“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.”
“The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence [ubuntu]. A person is a person through another person.”
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
“Rivers do not drink their own water; tress do not eat their own fruit; the sun does not shine on itself and flowers do not spread their fragrance for themselves. Living for others is a rule of nature. We are all born to help each other. No matter how difficult it is[…]Life is good when you are happy, but much better when others are happy because of you.”
“As human beings essentially belong to the same family and we have to think of each other as part of ‘us.’ To develop peace in the world, we have to educate people to understand that we are all the same in being human.”
“Dehumanizing people debases us all; humanity is beautifully and almost infinitely diverse. The bonds of our common humanity must overcome the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices.”
“All differences in this world are of degree, and not kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”
“When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.”
“Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.”
"And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
“My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.”
“We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely[...]by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria — which is our actual experience.”
“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.”
