Joanna Macy Quotes

Quotes about:

• We are capable of suffering with our world, and that is the true meaning of compassion. It enables us to recognize our profound interconnectedness with all beings. Don't ever apologize for crying for the trees burning in the Amazon or over the waters polluted from mines in the Rockies. Don't apologize for the sorrow, grief, and rage you feel. It is a measure of your humanity and your maturity. It is a measure of your open heart, and as your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal. That is what is happening as we see people honestly confronting the sorrows of our time.

  Joanna Macy

  Grief, Heart, Compassion

  128 Copy quote

• You don't need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it is enough.

  Joanna Macy

  Heart, Needs, Action

  122 Copy quote

• If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear. People who can open to the web of life that called us into being

  Joanna Macy

  Love, Web Of Life, People

  114 Copy quote

• This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, because these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings.

  Joanna Macy

  Nature, Fear, Anger

  Joanna Macy, Norbert Gahbler (2006). “Pass it On: Five Stories That Can Change the World”, p.105, Parallax Press

  193 Copy quote

• The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.

  Joanna Macy

  World, Radical, Can Do

  97 Copy quote

• Out of this darkness a new world can arise, not to be constructed by our minds so much as to emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see clearly how it's going to turn out, we are still called to let the future into our imagination. We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished in our hearts.

  Joanna Macy

  Dream, Heart, Imagination

  89 Copy quote

• The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present, and when you're worrying about whether you're hopeful, or hopeless, or pessimistic, or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you're showing up, that you're here and that you're finding ever more capacity to love this world because it will not be healed without that. That was what is going to unleash our intelligence and our ingenuity and our solidarity for the healing of our world.

  Joanna Macy

  Healing, Optimistic, Our World

  "Joanna Macy: A Wild Love for the World". "On Being" with Krista Tippett, onbeing.org. August 11, 2016.

  114 Copy quote

• To be alive in this beautiful, self-organizing universe -- to participate in the dance of life with senses to perceive it, lungs that breathe it, organs that draw nourishment from it -- is a wonder beyond words.

  Joanna Macy

  Beautiful, Self, Alive

  Joanna Macy, Molly Young Brown (2014). “Coming Back to Life: The Guide to the Work that Reconnects”, p.91, New Society Publishers

  95 Copy quote

• The sorrow, grief, and rage you feel is a measure of your humanity and your evolutionary maturity. As your heart breaks open there will be room for the world to heal.

  Joanna Macy

  Grief, Heart, Maturity

  Joanna Macy (2013). “Greening of the Self”, p.7, Parallax Press

  104 Copy quote

• The future is not out there in front of us, but inside us.

  Joanna Macy

  Future, Fronts

  Joanna Macy (1983). “Despair and personal power in the nuclear age”, New Society Pub

  18 Copy quote

• Because the relationship between self and world is reciprocal, it is not a matter of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. As we work to heal the Earth, the Earth heals us. No need to wait. As we care enough to take risks, we loosen the grip of ego and begin to come home to our true nature.

  Joanna Macy

  Peace, Home, Self

  80 Copy quote

• Walk boldly through your life with an open, broken heart.

  Joanna Macy

  Heart, Broken, Walks

  77 Copy quote

• The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further.

  Joanna Macy

  Web Of Life, Cradle

  67 Copy quote

• Gratitude is liberating. It is subversive. It helps us to realize that we are sufficient, and that realization frees us.

  Joanna Macy

  Gratitude, Realization, Helping

  Joanna Macy (2007). “World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent times”, p.72, Parallax Press

  89 Copy quote

• It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to evolutionary and psychological transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells.

  Joanna Macy

  Fall, Emotional, Shells

  14 Copy quote

• When you look at what is happening to our world-and it is hard to look at what's happening to our water, our air, our trees, our fellow species-it becomes clear that unless you have some roots in a spiritual practice that holds life sacred and encourages joyful communion with all your fellow beings, facing the enormous challenges ahead becomes nearly impossible.

  Joanna Macy

  Spiritual, Practice, Roots

  Joanna Macy (2013). “Greening of the Self”, p.5, Parallax Press

  58 Copy quote

• Action isn't a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it's an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts.

  Joanna Macy

  Awakening, Alive, Action

  66 Copy quote

• The wave of the future is on the local level. Don't waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. But come into where you're almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.

  Joanna Macy

  Heart, Fighting, Community

  46 Copy quote

• Grace happens when we act with others on behalf of our world.

  Joanna Macy

  Our World, Grace, Behalf

  Joanna Macy (2007). “World as Lover, World as Self: A Guide to Living Fully in Turbulent times”, p.106, Parallax Press

  12 Copy quote

• There's a song that wants to sing itself through us. We just got to be available. Maybe the song that is to be sung through us is the most beautiful requiem for an irreplaceable planet or maybe it's a song of joyous rebirth as we create a new culture that doesn't destroy its world. But in any case, there's absolutely no excuse for our making our passionate love for our world dependent on what we think of its degree of health, whether we think it's going to go on forever. Those are just thoughts anyway. But this moment you're alive, so you can just dial up the magic of that at any time.

  Joanna Macy

  Beautiful, Song, Thinking

  "A Wild Love for the World". "On Being" with Krista Tippett, onbeing.org. September 16, 2010.

  68 Copy quote

• The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.

  Joanna Macy

  Peace, Heart, Grieving

  Joanna Macy (1983). “Despair and personal power in the nuclear age”, New Society Pub

  80 Copy quote

• The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstaticâ but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

  Joanna Macy

  Flower, Emotional, Psychics

  77 Copy quote

• It’s walking the razor’s edge of the sacred moment where you don’t know, you can’t count on, and comfort yourself with any sure hope. All you can know is your allegiance to life and your intention to serve it in this moment that we are given. In that sense, this radical uncertainty liberates your creativity and courage.

  Joanna Macy

  Creativity, Comfort, Razors

  13 Copy quote

• No magic bullet, not even the Internet, can save us from population explosion, deforestation, climate disruption, poison by pollution, and wholesale extinction of plant and animal species. We are going to have to want different things, seek different pleasures, pursue different goals than those that have been driving us and our global economy.

  Joanna Macy

  Animal, Goal, Magic

  42 Copy quote

• Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art....It is a privilege to be alive in this time when we can choose to take part in the self-healing of our world.

  Joanna Macy

  Gratitude, Art, Healing

  38 Copy quote

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