I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

I was never focused on me, me, me all the time. I was always focused on somebody else.

There are thousands of ways to take action. For example, plant trees, pick up litter, join an organisation or movement that makes a difference and especially try to influence adults and put pressure on people in power.

I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

I threw my cup away when I saw a child drinking from his hands at the trough.

A man who risks his life in shooting big game in order to secure good specimens for natural history collections, or to rid a district of a man-eater or other dangerous neighbor, is a sportsman in the true sense.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

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

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Can you imagine what a different world we will live in when businesses do what’s right for the communities and the environment in everything they do?

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

When you hear people making hateful comments, stand up to them. Point out what a waste it is to hate, and you could open their eyes.

I think ‚Dirty Harry‘ was probably sensitive toward the victims of violent crime.

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

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.

We need to, you know, restore people. 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.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

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

Gardening is not a rational act.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

I am sometimes sad when I hear the personal stories of Tibetan refugees who have been tortured or beaten. Some irritation, some anger comes. But it never lasts long. I always try to think at a deeper level, to find ways to console.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

The main message we want to get out there is that climate change is caused by the rotten economic system.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that’s safer, doesn’t require us to go around the world to get all our oil.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

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

Whenever you’re going through a tough time, generally, you become more compassionate, you become softer, you become more thoughtful, kinder. These are all spiritual qualities that will help you to align yourself with God and God consciousness rather than with a split fear-based consciousness.

It is hard sometimes to always be at the centre of attention, but when you talk about me you also have to talk about the climate.

Biofuels such as ethanol require enormous amounts of cropland and end up displacing either food crops or natural wilderness, neither of which is good.

Innovations that are guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and environment will be necessary to ensure food security in the future.

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