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

I love to be alone, and I did as a child as well, especially if I was outside.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

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 greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

I felt I had to solve everyone’s problems.

I was a huge Mike Tyson fan growing up; his fights were always on in my house.

You never make fun of anybody with a club foot or a withered arm, but it’s open season on anybody who stutters.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

I spent years studying the teachings of Patanjali, and he reminded us several thousand years ago that when we are steadfast – which means that we never slip in our abstention of thoughts of harm directed toward others – then all living creatures cease to feel enmity in our presence.

Peace begins with a smile.

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.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.

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

He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.

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.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.

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

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

Technology is unlocking the innate compassion we have for our fellow human beings.

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

Men feel that cruelty to the poor is a kind of cruelty to animals. They never feel that it is an injustice to equals; nay it is treachery to comrades.

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

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Positional leaders ignore the fact that every person has hopes, dreams, desires, and goals of his own. And leaders must bring their vision and the aspirations of the people they lead together in a way that benefits everyone.

I started playing violin in the 5th grade. They had a program in school where you could get out of class to go play instruments. So I raised my hand, left out of class, me and a bunch of my homeboys, just to get out of class for that day. They asked what instrument you wanted to play and I picked the violin.

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

If we love our country, we should also love our countrymen.

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.

There is always something infinitely mean about other people’s tragedies.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings – to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

Life becomes harder for us when we live for others, but it also becomes richer and happier.

He who has felt his own ruin will not imagine the case of any to be hopeless; nor will he think them too fallen to be worthy his regard.

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.

If you would judge, understand.

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.

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

I’ve been to those places where it’s ‚poor, pitiful me.‘

We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.

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

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

When I was at school, I used to stay on a balcony singing and people would stand around listening.

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

I just don’t like killing creatures.

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.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

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.

I’m a pretty tough guy, you know. I’m a pretty hard man. I’ve got a lot of compassion, but I don’t waste time with people.

The only person who ever called me Paul was my father, so I always associate it with doing something wrong, you know. So, you know, occasionally, people will come up to me on the street and try to, you know, ingratiate themselves and call me Paul. I don’t like it, actually.

‚Doo-wop‘ is a very special word for me. Because I grew up listening to my dad who, as a Fifties rock & roll head, loved doo-wop music.

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.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.