Social Security is based on a principle. It’s based on the principle that you care about other people. You care whether the widow across town, a disabled widow, is going to be able to have food to eat.

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.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.

I want someone who can trust that my big hands are going to take care of them.

What is the appropriate behavior for a man or a woman in the midst of this world, where each person is clinging to his piece of debris? What’s the proper salutation between people as they pass each other in this flood?

It was the labor movement that helped secure so much of what we take for granted today. The 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, Social Security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstones of the middle-class security all bear the union label.

Whether a person is straight or gay, Republican, Democrat, good person, not a good person, they’re all welcome, because to me, church is a place you’re supposed to get healed and whole and loved.

My mother told me, ‚Son, nobody else but God knows.‘ And that’s what I’m about – reaching out to the people, crying with them, giving them hope. Visiting the hospital, visiting the kids with cancer, visiting the adults, and stuff like that. That’s what I do.

One man cannot hold another man down in the ditch without remaining down in the ditch with him.

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.

Rose Adams is a wonderful Christian woman who cared for my mother, Morrow Coffey Graham, in her last years of life.

No matter how you cut it, this real debate on personal accounts is about the legitimacy of Social Security; it’s not about the solvency of Social Security.

To give aid to every poor man is far beyond the reach and power of every man. Care of the poor is incumbent on society as a whole.

Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

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.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

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.

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, ‚I don’t believe they meant to hurt me.‘ ‚Maybe they’re having a bad day or don’t feel well.‘ ‚They probably don’t even realize how they sound.‘

When I was young, many people worked for a company with a pension plan that covered them for as long as they lived. If they didn’t have a pension plan, they could count on Social Security and Medicare.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can’t un-see.

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

There are some cases in which the sense of injury breeds not the will to inflict injuries and climb over them as a ladder, but a hatred of all injury.

I look after people.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

I have much more support than most women around this world, and I have the financial means to have a home and help with care and food.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

But who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, ‚Would you take my son with you?‘ He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.

The poorest people are the sweetest people.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

We will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it – not by turning it over to Wall Street.

If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

I should like to know if, taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle, you begin making exceptions to it, where will you stop? If one man says it does not mean a Negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man?

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

Power has only one duty – to secure the social welfare of the People.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Giving a poor person money keeps them poor.

He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Peace begins with a smile.

The truth is God created us to have relationship with us. He wants to love us and take care of us, and He wants us to love Him. That’s where our walk with Christ has to start.

Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.

There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt. And, of course, there are Christian monks and nuns who already use Buddhist methods in order to develop their devotion, compassion, and ability to forgive.

The universal order and the personal order are nothing but different expressions and manifestations of a common underlying principle.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

When you are young, you cannot imagine being disabled. You imagine you would conquer it somehow. As I’ve got older, I can imagine it; I can see how life narrows in. I feel compassion for my mother now.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives.

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.