Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

You can’t have it all all at once. Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all, but in given periods in time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

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

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

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

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

What money is better bestowed than that of a schoolboy’s tip? How the kindness is recalled by the recipient in after days! It blesses him that gives and him that takes.

The blessed of us must save the less of us. I’m blessed, and yeah, I’m planning to go to Heaven.

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.

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community.

If you wished to be loved, love.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

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

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?

I believe that of all the things I have done, exciting though many of them have been, there’s no doubt in my mind that the most worthwhile have been the establishing of schools and hospitals, and the rebuilding of monasteries in the mountains.

You give before you get.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

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

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

It is not my nature, when I see a people borne down by the weight of their shackles – the oppression of tyranny – to make their life more bitter by heaping upon them greater burdens; but rather would I do all in my power to raise the yoke than to add anything that would tend to crush them.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.

Great teachers emanate out of knowledge, passion and compassion.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

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.

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.

Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.

I have a big gay and lesbian following and they’ve been very loyal and kind to me.

When we are well, we all have good advice for those who are ill.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

Charity bestowed upon those who are worthy of it is like good seed sown on a good soil that yields an abundance of fruits. But alms given to those who are yet under the tyrannical yoke of the passions are like seed deposited in a bad soil. The passions of the receiver of the alms choke, as it were, the growth of merits.

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?‘

Today, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life.

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.

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 thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

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.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.

The American people have not become heartless.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I’ve got. Somebody’s got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain’t got this, somebody ain’t got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

Whatever possession we gain by our sword cannot be sure or lasting, but the love gained by kindness and moderation is certain and durable.

There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.

T stands for being nice. T stands for manners. T stands for being polite.

Too many have dispensed with generosity in order to practice charity.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

I can’t read the newspaper without crying. I’m easily affected by horrible events, you see.

We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

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

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

We can learn to see each other and see ourselves in each other and recognize that human beings are more alike than we are unalike.