No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of human life over any principle or ideology.
Daniel Berrigan's quote suggests that no matter how important a belief or principle may seem, it should never take precedence over the value of a single human life. It serves as a reminder to prioritize compassion and humanity over rigid dogmas or abstract ideals, illustrating the moral responsibility we hold towards each other as human beings.
In practice
In a speech advocating for social justice, this quote could highlight the need for empathy in leadership.
Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation.
Of course, let us have peace, we cry, "but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties ... " There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison, and death in its wake.
The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.
The God of life summons us to life; more, to be lifegivers, especially toward those who lie under the heel of the powers.
For my part, I believe that the vain, glorious and the violent will not inherit the earth. . . . In pursuance of that faith my friends and I take the hands of the dying in our hands. And some of us travel to the Pentagon, and others live in the Bowery and serve there, and others speak unpopularly and plainly of the fate of the unborn and of convicted criminals. It is all one.
Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.
In progressive societies the concentration[of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.
There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant.
The Contessa was surely way ahead of her time, too, in believing that men were not only usless and idiotic, but downright dangerous. That idea wouldn't catch on big in her native country until the last three years of the Vietnam War.
What you hope, you will eventually believe. _x000D_ What you believe you will eventually know. What you know, you will eventually create. What you create, _x000D_ you will eventually experience. What you experience, _x000D_ you will eventually express. What you express, _x000D_ you will eventually become. _x000D_ This is the formula for all of life.
One who faces and who fears the right things and from the right motive, in the right way and at the right time, posseses character worthy of our trust and admiration.
We object not to the narration of the deeds of our unregenerate condition, but to the mode in which it is too often done. Let sin have its monument, but let it be a heap of stones cast by the hands of execration - not a mausoleum erected by the hands of affection.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.