"No act of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted…" -- Aesop
"Without community service, we would not have a strong quality of life. It's important to the person who serves as well as the recipient. It's the way in which we ourselves grow and develop…" -- Dr. Dorothy I. Height, President and CEO of the National Council of Negro Women
"We need to reclaim what we have for too long ignored and neglected: the opportunity for active and meaningful engagement in our own communities…" -- Bill Shore, author of Revolution of the Heart: A New Strategy for Creating Wealth and Meaningful Change and founder of Share Our Strength, a Washington DC based anti-hunger non-profit organization
"We have to find a way that we can get our community back, so that people can be connected with each other, know each other's stories, know each other's sufferings…" -- Sister Helen Prejean, her story was the basis for the recent movie, Dead Man Walking
"In this great country of ours, it is inexcusable that so many children grow up in poverty and despair. The well-being of our children must be the national priority and the responsibility of every individual…" -- former President Jimmy Carter
"Working together, we can reach across the racial, cultural, social and economic gaps that divide us. We can recover our sense of community – our pride in being a nation of neighbors who care. We can revitalize the tradition of service to others that has been so much a part of our history and national character…" -- retired U.S. Army Gen. Colin Powell, Chairman of the Presidents' Summit for America's Future
"Nothing is more important to our shared future than the well-being of children. For children are at our core – not only as vulnerable beings in need of love and care but as a moral touchstone amidst the complexity and contentiousness of modern life…" -- First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, It Takes a Village
"I don't know what your destiny will be, but the one thing I know; the only ones among you who will really be happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve…" -- Albert Schweitzer, doctor, philosopher and Nobel Prize winner
"One is not born into the world to do everything but to do something…" -- Henry David Thoreau, poet, writer, philosopher
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead, anthropologist
"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again…" -- Mahatma Gandhi
"The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life-the children; those who are in the twilight of life-the elderly; and those who are in the shadow of life-the sick, the needy, and the handicapped…" -- Hubert Humphrey, former Vice-President of the United States
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world…" -- Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl
"Everyone can be great because anyone can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't even have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve… You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love…" -- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die…" -- Eleanor Roosevelt, former First Lady
"We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love and learning…" -- Robert Bellah, American sociologist and author of Habits of the Heart
"Citizen service is the very American idea that we meet our challenges not as isolated individuals, but as members of a true community, with all of us working together. Our mission is nothing less than to spark a renewed sense of obligation, a new sense of duty, a new season of service…" -- Former President William J. Clinton
"There is no better investment of time and money than in the life of a child. They are the future…" -- Alma Powell, member of the Washington DC based, Best Friends Foundation Board of Directors
"The magnitude of our social problems will require that all citizens and institutions make a commitment to volunteering as a way of life and as a primary opportunity to create needed change…" -- The Late Governor of Michigan, George Romney
"You have to find some reason for living. You have to find something to believe in. And for it to work, it has to be larger than you, that you will discover that you are not enough to satisfy yourself…" -- Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo
