Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Most citizens viewing the tape of Rodney G. King being beaten by police officers were stunned and uncomprehending. Most citizens, that is, but the urban poor. "

Related Quotes:

" We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease. "

Greg Boyle

Know

Just

Crime

" I would hope that government officials have a healthy respect for the complexity of the gang problem. They should never lose sight of the fact that there are human beings involved. There is no single solution. "

" As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized. "

" I'm not opposed to success. "

Greg Boyle

Success

Opposed

" What is ultimately compelling for our children in helping them conjure images of a future for themselves is our willingness to walk with them as they do it. "

" I'm the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine. "

" No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself. "

Greg Boyle

Always

Kid

" My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God. "

" Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming. "

" I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's. "

" We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang. "

" God is compassion. "

Greg Boyle

Compassion

God

" The business of second chances is everybody's business. "

" Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that's what happens at Homeboy Industries. "

" The highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us. "

" I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people. "

" I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works. "

" People have started to see that 'smart on crime' rather than 'tough on crime' makes sense. "

" I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen. "

" Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities. "

" I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang. "

" I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence. "

" Even gang members imagine a future that doesn't include gangs. "

" Don't forget, you are the hero of your own story. "

" The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did. "

Greg Boyle

Lead

Call

" Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all. "

" You don't really get Jesus saying very often there'll be pie in the sky when you die. He's really talking about now and today, and it's supposed to be like that. You're supposed to delight in what's right in front of you. "

" You are exactly what God had in mind when he made you. "

" Most employers just aren't willing to look beyond the dumbest or worst thing someone has done. "

" Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed. "