The way to plan the family is natural family planning not contraception. In destroying the power of giving life, through contraception, a husband or wife is doing something to self, and so it destroys the gift of life in him or her
When a poor person dies of hunger it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes our moral responsibility towards those in need, rejecting the idea that divine intervention alone should address suffering.
Mother Teresa's quote urges us to recognize our role in alleviating the suffering of others, particularly the poor and hungry. It challenges the notion that lack of divine assistance is the cause of human misery, asserting instead that it is our failure to act with compassion and generosity that leads to such tragedies. It serves as a reminder that individual and collective actions can make a significant difference in the lives of those who are suffering.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social justice, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of taking action against hunger.
More from Mother Teresa
All quotes →I believe in person to person; every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, that person is only one person in the world for me at that moment.
Purity is the fruit of prayer.
If your Eyes are Positive, You will Love the World. _x000D_ But if Your Tongue is Positive, The World will Love you.
The poor are great! The poor are wonderful! The poor are very generous! They give us much more than what we give them.
The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Similar quotes
Religion has convinced us that there's something else entirely other than concerns about suffering. There's concerns about what God wants, there's concerns about what's going to happen in the afterlife.
And therefore I looked down into the great pity of a person’s life on this earth. I don’t mean that we all end up dead, that’s not the great pity. I mean that he couldn’t tell me what he was dreaming, and I couldn’t tell him what was real.
Henceforth the cosmos, once a swarm of blazing galaxies, each a swarm of stars, was composed wholly of star-corpses. These dark grains drifted through the dark void, like an infinitely tenuous smoke rising from an extinguished fire. Upon these motes, these gigantic worlds, the ultimate populations had created here and there with their artificial lighting a pale glow, invisible even from the innermost ring of lifeless planets.
Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man’s fundamental right-the right to life-and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man’s life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.
I have not loved the world, nor the world me, but let us part fair foes; I do believe, though I have found them not, that there may be words which are things, hopes which will not deceive, and virtues which are merciful, or weave snares for the failing: I would also deem o'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve; that two, or one, are almost what they seem, that goodness is no name, and happiness no dream.
By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.