Pope John XXIII Quotes

Justice comes before charity.

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.

The family is the first essential cell of human society.

When I eat alone I feel like a seminarian being punished. I tried it for one week and I was not comfortable. Then I searched through Sacred Scripture for something saying I had to eat alone. I found nothing, so I gave it up and it's much better now.

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

The true and solid peace of nations consists not in equality of arms, but in mutual trust alone.

Prayer is the raising of the mind to God. We must always remember this. The actual words matter less.

Listen to everything, forget much, correct little.

Anybody can be Pope; the proof of this is that I have become one.

I am able to follow my own death step by step. Now I move softly towards the end.

Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfullfilled potential.

See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.

To keep me from sin and straying from Him, God has used devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. My life vows destined to be spent in the light irradiating from the tabernacle, and it is to the Heart of Jesus that I dare go for the solution of all my problems

The Catholic Church has a dignity far surpassing that of every merely human society, for it was founded by Christ the Lord. It is altogether fitting, therefore, that the language it uses should be noble, majestic, and non-vernacular.

The deposit of the faith is one thing ... the way it is expressed is another.

I want to throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in.

A peaceful man does more good than a learned one.

The feelings of my smallness and my nothingness always kept me good company.

Before everything else, fidelity to the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. Jesus did not found several churches, but one single Church.

You must know that it is by the state of the lavatory that a family is judged.

Here I am at the end of the road and at the top of the heap.

The social progress, order, security and peace of each country are necessarily connected with the social progress, order, security and peace of all other countries.

The Rosary is a school for learning true Christian perfection.

Today the universal common good poses problems of world-wide dimensions, which cannot be adequately tackled or solved except by the efforts of public authorities endowed with a wideness of powers, structure and means of the same proportions; that is ... on a world-wide basis.

Prudent is he who can keep silent that part of truth which may be untimely, and by not speaking it, does not spoil the truth of what he said.

Born poor, but of honored and humble people, I am particularly proud to die poor.

Never Hesitate to hold out your hand; never hesitate to accept the outstretched hand of another.

The thought of the presence of God and the spirit of worship will in all my actions have as their immediate object Jesus, God and man, really present in the most holy Eucharist. The spirit of sacrifice, of humiliation, of scorn for self in the eyes of men, will be illuminated, supported and strengthened by the constant thought of Jesus, humiliated and despised in the Blessed Sacrament

I live by the mercy of Jesus, to whom I owe everything and from whom I expect everything.

There is a common belief that under modern conditions peace cannot be assured except on the basis of an equal balance of armaments ... [but] true and lasting peace among nations cannot consist in the possession of an equal supply of armaments but only in mutual trust.

Do not walk through time without leaving worthy evidence of your passage.

Mankind is a great, an immense family ... This is proved by what we feel in our hearts at Christmas.

An angel of Paradise, no less, is always beside me, wrapped in everlasting ecstasy on his Lord. So I am ever under the gaze of an angel who protects and prays for me.

Every time I hear anyone speak of the Sacred Heart of Jesus or of the Blessed Sacrament I feel an indescribable joy. It is as if a wave of precious memories, sweet affections and joyful hopes swept over my poor person, making me tremble with happiness and filling my soul with tenderness. These are loving appeals from Jesus who wants me wholeheartedly there, at the source of all goodness, his Sacred Heart, throbbing mysteriously behind the Eucharistic veils ... I love to repeat today 'Sweet Heart of my Jesus, make me love You more and more.'

Relations between States, as between individuals, must be regulated not by armed force, but in accordance with ... truth, justice and vigorous and sincere co-operation.

O Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, I would like to be filled with love for You; keep me closely united with You, may my heart be near to Yours. I want to be to You like the apostle John. O Mary of the Rosary, keep me recollected when I say these prayers of yours; bind me forever, with your rosary, to Jesus of the Blessed Sacrament. Blessed be Jesus, my love..

I have looked into your eyes with my eyes. I have put my heart near your heart.