Quotes By Pope Francis

If the Christian is a restorationist, a legalist, if he wants everything clear and safe, then he will find nothing. Tradition and memory of the past must help us to have the courage to open up new areas to God.

I love tango, and I used to dance when I was young.

Christmas is joy, religious joy, an inner joy of light and peace.

No one can grow if he does not accept his smallness.

God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy.

It is not 'progressive' to try to resolve problems by eliminating a human life.

Living together is an art. It's a patient art, it's a beautiful art, it's fascinating.

Situations can change; people can change. Be the first to seek to bring good. Do not grow accustomed to evil, but defeat it with good.

This is the struggle of every person: be free or be a slave.

The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path.

Idolatry, then, is always polytheism, an aimless passing from one lord to another. Idolatry does not offer a journey but rather a plethora of paths leading nowhere and forming a vast labyrinth.

Indifference is dangerous, whether innocent or not.

If I'm not mistaken, Sigmund Freud said that in every idealisation there's an aggression. Depicting the Pope as a sort of Superman, a star, is offensive to me. The pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly and has friends like everyone else. A normal person.

If our hearts are closed, if our hearts are made of stone, the stones find their way into our hands and we are ready to throw them.

Instead of imposing new obligations, (Christians) should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet.

The most important thing in the life of every man and every woman is not that they should never fall along the way. The important thing is always to get back up, not to stay on the ground licking your wounds.

Nobody can go off to battle unless he is fully convinced of victory beforehand. If we start without confidence, we have already lost half the battle and we bury our talents.

We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good.

When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment.

I think that we succumb to attitudes that do not permit us to dialogue: domination, not knowing how to listen, annoyance in our speech, preconceived judgments and so many others.