If you’re in trouble, or hurt or need – go to the poor people. They’re the only ones that’ll help – the only ones.

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can’t solve extreme poverty and disease, isn’t just mistaken. It is harmful.

Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level. That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we are going to have to change the system.

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility – America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

There are more pleasant things to do than beat up people.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

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.

I used to let other people’s struggles affect my happiness. If they weren’t happy, there was no way I was going to be happy. The opposite was also true: If I wasn’t happy, I didn’t want anyone around me to be happy.

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.

Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

There are folks who now know black families – like the Johnsons on ‚Black-ish‘ or the folks on ‚Modern Family.‘ They become part of who you are. You share their pains. You understand their fears. They make you laugh, and they change how you see the world.

I’m amazed sometimes by the Christians who don’t really believe that God wants to help them and bless them.

Who, being loved, is poor?

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

The poor don’t know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

The civility which money will purchase, is rarely extended to those who have none.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

When I was an orphan, I was the richest kid at the orphanage because everyone else was complaining about not having anything. But when I discovered that you could get two cents for a Coca-Cola bottle, I would follow people around who were drinking it and ask them if they were almost through with it.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

Give to everyone who begs from you; and of him who takes away your goods do not ask them again. And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.

Every loss of life is terrible.

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

Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

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.

I feel like I want to take care of everyone and I also feel this terrible guilt if I am unable to. And I have felt this way ever since all this success started.

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.

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.

I do believe that in order to be a successful negotiator that as a diplomat, you have to be able to put yourself into the other person’s shoes. Unless you can understand what is motivating them, you are never going to be able to figure out how to solve a particular problem.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

Sub-Saharan Africa is also home to 400 million of the world’s poorest people.

As a medical doctor, I have known the face of adversity. I have seen much of death and dying, suffering and sorrow. I also remember the plight of students overwhelmed by their studies and of those striving to learn a foreign language. And I recall the fatigue and frustration felt by young parents with children in need.

You stand out in the crowd only because you have these many, many carrying you on their shoulders.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

I wish every American had an opportunity to sit down, to go to a base, to meet with families, to meet with service members, to sit down with our veterans – because we would think differently about our challenges as individuals.

To add value to others, one must first value others.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

Some folks believe that hardship breeds artistic creativity. I don’t buy it. One can put up with poverty for a while when one is young, but it will inevitably wear a person down.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

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 Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

Be nice to whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Life is relationship, living is relationship. We cannot live if you and I have built a wall around ourselves and just peep over that wall occasionally. Unconsciously, deeply, under the wall, we are related.

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.

I feel like I write so that people can think of it as theirs. If my song is exactly about your life right now, then it is – I don’t even want to say that it’s mine, because it’s yours.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

I just don’t like killing creatures.

The correlative to loving our neighbors as ourselves is hating ourselves as we hate our neighbors.

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

There are people who want to make men’s lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.