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

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.

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.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

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.

An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.

For Christians, who believe they are created in the image of God, it is the Godhead, diversity in unity and the three-in-oneness of God, which we and all creation reflect.

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.

Encouragement to others is something everyone can give. Somebody needs what you have to give. It may not be your money; it may be your time. It may be your listening ear. It may be your arms to encourage. It may be your smile to uplift. Who knows?

We still have many neighborhoods that are racially identified. We still have many schools that even though the days of state-enforced segregation are gone, segregation because of geographical boundaries remains.

No one has been barred on account of his race from fighting or dying for America, there are no white or colored signs on the foxholes or graveyards of battle.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

As much as I love the Western genre, I figured if I kept doing those, I’d eventually run out of steam on that, and that would’ve been the end of it.

A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

I’ve never been a jealous person, and I’ve never felt built up by someone else’s failure – that’s a cheap thrill.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point?

Even after Independence, we have had to face the poison of casteism and communalism. How long these evils will continue? Whom does it benefit?

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

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

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?‘

I think you could ask 10 English people the same question about class and get a very different answer.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

Good psychology should include all the methodological techniques, without having loyalty to one method, one idea, or one person.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

It’s always interesting about God because it’s like all of the religions in the world say that they pray to the same God, and yet they ask that same one God to divide itself up and agree with this one and fight against that one.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

The American people have not become heartless.

I’m tri-racial: African-American, Native American and Euro – that’s the Scotch-Irish part.

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

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

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

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

We should play free football, defend lively with a passion, and have the best understanding in offence.

No intelligent black man or black woman in his or her right black mind wants white boys and white girls coming to their homes to marry their black sons and daughters.

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 read in the newspapers they are going to have 30 minutes of intellectual stuff on television every Monday from 7:30 to 8. to educate America. They couldn’t educate America if they started at 6:30.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Love other human beings as you would love yourself.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book.

We must, all of us, learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

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

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That’s when you can get more creative in solving problems.

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.