Mother Teresa Quotes

“MT [Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Intense love does not measure it just gives. ”
― Mother Teresa

“Profound joy of the heart is like a magnet that indicates the path of life.”
― Mother Teresa

“If you can't do great things, Mother Teresa used to say, do little things with great love. If you can't do them with great love, do them with a little love. If you can't do them with a little love, do them anyway.
Love grows when people serve.”
― John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God's Best Version of You

“When the late Pope John Paul II decided to place the woman so strangely known as “Mother” Teresa on the fast track for beatification, and thus to qualify her for eventual sainthood, the Vatican felt obliged to solicit my testimony and I thus spent several hours in a closed hearing room with a priest, a deacon, and a monsignor, no doubt making their day as I told off, as from a rosary, the frightful faults and crimes of the departed fanatic. In the course of this, I discovered that the pope during his tenure had surreptitiously abolished the famous office of “Devil’s Advocate,” in order to fast‐track still more of his many candidates for canonization. I can thus claim to be the only living person to have represented the Devil pro bono.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“I like how Mother Teresa put it: "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile." If you approach life this way, always looking for ways to build instead of to tear down, you'll be amazed at how much happiness you can give to others and find for yourself”
― Sean Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens: The Ultimate Teenage Success Guide

“People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you. Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight. Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow. Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God. It was never between you and them anyway.”
― Mother Teresa

“The rich world likes and wishes to believe that someone, somewhere, is doing something for the Third World. For this reason, it does not inquire too closely into the motives or practices of anyone who fulfills, however vicariously, this mandate.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Everything everyone thinks they know about [Mother Teresa] is false. It must be the single most successful emotional con job of the twentieth century.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“It is often said, inside the Church and out of it, that there is something grotesque about lectures on the sexual life when delivered by those who have shunned it. Given the way that the Church forbids women to preach, this point is usually made about men. But given how much this Church allows the fanatical Mother Teresa to preach, it might be added that the call to go forth and multiply, and to take no thought for the morrow, sounds grotesque when uttered by an elderly virgin whose chief claim to reverence is that she ministers to the inevitable losers in this very lottery.”
― Christopher Hitchens, The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice

“Some of our friends are our friends only because we used to be friends.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“In some rare cases, a friendship between two people benefits both of them, and what’s more, in some rarer cases, it benefits both of them equally.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“Pettiness often leads both to error and to the digging of a trap for oneself. Wondering (which I am sure he didn't) 'if by the 1990s [Hitchens] was morphing into someone I didn’t quite recognize”, Blumenthal recalls with horror the night that I 'gave' a farewell party for Martin Walker of the Guardian, and then didn't attend it because I wanted to be on television instead. This is easy: Martin had asked to use the fine lobby of my building for a farewell bash, and I'd set it up. People have quite often asked me to do that. My wife did the honors after Nightline told me that I’d have to come to New York if I wanted to abuse Mother Teresa and Princess Diana on the same show. Of all the people I know, Martin Walker and Sidney Blumenthal would have been the top two in recognizing that journalism and argument come first, and that there can be no hard feelings about it. How do I know this? Well, I have known Martin since Oxford. (He produced a book on Clinton, published in America as 'The President We Deserve'. He reprinted it in London, under the title, 'The President They Deserve'. I doffed my hat to that.) While Sidney—I can barely believe I am telling you this—once also solicited an invitation to hold his book party at my home. A few days later he called me back, to tell me that Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic, had insisted on giving the party instead. I said, fine, no bones broken; no caterers ordered as yet. 'I don't think you quite get it,' he went on, after an honorable pause. 'That means you can't come to the party at all.' I knew that about my old foe Peretz: I didn't then know I knew it about Blumenthal. I also thought that it was just within the limit of the rules. I ask you to believe that I had buried this memory until this book came out, but also to believe that I won't be slandered and won't refrain—if motives or conduct are in question—from speculating about them in my turn.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“For the first time in this 11 years--I have come to love the darkness--for I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus' dakness and pain on earth. You have taught me to accept it [as] a "spiritual side of 'your work'"... (Mother Teresa, quoated in Kolodiejchuk, p. 208).”
― Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the Saint of Calcutta

“We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“*Prostitution* is a euphemism for rape incidents that the victim and the economy profits from.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“In many cases, it was the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that fell for her man.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“Females and boys are the only creatures that propose others for friendship. As for the rest of us, friendship sort of just happens.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“It is humanly impossible to be selfless. As a matter of fact, human beings are inherently selfish.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“The pleasure or the benefit that the object of our deed derives from it is every now and then greater or even more important than the one we derive from the deed.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“When you look at Van Gogh, Jesus, Buddha, Mother Teresa from a "fiscal" perspective, they were homeless. When you look at them from a humanity
perspective, they were priceless.”
― Natalie Pace, The Gratitude Game: 21 Days to a Healthier, Wealthier, More Beautiful You

“Putting someone before yourself is possible only if that is done literally.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Be humble and kind. Kindness has power in it. Look at Mother Teresa, the truest example of kindness. She was humble, kind, and fragile yet she was also a symbol of power. I have never heard of a woman more powerful than her. When we hear name, we must bow our heads with deep respect.”
― Debasish Mridha

“Only a handful of individuals in human history can be truly hailed as Christians, such as Tolstoy, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Rumi, Martin Luther King Jr. and a few others.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neurons of Jesus: Mind of A Teacher, Spouse & Thinker

“When we help someone with genuine concern for her well-being, levels of endorphins, which are associated with euphoric feeling, surge in the brain, a phenomenon referred to as the helper’s high. In studies in which participants were asked to consciously extend compassion to another person, the reward centers of the compassionate brain were activated – the same brain system that lights up when we think of chocolate or another treat...The fulfillment Mother Teresa derived from her selfless service was a by-product, not the goal. Her primary motive was to bring help and solace to the destitute. This is the catch – a happy catch – to compassion: The more we are in it for other people, the more we get out of it ourselves.”
― Thupten Jinpa, A Fearless Heart: How the Courage to Be Compassionate Can Transform Our Lives

“He then said, 'But in India, where there are so many problems, can you ever be successful at what you do- isn't it hopeless to try?' She replied, "Well, Senator, we're not always called to be successful but we're always called to be faithful.”
― Mother Teresa (as told by Dave)

“Not every man is Swami Vivekananda to learn wisdom from a sex worker and not every woman is Mother Teresa to teach love to a thief”
― Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

“The worlds of poverty and wealth collided, and I guess I felt a little dose of what the experts call culture shock. According to Mother Teresa, it is among the wealthy that we can find the most terrible poverty of all— loneliness. So perhaps I was still among the poorest of the poor, but these poor folks had some cash!”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“The Greatest Opportunity you would ever find is the ability to serve and assist someone in Need”
― Manuel Corazzari