Jean Vanier Quotes

I believe that love gives you the freedom and power to share your best self and to inspire others.

I like to help others and count it as my greatest pleasure in life to see a person free himself of the shadows which darken his days.

I would say that the thrust of my life has been initially about getting free, and then realizing that my freedom is not independent of everybody else. Then I am arriving at that circle where one works on oneself as a gift to other people so that one doesn't create more suffering. I help people as a work on myself and I work on myself to help people.

The purpose in life is not to win. The purpose in life is to grow and to share. "When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people's lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.

I would like my life to be a statement of love and compassion--and where it isn't, that's where my work lies.

We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.

I think service to others is the real key to winning our own personal freedom and the road to our own happiness, our own personal contentment and fulfillment.

No man (sic) has learned to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Length without breadth is like a self-contained tributary having no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. In order to live creatively and meaningfully, our self-concern must be wedded to other concerns.

I'm just a regular mother who's trying to save lives and be the best human being I can be.

I've certainly had a lot of experiences in my life where I was much too self-centered.

As I got more successful, I felt it was more incumbent upon me to help the other people. I did more and more and the more I did the more I wanted.

I have always believed that when you're feeling sorry for yourself, the best thing to do is help someone else.

It's not about me, it's about my family. You don't answer questions for you, but for us. You learn to live beyond yourself.

I made a promise to myself to be kinder to other people.

Try to help others. Consult their weaknesses, relieve their maladies; strive to raise them up, and by so doing you will most effectually raise yourself up also.

If everybody, every day, would try to do one thing that pulls them beyond themselves the world will start being a better place.

I want to be a good human being.

My family life and my ideals, my commitment to the community and to other people - all people - has been improved. I think less about myself and more about my community today.

Testifying has helped me understand that one individual's behavior and actions make a difference. That my actions are important to people other than myself.

If it awakens in us as a whole how important that is - the theme of how conquest and ambition are meaningless without contribution - I think then as a society we're in better shape. I hope people are inspired to be the best.

After having children, life becomes about living beyond yourself; about being bigger and better.

I'm saying that you can create success for yourself but also understand that you have a responsibility to others.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.

I am a great motivator. I have struggles in my life, and the only way I can push through them is to motivate others. It really is quite selfish.