Quotes from Greg Boyle

Relapse happens, especially when you're dealing with folks who are frankly the least likely to succeed based on their own pasts and difficulties. We can work with the most likely to succeed. I'm not interested in that.

You are so much more than the worst thing you've ever done.

Most employers just aren't willing to look beyond the dumbest or worst thing someone has done.

Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming.

Abject poverty, political instability, torture, and other abuses push thousands across our border. There is not a deterrent imaginable that equals the conditions that force their migration.

I always have a funny story at communion time that underscores that no one is perfect, and that communion is not for perfect people but for hungry people.

The desire of God's heart is immeasurably larger than our imaginations can conjure.

You stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly and the badly behaved until bad behavior is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.

I wouldn't trade my life for anybody's.

Children find themselves adrift not because the informational signposts are illegible, but because there is no one around to guide and accompany them.

The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.

The margins don't get erased by simply insisting that the powers-that-be erase them.

There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.

We need a pope to oversee not simply a modernization of the church but its total transformation.

We are among the handful of countries that has difficulty distinguishing juveniles from adults where crime is concerned. We are convinced that if a child commits an adult crime, that kid is magically transformed into an adult. Consequently, we try juveniles as adults.

The Church should say, 'I'm frightened that women will be ordained;' that's honest, say that. But don't say, 'It's a grave sin,' because that's nonsense.

The employer is not going to choose the gang member who's just been released from prison: they're going to choose the person with the skills.

The highest religious and spiritual ideals of any faith would invite us to a compassion for all lives destroyed by the violence that plagues us.

We are less than honest and commit a grave error if we insist that what happened to Rodney G. King was isolated and an exceptional case. The poor know better.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

I kinda don't do guilt. I gave it up for Lent years ago.

Young people can change and grow. Every parent knows that.

I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.

The draconian spirit that seeks to enhance penalties and to lower the age at which juveniles will be tries as adults, is part of the 'whole cloth' of three strikes. Our failure to address the depair of our inner-city youth is only delayed by our over-confidence in a stance that is 'tougher than thou.'