Jonathan Chen Quotations

World peace cannot be enforced by those who do not have inner peace. World peace is an inevitable result of individual inner peace.

No one has the road of life mapped out. We pave away what's beneath our feet. If it leads to happiness, maybe someone will walk on.

One whose auditory sense has been accustomed to being comfortable with one kind tune misses out the spectacularity of the symphony.

I wish guns were violins, oboes, clarinets, and trumpets. I wish gunshot were beautiful music that gravitates people instead of frightens them in hiding. I wish combat were meant to fight disasters, diseases, poverty, and hunger. I wish troops were true peacemakers who hold children in their arms and hug elders with smiles everywhere they go, all wearing the peace sign as their emblem. Let me turn my wishes into prayers.

Ignorance is not due to lack of education. Ignorance is a state of mind that refuses the temptation of looking into the facts, that craves for the twisted, inflammatory interpretation of the facts that nourishes the prejudice in it to stay the course and expand, at the cost of totally dumping the intelligence the Creator put in it.

What we have been seeing these days is not quite as encouraging as what we used to believe that in the modern world it is nearly impossible to interact socially and culturally only with those who think alike. Longing for the comforting of sameness may appears providing some safety and security. It confines ourselves into divisions that blocks our minds. In the end, collectively we become unsafe and insecure.

Hatred may appear powerful in uniting those who share the same sensation. But it would be short lived. Unity is long lasting when it is based on love and respect.

It is impossible to absorb the vastness of the sky. But taking an in awe attitude towards it helps opening our minds.

Listen to others with an open mind. Normally, that leads to a pleasant conversation.

True liberty cannot be attained if one lives in fear. Fear exists if one does not nourish oneself with inner peace.

There is no such a thing as a good world and a bad world. There is only one world, and it is up to us to make it better.

Every great cause starts with a simple idea - You just have to believe you can make a change

Don't let what we know stand in the way of what we could know.

A true gardener never plants impatiently, nor does he expect miracles. He begins with a sincere and earnest adoration, loosens the soil with slow and gentle hand, and prepares wholeheartedly to take care what he plants. To him, there's nothing more rewarding than knowing soon he will be able to experience the rejoice from seeing the young seedling sprouting in the soil with crystal-like droplets.

I try not to make judgmental remarks on the little peculiarities of a youth. In fact, when I am conversing with a child, I find myself having the same sort peculiarities.

Individual liberty can only be acquired individually. It is not something to be imposed, nor it is automatically guaranteed. One begins to commence it when the mind is no longer enslaved by foreign ideas and outwards carriages are commissioned from inner independent thinking.

In a good paining, each stroke is uniquely required yet it relates to all others in forming the total beauty

Being a friend to your child is the best gift you give to your child.

A good public official always understands that he is to server the entire population, even though he's elected by only a little more than half of those who voted.

The first thing every baby receives is the all-encompassing mother's love. Revivifying the purity of that native tenderness helps transcending the cleavage between complex emotions and love in its natural simplicity.

The mental and physical reactions to what are perceived as labor and leisure are distinctively different, though at leisure labor is often involved. Some people are able to maintain a happier balance between labor and leisure, not because they have a world of free time, but because they effectively expanded what is in leisure.