Quotes from Pope John Paul II

The greater the feeling of responsibility for the person the more true love there is.

We are the people of life, because God, in His unconditional love, has given us the Gospel of Life, and we are called to act accordingly.

The Church counters the culture of death with the culture of love.

Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.

In the life of husband and wife together, fatherhood and motherhood represent such a sublime "novelty" and richness as can only be approached "on one's knees".

Man always travels along precipices... His truest obligation is to keep his balance.

From Mary we learn to surrender to God's Will in all things. From Mary we learn to trust even when all hope seems gone. From Mary we learn to love Christ her Son and the Son of God!

People are made for happiness. Rightly, then, you thirst for happiness. Christ has the answer to this desire of yours. But he asks you to trust him.

Following Christ, the Church seeks the truth, which is not always the same as the majority opinion.

Treating a person as a means to an end, and an end moreover which in this case is pleasure, the maximization of pleasure, will always stand in the way of love.

Freedom exists for the sake of love.

We are the sum of the Father's love for us

Love is a constant challenge, thrown to us by God.

This is the wonderful truth, my dear friends: the Word, which became flesh two thousand years ago, is present today in the Eucharist

And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit.

Truth can never be confined to time and culture; in history it is known, but it also reaches beyond history.

The world [is] tired of ideology [and] is opening itself to the truth. The time has come when the splendor of this truth has begun anew to illuminate the darkness of human existence.

Contraception contradicts the full truth of the sexual act as the proper expression of conjugal love.

Freedom is not the ability to do anything we want, whenever we want. Rather, FREEDOM is the ability to live responsibly the truth of our relationship with God and with one another.

May the culture of life and love render vain the logic of death.

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not do away with alienation but rather increases it, adding to it a lack of basic necessities and economic inefficiency.

Peace is not just the absence of war. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith.

Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war.