Top 77 Greg Boyle Quotes

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

There is no ‘them’ and ‘us.’ There is only us.

Don’t forget, you are the hero of your own story.

Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.

I work with gang members, and I feel a kind of affinity and gift, even. But who would’ve thunk it, you know? I mean, I didn’t anticipate it.

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.

We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time.

If the Los Angeles Police Department had enough officers, it could focus on one part of the community and stay there long enough to know and respect the people the officers are called on to protect and serve.

Even gang members imagine a future that doesn’t include gangs.

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 can’t get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.

The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.

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?

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

I want to be prophetic and take stands and stand with those on the margins, and I want to laugh as much as I can.

I have never seen a hopeful person join a gang.

We need not wait for further, well-placed home video cameras to see that low-intensity warfare is being waged against low-income minorities. We need only listen to the voices of the poor; they can testify that they are dehumanized, disparaged, and despised by the police.

Jesus did not only serve the needs of the people, but truly hoped that the people and Jesus would be one.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It’s a symptom, not a problem.

I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works.

Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans’ seeming refusal to believe in a person’s ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed.

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.

As much as I dislike the suggestion of single solutions to complex problems, jobs are as close as we will get to a single, effective answer to the enormous problem of gangs.

I love movies.

We don’t need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.

I would hope that government officials have a healthy respect for the complexity of the gang problem. They should never lose sight of the fact that there are human beings involved. There is no single solution.

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

We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.

I spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986, I became pastor of the church.

The power of community policing is in the relationship. This can happen only if an officer sticks around for a while.

I feel called to be faithful.

The business of second chances is everybody’s business.

God can get tiny if we’re not careful.

What is ultimately compelling for our children in helping them conjure images of a future for themselves is our willingness to walk with them as they do it.

Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to?

You are exactly what God had in mind when he made you.

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 don’t save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, ‘There’s that door. I think if you walked through it, you’d be happier than you are.’

Our best selves tell us that ‘there but for the grace of God… ‘ and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God’s grief and heart for us all.

I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.

Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not ‘about something.’ It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

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.

You don’t really get Jesus saying very often there’ll be pie in the sky when you die. He’s really talking about now and today, and it’s supposed to be like that. You’re supposed to delight in what’s right in front of you.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

Metro police can’t infuse hope into those for whom hope is foreign. The algorithm does not exist that can heal the traumatized. Data-driven predictions won’t result in the delivery of mental health services.

God is compassion.

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

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

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

The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did.

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.

I didn’t take my vows to the LAPD.

My job isn’t to fix or rescue or to save. It’s to accompany, see people, listen to them.

I’m the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine.

The poor evangelize you about what’s important and what is the Gospel, and that that’s where the joy is.

Gangs are bastions of conditional love, and one of the ways to counteract it is to offer community, which will always trump gang, and that’s what happens at Homeboy Industries.

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

All politics are local, and so in church.

The powers, conditions, and desires that propel Mexicans and Central Americans into this country are so fundamental, so vast, that no action, legislative or other-wise, can discourage this flight.

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.

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.

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

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

In my barrio, jobs work and money saves lives. When I have had the funds to place a gang member on a job site and pay his salary, I’ve seen him stop banging. When, on the rarest of occasions, an employer has offered a job to one of these youth, I’ve witnessed kids suddenly have a reason to get up in the morning.

I’m not always optimistic, but I am hopeful.

The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

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.

I’ve never met an evil person ever.

Homeboy Bakery is an alternative to kids who have found themselves, regrettably, in gangs and want to redirect their lives.