Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

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

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

You may be rich, but there is one thing you can’t afford – that is, if you are a good sort – you can’t afford to spend money on your own luxuries while there are people around you wanting the necessaries of life.

A saint is tolerant and is attentive to the pleadings of other human beings, not only to spoken messages but to unspoken messages as well.

A puritan is a person who pours righteous indignation into the wrong things.

When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

My mother insisted that her children read.

I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‚hopey changey stuff,‘ she was right: there was nothing there.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

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

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

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

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.

Men are what their mothers made them.

When you’re in prison, you want to know that you were thought about.

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’m dying to be a great dad one day, whenever that day comes.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

The best leaders are readers of people. They have the intuitive ability to understand others by discerning how they feel and recognizing what they sense.

The biggest thrill a ballplayer can have is when your son takes after you. That happened when my Bobby was in his championship Little League game. He really showed me something. Struck out three times. Made an error that lost the game. Parents were throwing things at our car and swearing at us as we drove off. Gosh, I was proud.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

It sometimes makes people feel better about themselves, you know, to put other people down, or make fun of them, or maybe make mockery of their work and that doesn’t make me feel good at all.

I wish I had been home more when the children were growing up. I missed a lot.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president, but they don’t want them to become politicians in the process.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

Don’t wait for the last judgment – it takes place every day.

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.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can’t imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

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

One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

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.

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

People in Latin America… love America from afar and emulate America in some ways but also hate a lot of things that America does to them.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

People really had a problem with my disinterest in submission. They had a problem with my intellect, and they had a problem with my choice of lovers. They had a problem with my choice of everything.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

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.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

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.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.