Certainly I’ll never be able to put myself in the situation that people growing up in the less developed countries are in. I’ve gotten a bit of a sense of it by being out there and meeting people and talking with them.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

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.

It’s a tragedy, in a way, that Americans are brought up to think that they cannot feel for other people and other beings just because they are different. They think they’re different. It’s very limiting.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

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

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

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

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.

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

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

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.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

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

‚Tis not enough to help the feeble up, but to support them after.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

It’s amazing if you just listen to people. They tell you all the time things that you can do for them, without even realizing what they’re doing. I’ve learned to take notice of those things and if it’s something that I feel God wants me to do, then I try to do that to add joy to their life.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

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.

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.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

Seek always to do some good, somewhere. Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth. You must give some time to your fellow man. For remember, you don’t live in a world all your own. Your brothers are here too.

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

What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.

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

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

I have a collective sense of suffering.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

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.

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.

I look after people.

Many people look at me and think they know me but they don’t at all. This is the real me. I am a humble person, a feeling person. A person who cares about others, who wants to help others.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

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.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people.

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.

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.

Maleficent has suffered abuse in the past, and there’s a reason why she is now as furious as she is. And I think that children who have been outcast and abused in any way will relate to her. There’s a beautiful side to her; she’s not just a dark person. She has all these facets. And that is interesting.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

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

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

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

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.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

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

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, ‚I don’t believe they meant to hurt me.‘ ‚Maybe they’re having a bad day or don’t feel well.‘ ‚They probably don’t even realize how they sound.‘

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.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

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

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

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

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.