We make the future sustainable when we invest in the poor, not when we insist on their suffering.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

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

There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.

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.

As a Christian, you forgive, and you feed the hungry and clothe the naked, and you visit the sick and comfort the lonely. If I’m a true follower of my lord and saviour Jesus Christ, I got to do the things you’re supposed to be doing.

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.

It’s always going to be a fight for anyone who isn’t an older white man. I want to fight for anyone who doesn’t have a fight.

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 most impactful dollars that Australia can spend are actually what goes to help the poorest.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

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.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Respect the burden.

And we have done more in the two and a half years that I’ve been in here than the previous 43 Presidents to uphold that principle, whether it’s ending ‚don’t ask, don’t tell,‘ making sure that gay and lesbian partners can visit each other in hospitals, making sure that federal benefits can be provided to same-sex couples.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind.

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

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.

It would make everything I worked for meaningless if baseball is integrated but political parties were segregated.

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

I believe that a child going without an education is a crime.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

I used to always fight for human rights. I still fight for Leonard Peltier, who’s spent 35 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.

Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.

A calling is you feel – you look out and see the need – maybe it’s the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it’s the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was – felt called.

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.

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

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.

Growing up, I decided, a long time ago, I wouldn’t accept any manmade differences between human beings, differences made at somebody else’s insistence or someone else’s whim or convenience.

We do not judge the people we love.

I think organized labor is a necessary part of democracy. Organized labor is the only way to have fair distribution of wealth.

I am for people. I can’t help it.

The healthy man does not torture others – generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.

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

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Slavery takes hold of few, but many take hold of slavery.

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society.

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.

A real Christian is a person who can give his pet parrot to the town gossip.

Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person.

I’m a pretty tough guy, you know. I’m a pretty hard man. I’ve got a lot of compassion, but I don’t waste time with people.

Let us fill our hearts with our own compassion – towards ourselves and towards all living beings.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.

We know that for every 1 person who get access to the Internet, one new job gets created, and one person gets lifted out of poverty. So in theory, going and connecting everyone on the Internet is a large national and even global priority.

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

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

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

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

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

One of the most pervasive political visions of our time is the vision of liberals as compassionate and conservatives as less caring.

A gender line… helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage.