I don’t like to see animals in pain. That was very uncomfortable to me. I don’t like factory farming. I’m not an advocate for the meat industry.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

I try to be vegan… I really, really try. I don’t eat any red meat, and the whole animal thing really upsets me, so I’ve tried.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‚If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?‘ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‚If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?‘

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

I was a proponent of the ERA.

Personally, I don’t wear fur.

What do you regard as most humane? To spare someone shame.

I’m a warrior for the middle class.

If you would judge, understand.

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.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

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.

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

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

It is a strange trade that of advocacy. Your intellect, your highest heavenly gift is hung up in the shop window like a loaded pistol for sale.

It is a very rare man who does not victimize the helpless.

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

The greatest gift that you can give to others is the gift of unconditional love and acceptance.

I just genuinely feel that that’s what you do when you’re an artist: You stick up for the people around you.

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

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

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

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

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.

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.‘

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

A faithful woman can become a devoted daughter of God – more concerned with being righteous than with being selfish, more anxious to exercise compassion than to exercise dominion, more committed to integrity than to notoriety. And she knows of her own infinite worth.

For years, decades, the system has taught us to stay quiet. They’ve made us believe that those who take to the streets to speak up are crazy, criminals, troublemakers.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

We do not judge the people we love.

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.

God is patient with us to become the God’s children he wants us to be but you really can see him weeping.

The protestor I think will speak up for the world’s poorest.

More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other’s well-being, is source of happiness.

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

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

I look after people.

Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

Our veterans who fall on hard times and find themselves without a home deserve more than just handwringing or kind words. They deserve real help that gets them back on their feet.

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

I can hardly eat meat because it has to look like something what it was not when it was alive.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

Seven hundred thousand people who have dementia in this country are not heard. I’m fortunate; I can be heard. Regrettably, it’s amazing how people listen if you stand up in public and give away $1 million for research into the disease, as I have done.

I’m a pretty tough guy, you know. I’m a pretty hard man. I’ve got a lot of compassion, but I don’t waste time with people.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

I want to make a policy statement. I am unabashedly in favor of women.

Artists have a responsibility to speak and to act when governments fail, and if we don’t do that, we really deserve the world we get.

The American people have not become heartless.

There are thousands of ways to take action. For example, plant trees, pick up litter, join an organisation or movement that makes a difference and especially try to influence adults and put pressure on people in power.

If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls… saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.

Judge Afiuni has suffered enough. She has been subject to acts of violence and humiliations to undermine her human dignity. I am convinced that she must be set free.