Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

I’m generous. I give good tips. It’s just – the way I live my life, ironically enough, is: I don’t want anything. I’m not a consumer. I don’t crave objects.

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.

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 pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

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

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

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.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.

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

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.

None of us has any personal interest above the interests of the country. Our country is more important than our careers.

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

Use power to help people. For we are given power not to advance our own purposes nor to make a great show in the world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power and it is to serve people.

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

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.

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

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

It is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr.

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 the other person injures you, you may forget the injury; but if you injure him you will always remember.

For so many people, television and movies may be the only way they understand people who aren’t like them.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

Help others and give something back. I guarantee you will discover that while public service improves the lives and the world around you, its greatest reward is the enrichment and new meaning it will bring your own life.

Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.

The most amazing philanthropists are people who are actually making a significant sacrifice.

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

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

Understanding is a two-way street.

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.

Stay humble and be concerned for the less fortunate.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criterion by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

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.

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.

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?‘

I am prepared to resort to anything, to submit to anything, for the sake of the commonwealth.

If something inconveniences my children too much or takes me away from them, I won’t do it.

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

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

Creativity has got to start with humanity and when you’re a human being, you feel, you suffer. You’re gay, you’re sick, you’re nervous or whatever.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

The highest form of worship is the worship of unselfish Christian service. The greatest form of praise is the sound of consecrated feet seeking out the lost and helpless.

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.

To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase… Rather, it’s displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.

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