There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Respect the burden.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

It’s that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so ‚don’t fuss, dear; get on with it.‘

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

As a medical doctor, I have known the face of adversity. I have seen much of death and dying, suffering and sorrow. I also remember the plight of students overwhelmed by their studies and of those striving to learn a foreign language. And I recall the fatigue and frustration felt by young parents with children in need.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level… Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

I look after people.

Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, ‚Would you take my son with you?‘ He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

I was raised by a mother who told me I was great every day of my life.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

I just make good movies. That’s the way I thank my fans.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

Today we affirm a new commitment to live out our nation’s promise through civility, courage, compassion and character.

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary.

I’ve choreographed all of my movies.

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

Love… it surrounds every being and extends slowly to embrace all that shall be.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I’d ever have any interest in filmmaking.

I think technology really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

I became the kind of parent my mother was to me.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

I’d have to be superman to do some of the things I’m supposed to have done, I’ve been at six different places at six different times.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

I’ve never lived my life in the opinion of others. I believe I’m a good person. I believe I’m a good mom. But that’s for my kids to decide, not for the world.

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‚Well, put your hand over here.‘

When I’m making an American film, it’s more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, ‚What are you doing!? Tell me first!‘ There are so many restrictions.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.