Bruce Reyes-Chow > Quotes

“At the end of the day, dipping into the attack well of body-shaming, racism, misogyny, and ableism is just lazy. When people resort to these kinds of tactics, I simply think that they have lost the ability to debate the merits and content of a position. Instead, they want to play to the bot-fueled, troll-fed, worst of who humans can be.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“There will always be injustice in the world, because, you know, humans. The question is how we will choose to respond to the injustice around us.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“To be kind is to accept that each person is a created and complex human being — and to treat them as if you believe this to be true.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“. . . if we do not continue to choose kindness together, can you imagine how much worse the world will become? The least we can do in response to and in gratitude for all those kindness giants who have paved the way is to do the same for the generations to come.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Kindness is not just the absence of being mean or hateful. Being kind entails actively resisting actions, ideas, and institutions that rob others of dignity.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“We can no longer abdicate the Christian story to hate, violence, and oppression. Those of us who occupy this more loving, just, and extended version of the Christian story must do a better job of claiming, articulating, and speaking the hell up.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, Everything Good about God Is True: Choosing Faith

“Being nice is often about avoiding conflict, letting inappropriate actions slide, or bottling up words and actions that ought to be spoken and enacted to prevent creating an uncomfortable scene. At its worst, being nice reinforces actions and attitudes that strip away human dignity.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Doing good in the world is a challenge and a choice that is laid before us each and every day. We simply need to decide if we will choose to accept it. Of”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, But I Don't See You as Asian: Curating Conversations about Race

“Without the voices from the edges publicly demanding, wailing, and protesting, institutions and systems that engage in exclusionary, oppressive, or marginalizing practices continue to operate with apathy or impunity. Destructive systems do not change themselves, and those working for change within these systems can’t do it alone.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Risk stepping into the mess because, more times than not, on the other side of the tension there are new beginnings, strengthened relationships, and the knowledge that conflict is not something to avoid, but a means to a deeper, stronger, and kinder world.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Kindness that is fueled by guilt, pity, or colonialism is not kindness at all. Kindness is not currency or a commodity to be used to barter and bargain away the sins of our past or to alleviate our responsibility to be part of global recovery efforts in times of tragedy.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“The gift of the past is not that people learned to suffer through some plan orchestrated by God. Rather, seeing how our forebears lived out God’s story in the midst of their suffering helps us to seek God in the midst of ours.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, Everything Good about God Is True: Choosing Faith

“To articulate who I hope will pick up this book and take a read: I imagine it being those who find themselves living in the tension between intellectual pursuit and passionate action. Neither”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, But I Don't See You as Asian: Curating Conversations about Race

“if we honor and value the complex ways in which people engage in organizational work, we are honoring the person and showing them kindness. At the end of the day, kindness in a meeting environment is about valuing the human before us: their time, their perspectives, and their personalities.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Expressions of kindness in times of social change and public protest should focus on those who are seeking justice and liberation and not on the ones whose privileged worlds are being disrupted by the leveling of a social playing field or a correction in disparities of access, power, or authority.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow

“When acts of kindness and calls for civility are fueled by social, economic, and racial privilege, these acts are often more about doing just enough to keep the status quo and not about transformative change for those who are experiencing struggle.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow

“God takes the side of the suffering —those who are suffering in body, mind, heart, spirit, or
soul. God not only takes the side of the suffering; God weeps when we bear the brunt of violence, oppression, and poverty brought about by condition, circumstance, or even choice.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, Everything Good about God Is True: Choosing Faith

“Kindness, and the commitment to see the other as deserving of human dignity, demands of us to protest, resist, and do all that we can to fight that which says otherwise. Not only do we have the power to make sure that things do not get worse, but over the long haul, we also have the power to make long-lasting change for good.
I need you.
We need one another.
We can only do this together.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World

“Kindness is not a journey for the meek and mild. For those of us who have been steeped in ways of being that are not kind, it takes tremendous energy to purge ourselves of patterns and behaviors that are not kind. Every day we have to choose to commit to live out kindness that day.”
― Bruce Reyes-Chow, In Defense of Kindness: Why It Matters, How It Changes Our Lives, and How It Can Save the World