For HuffPost’s #LoveTakesAction series, we’re telling stories of how people are standing up to hate and supporting those most threatened. What will you stand up for? Tell us with #LoveTakesAction.
Love has the power to create bonds, forge community, ignite a spark that galvanizes people into action. Writers, activists and thought leaders have long used words to light that spark. Through prose and speeches and essays, history and her chronologers have taught us that love is a force to be reckoned with.
To honor the radical power of love this Valentine’s Day, The Huffington Post rounded up 21 of our favorite quotes about love to remind us that where there is love there is hope.
1. “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” Sermon (1967)
2. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare.”
― Audre Lorde, A Burst Of Light: Essays (1988)
3. “Love is not a being word, it is an action word... When you see hate out there, understand that the challenge will never be the hate of some, but the silence, indifference and apathy of the many.”
― Sen. Cory Booker, Twitter (2017)
4. “Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Where Love Is, God Is (1855)
5. “Here and now ― I love you, for this moment, you have my heart. But you are not entitled to my future ― you have no ownership of my past.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure (2013)
6. “I swear I couldn’t love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.”
― Leo Christopher, Sleeping In Chairs (2015)
7. “Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic.”
― Marty McConnell, Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell (2009)
8. “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum (2006)
9. “I have decided to stick to love... Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., “Where Do We Go From Here?” Sermon (1967)
10. “Love is our essential nutrient. Without it, life has little meaning. It’s the best thing we have to give and the most valuable thing we receive. It’s worthy of all the hullabaloo.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Dear Sugar column (2011)
11. “I am too full of life to be half-loved.”
― Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions For Ada (2015)
12. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., “Love Your Enemies” Sermon (1957)
13. “You will learn a lot about yourself if you stretch in the direction of goodness, of bigness, of kindness, of forgiveness, of emotional bravery. Be a warrior for love.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice On Love And Life From Dear Sugar (2012)
14. “All religious institutions, despite different philosophical views, all have the same message ― a message of love.”
― Dalai Lama, WGNO speech on religious harmony (2013)
15. “We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., “Love Your Enemies” Sermon (1957)
16. “Her love was full-throated and all-encompassing and unadorned. Every day she blew through her entire reserve.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild (2013)
17. “We know what the world wants from us. We know we must decide whether to stay small, quiet, and uncomplicated or allow ourselves to grow as big, loud, and complex as we were made to be. Every girl must decide whether to be true to herself or true to the world. Every girl must decide whether to settle for adoration or fight for love.”
― Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior: A Memoir (2016)
18. “Love trumps hate.”
― Hillary Clinton, Democratic Nominee Acceptance Speech (2016)
19. “And I said to my body, softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath and replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.’”
20. “Love is not just looking at each other, it’s looking in the same direction.”
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars (2012)
21. “Loving you is like being 10 years old again, scaling a tree with my eyes bright and skyward, wanting only to get higher and higher, without a thought of how I would get back down.”
— Lang Leav, The Universe Of Us (2016)
Know a story from your community of people fighting hate and supporting groups who need it? Send news tips to lovetips@huffingtonpost.com.
