I often advocate that we look at many sides of an issue, walk in someone else’s shoes, and identify and reject false choices.

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

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

What air is to the body, to feel understood is to the heart.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

I was never focused on me, me, me all the time. I was always focused on somebody else.

The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.

It’s not about changing people; it’s sometimes about changing a situation. How can we build an even better situation for them?

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.

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.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

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

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

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.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary.

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

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.

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.

All of the people in my life whom I consider to be close friends or colleagues are good thinkers.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

What I have in common with the character in ‚Truman‘ is this incredible need to please people. I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

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

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.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

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

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Many religious confessions share common values. They teach that we should do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits, but not when it misses.

A tear dries quickly when it is shed for troubles of others.

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

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.

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one’s experiences in common.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

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

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

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.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

I don’t know that my schooling was conducive to wild ideas and creativity, but it gave me discipline, drive. They taught me how to think. I really know how to think.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.

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

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

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.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

He who learns but does not think, is lost! He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Real living is living for others.

Learn to think continentally.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.