I’m very sensitive. I remember, as a kid at school, if someone in the classroom was sad or angry, it could have a great impact on me.

The chief reason for going to school is to get the impression fixed for life that there is a book side for everything.

I go to school the youth to learn the future.

I liked school, but I used to dread those moments when the teacher would call me up to give an oral report. I forced myself to deal with it and not dwell on the class in front of me – to keep a straight face, give the report and concentrate on getting it right. That’s normally how I perform. That’s how I am.

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

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

The good man is the friend of all living things.

I am not very good with relationships. With anyone. I can’t be locked up with anyone for too long.

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.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

See things from the boy’s point of view.

Compassionate listening is to help the other side suffer less. If we realize that other people are the same people as we are, we are no longer angry at them.

In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians.

I was in enough to get along with people. I was never socially inarticulate. Not a loner. And that saved my life, saved my sanity. That and the writing. But to this day I distrust anybody who thought school was a good time. Anybody.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

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

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

Being a good listener is absolutely critical to being a good leader; you have to listen to the people who are on the front line.

Oh, I’ve always been very… Emotional. ‚Hypersensitive‘ is what they call it, I think.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

First grade is very cheap. It’s the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don’t do it right.

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that there are people who can’t or won’t see what Black Lives Matter is trying to accomplish.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

The school is the last expenditure upon which America should be willing to economize.

Listen with the intent to understand, not the intent to reply.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

In terms of my involvement in ‚don’t ask, don’t tell‘ and marriage equality and anti-bullying and social emotional learning in schools – these are all things that arise out of my relationship with the world and with my fans.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.

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.

I would have a workshop attached to every school, and one hour a day given up to the teaching of simple decorative arts. It would be a golden hour to the children.

I grew up in an era of pretty severe poverty. My parents weathered the Great Depression, and money was always a very big concern. I was weaned on a shortage mentality and placed in foster homes largely because there simply wasn’t enough money to take care of the most basic of needs.

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

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.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

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.

I’ve been thinking of humorous things since I was… I can’t remember when. All the way through elementary school, all the way through junior high, all the way through high school, through college and after college, I was thinking of the same kinds of things that I say in front of an audience now.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

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.

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.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

I remember when I was younger, and in school, our teachers showed us films of plastic in the ocean, starving polar bears and so on. I cried through all the movies. My classmates were concerned when they watched the film, but when it stopped, they started thinking about other things. I couldn’t do that. Those pictures were stuck in my head.

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

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

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

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.

If you care about other people, you might try to organize to undermine power and authority. That’s not going to happen if you care only about yourself.

If you do not understand a man you cannot crush him. And if you do understand him, very probably you will not.

When I talk to kids, I’m really listening. When I do that, we have a little bit of a bigger connection than me being Kendrick Lamar and you being a student. It’s almost like we’re friends. Because a friend listens.

I come from a poor family, I have seen poverty. The poor need respect, and it begins with cleanliness.

Work is that which you dislike doing but perform for the sake of external rewards. At school, this takes the form of grades. In society, it means money, status, privilege.

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.

Logically, harmony must come from the heart… Harmony very much based on trust. As soon as use force, creates fear. Fear and trust cannot go together.

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.

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