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.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

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.

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

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

I don’t have a problem with Hulk Hogan. People say things and do things, and who am I to judge?

The most effective way to do it, is to do it.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

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 you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

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!

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

An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

Who hears me, who understands me, becomes mine, a possession for all time.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

I particularly admire are Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome who wrote in a certain tone of voice which was humane and understanding of humanity, but always ready to annotate its little foibles. I think I’d lay my cards down on that, and say that it’s that that I’m trying to do.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

The action we take and the decisions we make in this decade will have consequences far into this century. If America shows weakness and uncertainty, the world will drift toward tragedy. That will not happen on my watch.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

If we can really understand the problem, the answer will come out of it, because the answer is not separate from the problem.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a purpose.

Women are made to be loved, not understood.

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.

Not having hope is not an excuse for not doing something.

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.

My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ.

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

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

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.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Some like to think that a keen appreciation of art can actually make us better people – more just, more moral, more sensitive, more understanding. Perhaps that is true – in certain rare, isolated cases.

In Buddhist culture, offering food to the monk symbolizes the action of goodness, and if you have no opportunity to support the practice of spirituality, then you are somehow left in the realm of darkness.

Never mistake motion for action.

Dancing in high heels is kind of tough. I learn the dances without the heels, and then we add them. We just practice, and I get used to it. My feet hurt really badly at the end of the shows, but it’s fun. While it’s happening it’s fun. I feel tall.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.

We must act out passion before we can feel it.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.

One of the things that I’m very excited about with New Shepard, which is our suborbital tourism vehicle, is using that to get a lot of practice. One of the equilibria that we’re at today with space launch is that we don’t get to practice enough.

If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

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.

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Why a four-year-old child could understand this report. Run out and find me a four-year-old child. I can’t make head nor tail out of it.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?