Jean Vanier quotes

Jean Vanier was a Canadian philosopher, theologian, and humanitarian, best known as the founder of L'Arche communities. His work focused on helping people with intellectual disabilities find dignity and belonging. He inspired many through his vision of compassion, inclusion, and service. Here are 39 of his quotes:

Many people are good at talking about what they are doing, but in fact do little. Others do a lot but don't talk about it; they are the ones who make a community live.

Jean Vanier

I am struck by how sharing our weakness and difficulties is more nourishing to others than sharing our qualities and successes.

Jean Vanier

To be lonely is to feel unwanted and unloved, and therefor unloveable. Loneliness is a taste of death. No wonder some people who are desperately lonely lose themselves in mental illness or violence to forget the inner pain.

Jean Vanier

Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.

Jean Vanier

To love someone is to show to them their beauty, their worth and their importance.

Jean Vanier

Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.

Jean Vanier

Life is a succession of crises and moments when we have to rediscover who we are and what we really want.

Jean Vanier

When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.

Jean Vanier

Envy comes from people's ignorance of, or lack of belief in, their own gifts.

Jean Vanier

A growing community must integrate three elements: a life of silent prayer, a life of service and above all of listening to the poor, and a community life through which all its members can grow in their own gift.

Jean Vanier

But let us not put our sights too high. We do not have to be saviours of the world! We are simply human beings, enfolded in weakness and in hope, called together to change our world one heart at a time. (163)

Jean Vanier

When children are loved, they live off trust; their bides and hearts open up to those who respect and love them, who understand and listen to them.

Jean Vanier

I have discovered the value of psychology and psychiatry, that their teachings can undo knots in us and permit life to flow again and aid us in becoming more truly human.

Jean Vanier

Peace can only come as people begin to meet each other. Those that do have the courage to cross the road, however, to look kindly at people and to listen to them with tenderness, will find people much like themselves, people seeking to be loved for who they are. And that it is OK for each one of us to admit, "I don't have all the truth.... I am vulnerable, I am broken. I need help." Then comes the realization, "I need your help. I need your friendship." In the end, what you will find, and what you will help the world to discover, Vanier said, is what it means to be human.

Jean Vanier

There is that little compass within each one of us where we know what is right, what is just, what is good, what is true.

Jean Vanier

Try and find somebody who is lonely. And when you go to see them, they will see you as the messiah. Go and visit a little old lady who has no friends or family. Bring her flowers. People say ‘but that's nothing.' It is nothing-but it's also everything. It always begins with small little things. It all began in Bethlehem. That was pretty small.

Jean Vanier

To look forward, to want life, means we have to be willing to look backwards and become more conscious of all those who have hurt us, all that is broken in us and that has brought us inner deaths, hurts that we may have hidden and stifled. It means that we acknowledge the story of our origins, of our own lives, see and accept our brokenness and the times we also have hurt others. When we have accepted who we are and what we need in order to grow in compassion and peacemaking, we can move forward to give life. To forgive is a gift of God that permits us to let go of our past hurts.

Jean Vanier

Community means caring: caring for people. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: "He who loves community destroys community; he who loves the brethren builds community." A community is not an abstract ideal. We are not striving for perfect community. Community is not an ideal; it is people. It is you and I. In community we are called to love people just as they are with their wounds and their gifts, not as we would want them to be. Community means giving them space, helping them to grow. It means also receiving from them so that we too can grow. It is giving each other freedom; it is giving each other trust; it is confirming but also challenging each other. We give dignity to each other by the way we listen to each other, in a spirit of trust and of dying to oneself so that the other may live, grow and give.

Jean Vanier

Those we most often exclude from the normal life of society, people with disabilities, have profound lessons to teach us. When we do include them, they add richly to our lives and add immensely to our world.

Jean Vanier

The strong need the weak in order to become more human, more compassionate.

Jean Vanier

Before being Christians or Jews or Muslims, before being Americans or Russians or Africans, before being generals or priests, rabbis or imams, before having visible or invisible disabilities, we are all human beings with hearts capable of loving.

Jean Vanier

Somewhere, the deepest desire for us all is to be appreciated, to be loved, to be seen as somebody of value. But not just seen - and Aristotle makes a difference between being admired and being loved. When you admire people, you put them on pedestals. When you love people, you want to be together. So really, the first meeting I had with people with disabilities, what touched me was their cry for relationship.

Jean Vanier