mass media in promoting dialogue, becoming vehicles for reciprocal knowledge, of solidarity and of peace. They become a powerful resource for good if used to foster understanding between peoples, a destructive 'weapon' if used to foster injustice and conflicts.

If the communications media are a good destined for all humanity, then ever-new means must be found -- including recourse to opportune legislative measures -- to make possible a true participation in their management by all. The culture of co-responsibility must be nurtured.

Lord Jesus, Who in the Eucharist make your dwelling among us and become our traveling companion, sustain our Christian communities so that they may be ever more open to listening and accepting your Word. May they draw from the Eucharist a renewed commitment to spreading in society, by the proclamation of your Gospel, the signs and deeds of an attentive and active charity.

Each individual in fact has moral responsibility for the acts which he personally performs; no one can be exempted from this responsibility, and on the basis of it everyone will be judged by God himself.

May the death penalty, an unworthy punishment still used in some countries, be abolished throughout the world.

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.

For a stalk to grow or a flower to open there must be time that cannot be forced; nine months must go by for the birth of a human child; to write a book or compose music often years must be dedicated to patient research ...To find the mystery there must be patience, interior purification, silence, waiting.

Love the family! Defend and promote it as the basic cell of human

society; nurture it as the prime sanctuary of life. Give great care to the

preparation of engaged couples and be close to young married couples, so

that they will be for their children and the whole community an eloquent

testimony of God's love.

Eucharistic worship is not so much worship of the inaccessible transcendence as worship of the divine condescension, and it is also the merciful and redeeming transformation of the world in the human heart.

The mystery of the Holy Night, which historically happened two thousand years ago, must be lived as a spiritual event in the 'today' of the Liturgy," the Pope clarified. "The Word who found a dwelling in Mary's womb comes to knock on the heart of every person with singular intensity this Christmas.

And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit.

Know what you are talking about.

My desire is for the young people of the entire world to come closer to Mary. She is the bearer of an indelible youthfulness and beauty that never wanes. May young people have increasing confidence in her and may they entrust their lives to her.

There is no need to be dismayed if love sometimes follows torturous ways. Grace has the power to make straight the paths of human love.

Yes, the civilization of love is possible; it is not a utopia. But it is only possible by a constant and ready reference to the "Father from whom all fatherhood and motherhood on earth is named," from whom every human family comes.

This is why moral uneasiness is destined to become even more acute. It is obvious that a fundamental defect, or rather a series of defects, indeed a defective machinery is at the root of contemporary economics and materialistic civilization, which does not allow the human family to break free from such radically unjust situations.

There is no dignity when the human dimension is eliminated from the person. In short, the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, but that it shows far too little.

Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: 'Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!'.

It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.

Is not Jesus pointing to children even as models for grownups?

Utilitarianism is a civilization of production and of use, a civilization of "things" and not of "persons," a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used. In the context of a civilization of use, woman can become an object for man, children a hindrance to parents, the family an institution obstructing the freedom of its members.

Take heed all of you who have at heart mankind's future! Take heed men and women of good will! May the temptation to seek revenge give way to the courage to forgive; may the culture of life and love render vain the logic of death; may trust once more give breath to the lives of peoples.

The greatest gift you can give your child is another sibling.

The poor of the United States and of the world are your brothers and sisters in Christ. You must never be content to leave them just the crumbs from the feast. You must take of your substance, and not just of your abundance, in order to help them. And you must treat them like guests at your family table.

The cross means there is no shipwreck without hope; there is no dark without dawn; nor storm without haven.

The true Christian can nurture a trustful optimism, because he is certain of not walking alone. In sending us Jesus, the eternal Son made man, God has drawn near to each of us. In Christ he has become our travelling companion.

In the Eucharistic Sacrifice the Church venerates the memory of Mary the ever Virgin Mother of God and the memory of Saint Joseph, because he fed Him whom the faithful must eat as the Bread of Life.

Treating a person as a means to an end, and an end moreover which in this case is pleasure, the maximization of pleasure, will always stand in the way of love.

It is unbecoming for a cardinal to ski badly.

The modern world, a world which has experienced marvelous achievements but which seems to have lost its sense of ultimate realities and of existence itself.

Only in Christ can men and women find answers to the ultimate questions that trouble them. Only in Christ can they fully understand their dignity as persons created and loved by God.

Those who advocate euthanasia have capitalized on people's confusion, ambivalence and even fear about the use of modern life-prolonging technologies. Being able to choose the time and manner of one's death, without regard to what is chosen is presented as the ultimate freedom.

Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy.

The obligation to earn one's bread presumes the right to do so. A society that denies this right cannot be justified, nor can it attain social peace.

There is no true peace without fairness, truth, justice and solidarity.

Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the mind as emerging from the forces of living matter, or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.

The history of mankind, the history of salvation, passes by way of the family... The family is placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between love and all that is opposed to love.

The human person is a unique composite -- a unity of spirit and matter, soul and body, fashioned in the image of God and destined to live forever. Every human life is sacred, because every human person is sacred.

Holiness is not reserved for a small number of exceptional persons. It is for everyone. It is the Lord who brings us to holiness when we are willing to collaborate in the salvation of the world for the glory of God, despite our sin and our sometimes rebellious temperament.

Commending the victims to almighty God's mercy, I implore his strength upon all involved in rescue efforts and in caring for the survivors.

The ethos of redemption is realied in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.

Do not forget that true love sets no conditions; it does not calculate or complain, but simply loves.

Are you capable of risking your life for someone? Do it for Christ.

On my knees, I beg of you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the path of peace. Those who resort to violence always claim that only violence brings about change. You must know there is a political, peaceful way to justice.

When our whole life is one faith, hope, love, prayer and silence, a consecrated life always bound up in the Eucharist, then the 'urge' towards God springs.

Beneath the Sacred Host, Christ is contained, the Redeemer of the world.

Every act of reverence, every genuflection that you make before the Blessed Sacrament is important because it is an act of faith in Christ, and act of love for Christ. And every sign of the cross and gesture of respect made each time you pass a church is also an act of faith.

The promotion of the culture of life should be the highest priority in our societies...If the right to life is not defended decisively as a condition for all other rights of the person, all other references to human rights remain deceitful and illusory.

All human life-from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages-is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God. Nothing surpasses the greatness or dignity of a human person...If a person's right to life is violated at the moment in which he is first conceived in his mother's womb, an indirect blow is struck also at the whole moral order.

Precisely in an age when the inviolable rights of the person are solemnly proclaimed and the value of life is publicly affirmed, the very right to life is being denied or trampled upon, especially at the more significant moments of existence: the moment of birth and the moment of death.

We Christians joyfully recognize the religious values we have in common with Islam. I would like to repeat what I said to young Muslims some years ago in Casablanca: 'We believe in the same God, the one God, the living God, the God who created the world and brings his creatures to their perfection.

The purpose of art is nothing less than the upliftment of the human spirit.

Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love.

Freedom is not the ability to do anything we want, whenever we want. Rather, FREEDOM is the ability to live responsibly the truth of our relationship with God and with one another.

Jesus himself has shown us by his own example that prayer and fasting are the first and most effective weapons against the forces of evil.