Dennis Potter Quotes

In order to be cruel we have to close our hearts to the suffering of the other.

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

I think I know a thing or two about the way people love, but I don't know anything about hatred, psychosis, cruelty. Or maybe I don't have the guts to admit that I do.

As I got older, I guess I became more mellow and more forgiving and more loving.

One shouldn't be afraid of the humans. Well, I am not afraid of the humans, but of what is inhuman in them.

I don't want to tell your story because you're a insensitive, self-centered moron. I've told a lot of stories about young people, and I always feel there's hope.

Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel.

We cannot be kind to each other here for even an hour. We whisper, and hint, and chuckle and grin at our brother's shame; however you take it we men are a little breed.

With age, you get to a place where you don't want to knock people out. You just want to give people a hug.

If you are fortunate in life, age and knowledge breed compassion.

When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.

Being mean about other people isn't on my radar.

As a species, we can at times be dimwitted and cruel. But we're also capable of learning.

The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

If you're mean to a gentle man, it makes your meanness worse.

I wonder why people are so hateful sometimes. I just don't get it.

I feel like there is a real lack of empathy - not just in American society, it's definitely happening in Britain as well - and it's heartbreaking that people can see something and not feel it.

I've always thought cruelty is a failure of imagination.

...to be unkind because you are thoughtless is the worst kind of blindness.

One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant.

A will to be unkind is like a sickness. It can be healed or driven out. But to be unkind because you are thoughtless is the worst kind of blindness: difficult to cure, because you cannot see the fault even as you commit it.

I hate the very human inclination towards insensitivity

It blows my mind that anyone could be unkind to anyone.

Where there is no human connection, there is no compassion. Without compassion, then community, commitment, loving-kindness, human understanding, and peace all shrivel. Individuals become isolated, the isolated turn cruel, and the tragic hovers in the forms of domestic and civil violence. Art and literature are antidotes to that.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.