A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

— John Paul II

...all that is carried along by the stream's silvery cascade, rhythmically falling from the mountain, carried by its own current--carried where?

— John Paul II

A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love.

— John Paul II

A person is an objective entity, which as a definite subject has the closest contacts with the whole (external) world and is most intimately involved with it precisely because of its unwariness, its interior life.

— John Paul II

A person's rightful due is to be treated as an object of love, not as an object for use.

— John Paul II

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

— John Paul II

As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live.

— John Paul II

Could God have justified Himself before human history, so full of suffering, without placing Christ's Cross at the center of that history? . . . But God, who besides being Omnipotence is Wisdom and--to repeat once again--Love, desires to justify Himself to mankind. He is not the Absolute that remains outside the world, indifferent to human suffering. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us, a God who shares man's lot and participates in his destiny.

— John Paul II

Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.

— John Paul II

Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.

— John Paul II