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 the people become involved in their government, government becomes more accountable, and our society is stronger, more compassionate, and better prepared for the challenges of the future.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

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.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don’t have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

How shall I lose the sin, yet keep the sense, and love the offender, yet detest the offence?

I hated school. Even to this day, when I see a school bus it’s just depressing to me. The poor little kids.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

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

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

I’m no longer just a candidate. I’m the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn’t return. I’ve shared the pain of families who’ve lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who’ve lost their jobs.

He who cannot give anything away cannot feel anything either.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

The notion that we have even one single veteran living on the streets should be just considered a travesty to all of us.

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

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

My mother told me, ‚Son, nobody else but God knows.‘ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.

If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

It’s presumptuous to say you know how somebody feels.

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

Anybody who has been discriminated against, who comes from a group that’s been discriminated against, knows what it’s like.

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

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

Understanding is a two-way street.

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

I wanted to write a book that talked about the emotions of children, which is the rainbow. We all have moods. We talk about being blue when we’re sad, and being yellow when we’re cowards, and when we’re mad, we’re red.

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.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

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

I look after people.

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.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

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

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

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.

We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.

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

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we’re all the same.

If your mom cries a lot, you probably cry a lot. It’s what you learn.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

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.

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

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

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.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.