Quotes Using Words Volunteer/Volunteering

Share your favorite quotes about volunteers and volunteering so that others can add a spark to their presentations!  Also look at the other categories of "Quotables":  poems, humor, songs, stories, and parables.

We post quotables by newest submissions first.

Some get and forget. Some give and forgive.

-- Marquis on a street corner     Submitted by Fr. Bryan Bayda, The Welcome Home, Manitoba

Help one another; there's no time like the present and no present like the time.

-- James Durst, poet/songwriter/troubadour     Submitted by Sarah H. Elliston, Sr Associate, Volunteer Resource Center , Cincinnati, OH, USA

Great opportunities to help others seldom come, but small ones surround us every day.

-- Sally Koch     Submitted by Terry Mack, Manger of Volunteer Resources, The Support Network, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

If every American donated five hours a week, it would equal the labor of twenty million full-time volunteers.

-- Whoopi Goldberg     Submitted by Ann Rubin, Manager of Volunteer Services, Hospice of Michigan

Each one of us should lead a life stirring enough to start a movement.

-- Max Lucado, in On the Anvil     Submitted by Anonymous

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.

-- Aesop     Submitted by Judy P. King, Director of Volunteer Services, Georgia

There is only one thing worse than training your volunteers and having them leave - and that's not training them, and having them stay.

Submitted by Eileen Macmillan, American Friends of the University of Edinburgh, CA

There are two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we receive, and the larger kind we feel for what we give.

-- Edward Arlington Robinson     Submitted by Katherine Morton, Volunteer Program Coordinator, AIDS Calgary Awareness Association, Calgary, AB Canada

Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received - only what you have given: a full heart, enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage. 

-- St. Francis of Assisi     Submitted by Claire Rochon, Manager, Fund Development, Street Kids International, Canada

Unless your department has a budget infinitely greater than most, you will not get rich being a volunteer director/coordinator, but your life will be indescribably enriched by the people you meet and work with. A wise lady once told me that when you find your ideal job, you will do it for less than they pay you and when you find your calling you will do it for free. This is my ideal job. I hope you find yours.

-- Martin Tichenor, Volunteer Director for a medium security prison in Missouri, written to a newly "appointed" volunteer coordinator     Submitted by Linda Lowe, Volunteer Coordinator, City of Thornton, Thornton, CO, USA

How wonderful that no one need wait a single moment to improve the world

-- Anne Frank     Submitted by Sue Staggs, State Director, Tomorrows Leaders Today, Texas

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. 

-- Gandhi     Submitted by Devi Singh, India, AP (Hyderabad)

I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered people have torn down, other-centered people can build up.

-- Martin Luther King     Submitted by John Richards, Aquinas College, Perth, Australia

I have an almost complete disregard of precedent, and a faith in the possibility of something better. It irritates me to be told how things have always been done. I defy the tyranny of precedent. I go for anything new that might improve the past.

-- Clara Barton     Submitted by John Richards, Aquinas College, Perth, Australia

Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is of you.

-- Emerson     Submitted by Linda Steed, Volunteer Coordinator, Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, Shawnee Alliance for Seniors

It's good to be blessed. It's better to be a blessing.

Submitted by Kathy Carter, Volunteer Coordinator of Foster Care Citizen Review of Palm Beach County

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you are alive, it isn't.

-- Richard Bach     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

There are only two rules to change: One is to begin; the second is to continue.

Submitted by Sue Staggs, State Director, Tomorrows Leaders Today, Texas

There are three kinds of people: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who say, 'what happened?'

-- Casey Stengel     Submitted by Sue Staggs, State Director, Tomorrows Leaders Today, Texas

You have to become involved to make an impact. No one is impressed with the won/loss record of the referee.

-- John Holcomb     Submitted by Sue Staggs, State Director, Tomorrows Leaders Today, Texas

Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.

-- Gandhi     Submitted by Douglas Eggleston, Director, Emergency Services - American Red Cross, VA

As many arrows, loosed several ways, come to one mark...so many a thousand actions, once afoot, end in one purpose.

-- William Shakespeare Henry V, Act I, Sc.2     Submitted by Sue Smith, Great Works Regional Land Trust, ME

Past the beggar and the suffering walks he who asks, 'Why, oh God, do you not do something for these people?' To which God replied, 'I did do something, I made you.'

-- Sufi saying     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

You've got to think about 'big things' while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction. 

-- Alvin Toffler     Submitted by David Ontonovich, CDHVS, National Coordinator, Volunteer Resources - Canadian AIDS Treatment Information Exchange

The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.

-- Albert Einstein     Submitted by Jill C. Howland

You can't leave footprints in the sands of time while sitting down. 

-- Nelson Rockefeller     Submitted by Mary St. John, Grants Admin., Pets & People Humane Society, Inc., Oklahoma USA

Be the change that you wish to see in the world

-- Gandhi     Submitted by Brian Cugelman, IYV Webmaster, UNV , Germany

If your heart is full, it shouldn't matter if your pockets are empty.

-- Karen Dawson, Volunteer at Clay Elementary School Clay, WV     Submitted by Beth Anderson, AmeriCorps*VISTA, West Virginia

The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other people.

-- Aristotle     Submitted by Marilyn Gitsidis, Program Assistant, Seniors Support Services, Hellenic Home for the Aged, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

A man never stands as tall as when he kneels to help a child.

-- Knights of Pythogoras     Submitted by Tara Huxley, Camp Director Boys and Girls Club Community Services of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

-- Helen Keller     Submitted by Raven Alexander, Student Director, Florida Atlantic University Volunteer Center, Florida

To keep a lamp burning we have to keep putting oil in it. 

-- Mother Teresa     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression. 

-- Dodie Smith     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do. 

-- Henry Ford     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Don't wait for the last judgement - it takes place every day. 

-- Albert Camus     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers. 

-- Mignon McLaughlin     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumps, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.

-- Theodore Roosevelt     Submitted by Robin Popik, City of Plano Volunteer Program, Texas

It is better to shoot for the moon and miss, than shoot for nothing and hit it.

-- Reverend Eloise Page, Casadaga, Florida     Submitted by Abby Walters, President, Flying Turtle Enterprises, Inc., Florida

Good ideas remain ideas - unless we act upon them.

Submitted by Andy Fryar, Vice President - Volunteering Australia, Australia

Some people see things as they are and say 'why', I look at things that never were and say 'why not'.

-- Robert F. Kennedy     Submitted by Emma, North Carolina, USA

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.

-- Goethe     Submitted by Dorman Stanley, CONTACT Lubbock, Texas

The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others.

-- Ghandi     Submitted by Jackie Lonning, Co-VP of Scheduling, Student M.O.V.E. (Mobilizing Outreach Volunteer Efforts), Storm Lake, IA, USA

Destiny is not necessarily what we get out of life, but rather, what we give.

-- Cary Grant     Submitted by Diego Ojanio Franco, Chairman, The Cedarwork Project, Inc., Quezon City, Philippines

One of the things I keep learning is that the secret of being happy is doing things for other people. 

-- Dick Gregory     Submitted by Linda Hutchinson, Volunteer Coordinator, Victim Services Program, Mountain Comprehensive Care Center, Kentucky USA

A civilization flourishes when people plant trees under which they will never sit.

-- Greek Proverb     Submitted by Judy Gross, Volunteer Coordinator, Central Blood Bank of Pittsburgh

We are all like one-winged angels. It is only when we help each other that we can fly.

-- Luciano de Crescenzo     Submitted by Lori Ropa, American Water Works Association, Denver, CO USA

Volunteerism is the voice of the people put into action. These actions shape and mold the present into a future of which we can all be proud.

Submitted by Helen Dyer, Parks Funding and Volunteer Coordinator, Teller County, CO Division of Parks

Life is never so busy that there is no time to serve.

Submitted by Sharon Tan

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

-- Albert Schweitzer     Submitted by Deborah Stroup, Coordinator of Volunteers, Wolfner Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped

He who does nothing for others does nothing for himself

-- Goethe     Submitted by Susan E. Koch, Luther Crest Vol. Dir., PA.

Put yourself in someone's shoes" is a common phrase. But it is not a common thing that we do everyday. We are, most of the time, self-centred. Especially in this modern, fast-paced life. It is only when we stop for a moment and give our time to others, that we realise the true meaning of empathy. 

Submitted by Abdul Manan Bin Hassan, ASP, PRIS DEPT, Changi, Singapore

Most of us in volunteer programs now realize that those 1000 points of light of George Bush #1 are really 500 candles burning at both ends and the only thing to trickle down from Reganomics was budget cuts.

Submitted by Nita Moser, Volunteer Coordinator, Battered Women's Project

A verse to start community meetings:
"A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and when in the whole community the virtue of each one is living."

-- Rudolf Steiner, Austrian Philosopher and Scientist     Submitted by Sybille B. Hahn, Executive Director, CANES Home Support Services

The mode in which the inevitable comes to pass is through effort. 

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity. 
 

-- Horace Mann     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

-- Epictetus     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

I'm in the business of loving the hell out of people

-- Mother Waddles     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

They don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Submitted by Desire'e Larson, Women's Way, North Dakota Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program

You have not lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.

Submitted by Lisa Clegg, Coordinator, M.O.V.R.C. Foster Grandparents Program

Unless someone like you cares a whole, awful lot. Things aren't going to get better, they're NOT!

-- Dr. Seuss, The Lorax     Submitted by Sue Nelson, Agency Relations Director, Volunteer Jacksonville, Inc.

The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today. 

-- Saint Francis of Assisi     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Better one friend with a dish of food than a hundred with a sigh.

-- Yiddish Proverb     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

-- I John 3:18     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

If you can't go where people are happier, try to make people happier where you are.

-- Ashleigh Brilliant     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

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     Submitted by Mike Corbin, Membership Chair, Metropolitan Detroit Volunteer Administration Network

Let ... individuals make the most of what God has given them, have their neighbors do the same, and then do all they can to serve each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for something, it makes us civil and peaceable.

-- Sojourner Truth (c. 1797­1883), African American suffragist and abolitionist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, appendix—ch. 19, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton     Submitted by Lois Gaetz, Director, St Cloud Area Faith in Action, MN/USA

To the world you may be one person, But to one person you may be the world.

Submitted by Anonymous

It is one of the beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely help another without helping himself.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson     Submitted by Dominica Larkin, Volunteer Coordinator, The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, Canada

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

-- Mother Theresa     Submitted by Jenni

The broadest, and maybe the most meaningful definition of volunteering: Doing more than you have to because you want to, in a cause you consider good.

-- van Scheier (from Building Staff/Volunteer Relations)     Submitted by Claudia Collier, Director, Volunteer Center of the YMCA

Throughout your life, there is a voice only you can hear. A voice which mythologists label "the call." A call to the value of your life. The choice of risk and individual bliss over the known and secure.

You may choose not to hear your spirit. You may prefer to build a life within the compound, to avoid risk. It is possible to find happiness within a familiar box, a life of comfort and control.

Or, you may choose to be open to new experiences, to leave the limits of your conditioning, to hear the call. Then you must act.

If you never hear it, perhaps nothing is lost. If you hear it and ignore it, your life is lost.

-- Jennifer James     Submitted by Debra English, Volunteer Coordinator, HealthPartners

The heart of a volunteer is not measured in size, but by the depth of the commitment to make a difference in the lives of others. 

Submitted by DeAnn Hollis

Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.

-- Chinese Proverb     Submitted by Alane Hill, Project Director, Friends Foster Grandparent Program

The winds of change shall not discourage the volunteer.

Submitted by Lorna Wilson

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson     Submitted by Fiona Dawe, Executive Director, YouthNet, London, England

Which is more subversive—and corrosive—to believe in altruism or to see it simply as a cloak of self interest? Even if altruism did not exist, it would be necessary to believe in it. Pessimists in power are prone to despotism.

-- Frank Prochaska in Schools of Citizenship: Charity and Civic Virtue, Civitas: Institute for the Study of Civil Society, London, 2002     Submitted by Susan Ellis

It's easy to make a buck. It's a lot tougher to make a difference.

-- Tom Brokaw     Submitted by Cathie Waugh, Volunteer Coordinator, Habitat for Humanity, Colorado

Being a man or a woman is a matter of birth. Being a man or a woman who makes a difference is a matter of choice.

-- Byron Garrett, staff member of Arizona's Governor     Submitted by Nicolette Ryan, Volunteer Coordinator, Central Arizona Shelter Services

It is only through the eyes of others do you see yourself. It is only through the work of your own do you find the difference in others.

Submitted by Foo Ji-Wei, Volunteerism Through Oneself, Nanyang Technological University, Welfare Services Club, Singapore

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is tied up with mine, then let us work together.

-- Lill Watson, aboriginal activist     Submitted by Keith Goheen, Volunteer Coordinator, First State Community Action Agency, Delaware USA
You make a living by what you get, but you make a life by what you give.
-- Winston Churchill     Submitted by Elise Slobodin, Planning Executive, UJA-Federation, New York USA

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor is given by what he gave.

-- Calvin Coolidge     Submitted by Joe Hammontree, 4-H AmeriCorps VISTA, Shiawassee MSU Extension, Michigan, USA

Too often we under-estimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

-- Dr. Felice Leonardo Buscaglia     Submitted by several colleagues

To serve, not to be served.

-- The charge to service for AARP members from Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, AARP founder     Submitted by Carolyn Hunter, ASD, AARP Utah, USA

Don't ever question the value of volunteers. Noah's Ark was built by volunteers; the Titanic was built by professionals. 

Submitted by Dave Gynn, Coleman Professional Services, Ohio, USA

Volunteering is the ultimate exercise in democracy. You vote in elections once a year, but when you volunteer, you vote every day about the kind of community you want to live in.

-- Sue Premo, WI     Submitted by Marjorie Moore, Minds Eye Information Service    Belleville, IL, USA

There are many wonderful things that will never be done if you don't do them.

-- Charles D. Gill     Submitted by Caitlin Rohrer, Girl Scouts - Trillium Council, Pennsylvania

The highest reward for a person's work is not what they get for it, but what they become because of it. 

-- John Ruskin     Submitted by Caitlin Rohrer, Girl Scouts, Trillium Council, Pennsylvania

If you insist on measuring yourself, place the tape around your heart rather than your head.

-- Carol Trabelle     Submitted by Caitlin Rohrer, Girl Scouts, Trillium Council, Pennsylvania

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well?

-- Jack Kornfield     Submitted by Caitlin Rohrer, Girl Scouts, Trillium Council, Pennsylvania

Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others.

-- Danny Thomas     Submitted by Jack Gomez, Girl Scounts of Shagbark Council, Illinois

Paul Revere earned his living as a silversmith.   But what do we remember him for?  His volunteer work.  All activism is volunteering in that it's done above and beyond earning a living and deals with what people really care passionately about.  Remember, no one gets paid to rebel.  All revolutions start with volunteers.

-- Susan J. Ellis     Submitted by Susan in response to a workshop participant who heard Susan say this and wanted it shared.

Silence equals nonexistence. If I don't raise my voice, it's like I never existed.

-- Margaret Cho, Comedienne Revolution     Submitted by Jennifer Smerud

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

-- Mercy Mission Kenya     Submitted by Henri Nouwen

Help yourself. Volunteer.
So what's holding you back? Volunteer today.
Don't just stand there. Volunteer.
Do the right thing. Volunteer.

Submitted by Ahmed Amin

Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

-- Margaret Mead     Submitted by Maureen Stenquist

Volunteering is not a choice, it's a responsibility.

Submitted by Ashley E. Hyder

Someone asked the anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-1978), "What is the first sign you look for, to tell you of an ancient civilization?" The interviewer had in mind a tool or article of clothing. Ms. Mead surprised him by answering, a "healed femur". When someone breaks a femur, they can't survive to hunt, fish or escape enemies unless they have help from someone else. Thus, a healed femur indicates that someone else helped that person, rather than abandoning them and saving themselves. Isn't that what we in philanthropy are all about? Healing femurs of one sort or another?

Submitted by Leslie Paige

Volunteers are seldom paid; not because they are worthless, but because they are PRICELESS!

Submitted by Jana Baker

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and help them become what they are capable of being.   

-- Goethe     Submitted by Elizabeth Ellis

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