You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

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?‘

Honoring the priesthood fosters respect, respect promotes reverence, and reverence invites revelation.

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

In my work and in myself I reflect black people, women and men, as I reflect others. One day even the most self-protective ones will look into the mirror I provide and not be afraid.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

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

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

Whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship.

If I were a Negro, I’d be fighting, as Martin Luther King fought, for human recognition and justice. I’d rather go down with my flag flying. If you’re weak or crippled, or you can’t speak out or fight back in some way, then people don’t hesitate to treat you badly.

I love that for Barack, there is no such thing as ‚us‘ and ‚them‘ – he doesn’t care whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, or none of the above… he knows that we all love our country… and he’s always ready to listen to good ideas… he’s always looking for the very best in everyone he meets.

To be social is to be forgiving.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

He who has felt his own ruin will not imagine the case of any to be hopeless; nor will he think them too fallen to be worthy his regard.

I believe that God breathed life into every person and that every person is made in the image of God and you have accept them as they are, on their journey. I’m not here to preach hate or push people down.

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

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

I’m very sensitive. I remember, as a kid at school, if someone in the classroom was sad or angry, it could have a great impact on me.

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

It feels good to have your work respected again.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

I have such respect for ‚Democracy Now!‘

I was called ‚Dumbo,‘ like the elephant, as a child because I couldn’t understand things at school.

Well, I have great respect for Senator Hirono.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

When you are learning about a martial art, it is about respect.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

Some of the kids in school used to call my father a fake or a phony. That kind of thing brought on a few fights.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

A flippant, frivolous man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.

Young men have a passion for regarding their elders as senile.

Homophobia is real in this country.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‚I’m not interested,‘ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.

I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana’s loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

If you ever see The Rock working out in the gym, don’t think you can just go up and disturb his workout and expect him to take a picture. He’s there to work, so kindly just pass the silverback on by or he’ll rip your face off.

I was always respectful of people who were deeply religious because I always felt that if they gave themselves to it, then it had to be important to them. But if you can go through life without it, that’s OK, too. It’s whatever suits you.

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

Never find fault with the absent.