Compassion Quote by Jean Vanier

““Community as caring . . . Some communities - which are more groupings or sects - tend to suppress individual conscience in the interest of a greater unity. They tend to stop people from thinking, from having their own conscience. They tend to suppress whatever is secret and intimate in the individual as if personal freedom cuts across group unity and constitutes a sort of treason. In such a place, everyone must think alike - so there is a manipulation of intelligence, a brainwashing. . . . In a true community, each of us is able to keep our own deepest secret, which must not be handed over to others, nor maybe even shared. There are some gifts of God, some sufferings and some sources of inspiration, which should not necessarily be given to the whole community. Each of us should be able to deepen our own personal conscience and mystical life. . . . if the individual and his union with God and the truth are paramount, he or she can, if God so calls them, find another place in the community and no longer assume the function that the community finds most useful; he or she can even physically leave. The ways of God for the individual are not always those of the people at the head of the community or what human reason and experience establish.””

— Jean Vanier