If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

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

Resist the need to be ‚right‘ all the time or to always have the last word.

If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

All government, of course, is against liberty.

All my pictures are built around the idea of getting in trouble and so giving me the chance to be desperately serious in my attempt to appear as a normal little gentleman.

Stop this attitude that older people ain’t any good anymore! We’re as good as we ever were – if we ever were any good.

The world is put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts to conventionality.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

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

We can’t afford to be killing one another.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.

As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place. Music keeps the heart porous in many ways.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

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

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.

To govern means to pillage, as everyone knows.

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.

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

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.

Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

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.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.

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.

Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.

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

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

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

I think that people are tired. They’re tired of the same old kind of politics. People want a new tone to politics.

We live in a bewildering world.

It’s a lose-lose situation to get in a confrontation on the street. If you can break contact and get away, break contact and get away. That’s what you should learn self-defense for.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

Our modern society – especially in the West, and especially now – reveres youth.

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Most negotiators are trying to get their way.

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

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

The punishment which the wise suffer who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of worse men.

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.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

A lot of people are bored of all the political correctness.

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.