Peter Maurin Quotes

#1. In the Catholic Worker we must try to have the voluntary poverty of St. Francis, the charity of St. Vincent de Paul, the intellectual approach of St. Dominic, the easy conversations about things that matter of St. Philip Neri, the manual labor of St. Benedict.

Peter Maurin

#2. The future will be different if we make the present different.

Peter Maurin

#3. It is impossible to have a healthy and sound society without a proper respect for the soil.

Peter Maurin

#4. The coat that hangs in your closet belongs to the poor.

Peter Maurin

#5. The scholars must become workers so the workers may be scholars.

Peter Maurin

#6. The world would become better off
If people tried to become better.
And people would become better
If they stopped trying to become better off.

Peter Maurin

#7. Modern society calls the beggar bum and panhandler and gives him the bum's rush. But the Greeks used to say that people in need are the ambassadors of the gods

Peter Maurin

#8. If we are crazy, then it is because we refuse to be crazy in the same way that the world has gone crazy.

Peter Maurin

#9. What we give to the poor for Christ's sake, is what we carry with us when we die.

Peter Maurin

#10. I want a change, and a radical change. I want a change from an acquisitive society to a functional society, from a society of go-getters to a society of go-givers.

Peter Maurin