Top 90 Jean Vanier Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “It is difficult to make people understand that the ideal doesn’t exist, that personal equilibrium and the harmony they dream of come only after years and years of struggle, and that even then they come only as flashes of grace and peace.”

— Jean Vanier

52. “Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us.”

— Jean Vanier

53. “We work for peace every time we exercise authority with wisdom and authentic love.”

— Jean Vanier

54. “The friend of time doesn’t spend all day saying: ‘I haven’t got time.’ He doesn’t fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.”

— Jean Vanier

55. “All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.”

— Jean Vanier

56. “Stop looking for peace. Give yourselves where you are. Stop looking at yourselves, look instead at your brothers and sisters in need. Ask how you can better love your brothers and sisters. Then you will find peace.”

— Jean Vanier

57. “He who is or has been deeply hurt has a RIGHT to be sure he is LOVED.”

— Jean Vanier

58. “We cannot grow spiritually if we ignore our humanness, just as we cannot become fully human if we ignore our spirituality.”

— Jean Vanier

59. “Every human activity can be put at the service of the divine and of love. We should all exercise our gift to build community.”

— Jean Vanier

60. “Avoid the poison in your life that brings you turmoil.”

— Jean Vanier

61. “This evolution towards a real responsibility for others is sometimes blocked by fear. It is easier to stay on the level of a pleasant way of life in which we keep our freedom and our distance. But that means that we stop growing and shut ourselves up in our own small concerns and pleasures.”

— Jean Vanier

62. “People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.”

— Jean Vanier

63. “Put on light-coloured clothes and some perfume, take care of your body and do everything you can to fight against the forces of darkness. It is not an easy struggle, but it is worthwhile.”

— Jean Vanier

64. “True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward.”

— Jean Vanier

65. “If we are to grow in love, the prisons of our egoism must be unlocked. This implies suffering, constant effort and repeated choices.”

— Jean Vanier

66. “We discover that we are at the same time very insignificant and very important, because each of our actions is preparing the humanity of tomorrow; it is a tiny contribution to the construction of the huge and glorious final humanity.”

— Jean Vanier

67. “So we need places, laboratories, the creation of places which could be each one of our homes, where we invite people who are different, and we listen to each other, people of different class groups.”

— Jean Vanier

68. “We human beings are all fundamentally the same. We all belong to a common, broken humanity. We all have wounded, vulnerable hearts. Each one of us needs to feel appreciated and understood; we all need help.”

— Jean Vanier

69. “The weak and the poor are for us a source of unity. Jesus came into the world to change and transform society from a “pyramid” in which the strong and clever dominate at the top, into a “body”, where each member of society has a place, is respected and is important.”

— Jean Vanier

70. “The next chapter is about belonging: the essential need we have to be and to share with others. The human heart is a place of freedom. We can be obliged to follow the law but not to love, because “true love casts out fear.” Our society grows in justice and peace as we allow energies of love and concern for all to rise up in ourselves.”

— Jean Vanier

71. “A tension or difficulty can signal the approach of a new grace of God. But it has to be looked at wisely and humanly.”

— Jean Vanier

72. “A group is the manifestation of this need to belong. A group can, however, close in on itself, believing that it is superior to others. But my vision is that belonging should be at the heart of a fundamental discovery: that we all belong to a common humanity, the human race. We may be rooted in a specific family and culture but we come to this earth to open up to others, to serve them and receive the gifts they bring to us, as well as to all of humanity.”

— Jean Vanier

73. “Weakness, recognized, accepted, and offered, is at the heart of belonging, so it is at the heart of communion with another.”

— Jean Vanier

74. “To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.”

— Jean Vanier

75. “Belonging is important for our growth to independence; even further, it is important for our growth to inner freedom and maturity. It is only through belonging that we can break out of the shell of individualism and self-centredness that both protects and isolates us.”

— Jean Vanier

76. “Prayer is a meeting which nourishes our hearts. It is presence and communion. The secret of our being is in this kiss of God by which we know we are loved and forgiven. In our deepest selves, below the levels of action and understanding, there is a vulnerable heart, a child who loves but is afraid to love. Silent prayer nourishes this deep place.”

— Jean Vanier

77. “The fear of failure, of feeling helpless and unable to cope, had been built up in me ever since my childhood. I had to be a success. I had to prove my worth. I had to be right. This need to succeed and to be accepted, even admired by my parents and by those whom I considered my “superiors,” was a strong motivating force in me and is a motivation at the heart of many human endeavours.”

— Jean Vanier

78. “To reveal someone’s beauty is to reveal their value by giving them time, attention, and tenderness. To love is not just to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell them that they are special and worthy of attention.”

— Jean Vanier

79. “The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.”

— Jean Vanier

80. “Jesus does not impose or force anything on anyone. He gently invites each one of us to move forward. He says “come,” come and see, come and live an experience of love, healing and a new inner freedom.”

— Jean Vanier

81. “People seem to forget that there is a huge difference between the peace which is a gift of God and passes all understanding, and peace in the psychological sense. If we are living in a dream or illusion, or have certain psychological blocks, we should not be surprised that we become troubled when someone brings us face-to-face with reality. Sometimes we have to lose psychological peace before we can live in true peace.”

— Jean Vanier

82. “Children can then quickly discover that there is such a thing called truth; that they are not living in a chaotic world that is hypocritical, filled with only lies and pretense. Parents who admit to their children that they have been unjustly angry and ask for forgiveness are naming something: they are admitting that they are not perfect. Words and life can come together: the word can indeed become flesh.”

— Jean Vanier

83. “Sometimes it is easier to hear the cries of poor people who are far away than it is to hear the cries of our brothers and sisters in our own community. There is nothing very splendid in responding to the cry of the person who is with us day after day and who gets on our nerves. Perhaps too we can only respond to the cries of others when we have recognized and accepted the cry of our own pain.”

— Jean Vanier

84. “Her screams were not only a sign of her inner brokenness, darkness, and anguish but also a cry for help. Difficult as it is for us to accept and come to terms with this idea, I believe that every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?”

— Jean Vanier

85. “An ethics of desire is good news for those of us who have become allergic to an ethics of law.”

— Jean Vanier

86. “The language of elitism smells bad! It is not healthy to believe that we are the only ones to have captured truth and even less healthy to condemn others.”

— Jean Vanier

87. “That is the fundamental question; how to trust that she has a heart and that she can, little by little, receive love, be transformed by love, and then give love.”

— Jean Vanier

88. “I believe every act of violence is also a message that needs to be understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by real understanding. We must ask: ‘Where is the violence coming from? What is its meaning?”

— Jean Vanier

89. “He comes into that part of our being that is our treasure, that sacred space within us, hidden under all the fears, walls and anger in us so that we may grow in the spirit of love.”

— Jean Vanier

90. “The poor are always prophetic. As true prophets always point out, they reveal God’s design. That is why we should take time to listen to them. And that means staying near them, because they speak quietly and infrequently; they are afraid to speak out, they lack confidence in themselves because they have been broken and oppressed. But if we listen to them, they will bring us back to the essential.”

— Jean Vanier