When the people become involved in their government, government becomes more accountable, and our society is stronger, more compassionate, and better prepared for the challenges of the future.

Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level… Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder than anything I can think of.

The American people have not become heartless.

God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

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

We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.

I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their own life, and those that help them should be free from prosecution.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

We just cannot worry about ourselves.

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

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

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!

We hand folks over to God’s mercy, and show none ourselves.

I feel like if you’re a really good human being, you can try to find something beautiful in every single person, no matter what.

Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.

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

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

Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.

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

If we want to fight people in the world, we should fight them with pillows – pillows stuffed with food, medicine, music… That would be so much cheaper than bombs.

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

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.

Real living is living for others.

We ought to do good to others as simply as a horse runs, or a bee makes honey, or a vine bears grapes season after season without thinking of the grapes it has borne.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

All religions try to benefit people, with the same basic message of the need for love and compassion, for justice and honesty, for contentment.

My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.

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.

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

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 have spoken about inflation, unemployment, farmers‘ problems, security, etc. I keep talking about these issues. I seek answers from the Indian government.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that’s the essence of inhumanity.

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.

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

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

If you are not being bullied all I would say – cause I like to talk about the other side of it as well – is you know, be someone that nurtures, and if there’s someone in your class that maybe doesn’t have a lot of friends, be the person that sits with them in the cafeteria sometimes; be the bigger person.

We have an obligation to help people that cannot help themselves. The mentally retarded, the physically retarded, et cetera.

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.‘

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

Respect the burden.

There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate.

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.

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.

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

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.

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.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

I believe we are still so innocent. The species are still so innocent that a person who is apt to be murdered believes that the murderer, just before he puts the final wrench on his throat, will have enough compassion to give him one sweet cup of water.

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

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.