Don't give anybody up, or leave anybody out. My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us, and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight. (Eudora Welty)

All of us need to be toppled off the throne of self... Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek. (Elizabeth Goudge)

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and persecutions while the world lasts. (Dorothy L. Sayers)

I heard about this story at one an Arbinger event. Thank you to H for providing it in hard copy. This is a remarkable story!

Anyone who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but their own disposition, will waste their life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief they propose to remove. (adapted, Samuel Johnson)

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being. (Goethe)

To say 'I forgive you' is almost condescending - it locks me into an 'us and them' scenario keeping me right and you wrong. That attitude won't change anything. But I can experience empathy, and in that moment there is no judgment. (Jo Berry)

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
(Viktor E. Frankl)

Try to understand people. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a person well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love. (adapted, John Steinbeck)

Blind certainty, a close-mindedness that amounts to imprisonment so total that the prisoner doesn't even know he's locked up. ...I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of, is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will too. (David Foster Wallace, Kenyon Commencement Address, May 21, 2005)

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." (Fred Rogers)

Success in life has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It's what you do for others. (Danny Thomas)

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others. (Desmond Tutu)

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. (Henry Miller)

Beneath all of our hiding and pretending and protecting and defending and accusing and criticizing, there is a voice whispering the answer. We don't need anyone to tell us -- we already know.
I stopped watching my ego and I began listening for the voice beneath my ego... It is the voice in me - indeed, in all of us - that knows exactly how to love. (adapted, Kelly Flanagan)

An inner shift is required to hear the story of the enemy. For me the question is always about whether I can let go of my need to blame, and open my heart enough to hear. (Jo Berry)

Kindness without love is not kindness at all. It's patronage, it's condescension, it's smugness and superiority. If you have been the recipient of this species of 'kindness', you know that you would much rather do without it. But with love, kindness is refreshment and rejoicing... And it's a tough, patient virtue, not a frilly, fluffy one. (C. Okasaki)

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility. (Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin)

Sincerity is being oneself without thinking of oneself. Self-forgetfulness is at the heart of sincerity. (Arthur Henry King)

When I am open and receptive to the humanity of others, I no longer exaggerate their faults and my own virtues. I no longer ignore others' virtues and my own faults. I see others as they really are - as people - as real to me as I am to myself. (The Arbinger Institute, The Choice)