Valentine's Day

As we celebrate Valentine's Day in many different ways, I thought a few quotes from visionaries and heroes could help focus things a bit more clearly:

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” —  Martin Luther King, Jr., U.S. civil rights leader and Baptist minister

“When the power of Love will overcome the love of Power, the world will know Peace.” — Jimi Hendrix, visionary singer songwriter and instrumentalist

“Where there is love, there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“Whenever I groan within myself and think how hard it is to keep writing about love in these times of tension and strife which may, at any moment, become for us all a time of terror, I think to myself: What else is the world interested in? What else do we all want, each one of us, except to love and be loved, in our families, in our work, in all our relationships? God is Love. Love casts out fear. Even the most ardent revolutionist, seeking to change the world, to overturn the tables of the money changers, is trying to make a world where it is easier for people to love, to stand in that relationship to each other…There can never be enough of it.” — Dorothy Day, American journalist, activist and co-founder of Catholic Worker Movement

“I call them all love songs … They tell of love of man and woman, and parents and children, love of country, freedom, beauty, mankind, the world, love of searching for truth and other unknowns. But, of course, love alone is not enough.” — Pete Seeger, American folk singer songwriter and environmental and social justice activist