Quotes from Greg Boyle

It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for 'showing up' and embodying the message.

Like the suffering child, gang members act out of their despair, and their actions are all the more alarming now for our not having heeded their cry long ago. The shortsighted neglect that keeps us locked up in our outrage has also kept us from viable solutions.

The highest hallmark of a civilized society is not the rapidity by which it exacts vengeance, but its ability to hold victim and victimizer in its compassionate heart.

The truth is this: Brutalized, victimized children invariably will brutalize and victimize when they grow up. Is our only response to this the certain promise that we will penalize them when they do? Or will we commit to keeping our children safe from brutality and victimization?

Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez - these are people whose thoughts are so important.

Most citizens viewing the tape of Rodney G. King being beaten by police officers were stunned and uncomprehending. Most citizens, that is, but the urban poor.

At its best, an injunction creates a kind of vigilant heat that moves kids toward the light.

You can't reason with gang violence: you can't talk to it, sit it at the table, and negotiate with it.

What do we know to be true about gang violence? We know we will fail if we fixate on the symptoms and not address what undergirds it.

So complex are all the ingredients that cause gang membership that it seems virtually impossible to isolate one solution that can address them all and thereby manufacture a hope for the future upon which these kids can rely.

I'm not going to be here forever. I don't plan on going anywhere, but I don't know anybody for whom death is an exception.

All politics are local, and so in church.

Even gang members imagine a future that doesnt include gangs.