Leonardo Boff

Brazilian Theologian (one of the founders of Liberation Theology), Philosopher, Human Rights Activist, Writer.

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

As Hegel argues, “we learn from history that we do not learn from history;” and I say that we learn not from history but from suffering…

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

humankind is headed for great suffering, one that will cause us to change and learn…

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

one day we will have an earthly democracy, a planetary democracy where human beings will have to learn to survive together,

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

to live together with all our differences in a 'communal house' with scarce resources, for that’s all we will have

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

we do not have another earth, ours is a small planet with limited resources

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

one day we’ll all be socialists, not because of ideology, but because of statistics…

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

the challenge will be to learn to divide the few resources we'll have fairly, so this community of peoples will have enough to survive.

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

we don’t want a theology of development; we want a theology of liberation

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

Paulo Freire, who was also one of the founders of liberation theology, noted that the poor must be the agent of his/her own liberation

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

I live in utopia, like stars… we never reach the stars, but what would happen to our nights if they didn't have stars?

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

What would happen to sailors and astronauts without the stars to guide them and give them courage for the journey?

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

a good theologian has to go through the temptation of atheism

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

there is a great spiritual void in humankind

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

the dead is only invisible, not absent

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

http://t.co/e6ki33Pd

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

The crisis that we are all suffering is structural in nature and concerns the basics of our system of life together.

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

This is the reason for its dramatic and undeniable character. The crisis of the global system derives from the crisis

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

specific to the ruling class,
the bourgeois class that has directed our history for the past 5 centuries.

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

The ethos of this class, that is, its practices and the meaning that is given to them, the forms of relationships that consecrated

[Leonardo Boff @leonardoboff_]

and gave rise to the rest of the social classes, shows itself more or less incapable of assimilating, within its own structure,