When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

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

I maintain that, if everyone knew what others said about him, there would not be four friends in the world.

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.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot.

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?‘

If one could only teach the English how to talk, and the Irish how to listen, society here would be quite civilized.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

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.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

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

Except for the young or very happy, I can’t say I am sorry for anyone who dies.

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I’d caused the dragonfly to be killed.

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

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.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

There is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics.

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

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

What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

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

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

I don’t go down the road of condemning.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

Well I have a microphone and you don’t so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

When you’re in prison, you want to know that you were thought about.

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.

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

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.

Maleficent has suffered abuse in the past, and there’s a reason why she is now as furious as she is. And I think that children who have been outcast and abused in any way will relate to her. There’s a beautiful side to her; she’s not just a dark person. She has all these facets. And that is interesting.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

To know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance.

I’m just hoping that people understand that Islam is peace and not violence.

You hear about actors being late and all that sort of stuff, but you never find that with an actor who’s directed, because an actor who’s directed understands all the problems your production is going through.

Commonsense is the realised sense of proportion.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

When things haven’t gone well for you, call in a secretary or a staff man and chew him out. You will sleep better and they will appreciate the attention.

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.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

So when I speak in front of thousands, tens of thousands of people, I don’t really get nervous because I know what I want to say and I know what message I want to give.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.