Why we should all admit (and embrace) being wrong: Attachment to our own rightness keeps us from preventing mistakes when we absolutely need to, and causes us to treat each other terribly. ("wrongologist" Kathryn Schulz, "On Being Wrong")

The simple truth is, we all make mistakes, and we all need forgiveness... We can come up with all manner of justifications to excuse what we have done. When we are willing to let down our defenses and look honestly at our actions, we find there is a great freedom in asking for forgiveness and great strength in admitting the wrong. It is how we free ourselves... It is how we are able to move forward. (Desmond Tutu)

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back -- in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.
(Frederick Buechner)

Nearly every moment of every day of our entire lives (more than 1.2 billion seconds for me) is spent worrying about ourselves. We are preoccupied by concern about ourselves: am I doing the right thing, will I mess this up, will I be able to meet deadline, what do other people think of me, am I good enough, why is this happening to me, how can I get better, why don't people listen to me, why don't they treat me better, why can't they get out of my way, why is my body so fat, why don't things go my way, am I missing out on things? But what if we were freed of this worry about ourselves?

Today - let's agree to see each other as people. People with the same hopes, needs, fears, ambitions, goals and anxieties that we do. Person-to-Person instead of Person-to-Object. Watch what happens.

Every person must decide whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. (adapted, Martin Luther King, Jr.)

When we see others as people, we see their hopes, needs and fears, and this willingness to see and understand informs everything we do with them. When we see others as objects, on the other hand, we give ourselves license to treat them inhumanely. In order to feel justified, we don't allow ourselves to consider the positive in them.

These are a few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one's self.
To mind one's own business.
Not to want to manage other people's affairs.
To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.
To pass over the mistakes of others.
To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Never to stand on one's dignity.
(Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving)

You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well. (Lewis B. Smedes)

It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be [perfect]. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another. (Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island)

I don't know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. (John Steinbeck)

The best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings. (John Geddes)

Personal change is inherently paradoxical. It cannot be pursued directly, but is a byproduct of something else. I can only change by focusing on others - I cannot change by focusing on myself. (The Question Handbook, Arbinger)

Nearly all of our controversies and combats grow out of the fact that we are trying to get something from each other. There will be peace when our aim is to do something for each other. The true measure of a life is its outgo, its overflow -- our contribution to the welfare of others. (William Jennings Bryan)

Walk with me for a while, my friend - you in my shoes, I in yours - and then let us talk. (Richelle E. Goodrich)

It is an unnecessary burden to make negative judgmental assumptions about others. We are all on a journey. (Steve Maraboli)

Many people today agree that we need to reduce violence in our society. If we are truly serious about this, we must deal with the roots of violence, particularly those that exist within each of us. We need to embrace 'inner disarmament', reducing our own emotions of suspicion, hatred, and hostility toward our brothers and sisters. (Dalai Lama XIV)

To see others as people is to feel responsible for any wrongs of our own, however small... If we want others to take responsibility for their actions, we invite that only by our taking responsibility for our own.

Prejudice of any kind... means you don't see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence. (Eckhart Tolle)

Humankind. Be both.