One must be poor to know the luxury of giving!

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

To be able to give away riches is mandatory if you wish to possess them. This is the only way that you will be truly rich.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

We’re a blip in the existence of the universe, and we’re constantly trying to pull each other down. Not doing things to help each other.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

We need to show mercy. I mean, because as much mercy as you show people, that’s the mercy you’re going to be receiving.

Life is an ordeal, albeit an exciting one, but I wouldn’t trade it for the good old days of poverty and obscurity.

Buy land. They ain’t making any more of the stuff.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

If the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

The main message of Climate Revolution is that climate change is caused by the rotten financial system we’ve got, designed to create poverty and rip off any profits for a small amount of rich people. Meanwhile, it destroys the earth.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don’t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

I’m healthy as can be – not an ache or a pain. A lot of my prayer is thanking the Lord that I am healthy. I pray for long life and good health.

When I ask people to give, I can’t be on television if they don’t; I can’t help people, if I don’t – I mean, it takes money.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

Money doesn’t make you happy. I now have $50 million but I was just as happy when I had $48 million.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

I cannot possibly believe that I have it made while so many black brothers and sisters are hungry, inadequately housed, insufficiently clothed, denied their dignity as they live in slums or barely exist on welfare.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty.

For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned – take our post-traumatic growth – and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.

There is so much that people take for granted.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

I don’t want to be too critical of what other people do, but when people go back to do the same thing that they did, I’m completely confused. I’m like, ‚Didn’t you make that movie already?‘ I’ve been very fortunate, and I’m well taken care of, so the least I can do is try to go forward.

I make such big efforts to forget things and I can’t tell the story of my life because, thank God, I’m still living it.

Don’t throw stones at your neighbors if your own windows are glass.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

The value of a man should be seen in what he gives and not in what he is able to receive.

The more credit you give away, the more will come back to you. The more you help others, the more they will want to help you.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

Oh, how I would like a poor Church, and for the poor.

The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.

I always joke that my kids‘ favorite holiday is Father’s Day. They love the way I celebrate the occasion by writing each of them a thank-you letter and a generous check. It’s my way of letting them know how much I appreciate the great pleasure and privilege of being their dad.

Think and grow rich.

Information helps you to see that you’re not alone. That there’s somebody in Mississippi and somebody in Tokyo who all have wept, who’ve all longed and lost, who’ve all been happy. So the library helps you to see, not only that you are not alone, but that you’re not really any different from everyone else.

Of what use is a philosopher who doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings?

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

You give before you get.

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.