A Revolution of the Heart

Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day (8 November 1897 – 29 November 1980) was an American journalist turned social activist. A pacifist and a devout member of the Catholic Church, she advocated distributism and was a co-founder, with Peter Maurin, of the Catholic Worker movement. She authored several books and spoke often in public about faith and social justice.

Additional Dorothy Day Quotes

“One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside the proximity of the suffering poor is their sense of futility. Young people say, ‘What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the action of the present moment but we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes.
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers with that burning love, that passion, which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’”

–Dorothy Day [Loaves and Fishes (1963)].

“We cannot love God unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know Him in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone anymore. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship.”

–Dorothy Day [The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist].