Ann Aguirre Quotes

It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and therefore to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees - everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now and we will have no wars.

I'd never hurt another person.

I speak to people who have been through so much more.

Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.

I believe that we can heal Rwanda - and our world - by healing one heart at a time.

Love soothes wounds, while hatred and violence deepen them.

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.

It is not easy to talk about peace to people who are mourning every day.

Only through loving and supporting one another, even in the face of unbearable pain and suffering, will this cycle of violence end.

People who have suffered know more about compassion.

I don't think I ever sit there and think to kick a wound harder.

If you torture a man as I was tortured he will learn more about love than you could ever ­imagine, and that has left me ­vulnerable.

We must follow nonviolence and love.

Love knows how to forgive. Love cannot hurt and cannot be violent.

But what if it were you? What if you were stuffed in a human body and let loose on this planet only to find yourself lost among your own kind? What if you were such a good person that you tried to save the life that you'd taken that you almost died trying to get her back to her family? What if you then found yourself surrounded by violent aliens who hated you and tried to hurt you and tried to murder you over and over again? What if you just kept doing whatever you could to save and heal people despite that? Wouldn't you deserve a life too? Wouldn't you have earned that much?

Listening is a very deep practice. You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen especially to people we think are our enemies - the ones we believe are making our situation worse. When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a change to tell him or her of your pain, and it's your turn to be healed. This is the practice of peace.

Hate does not produce love, and by hate one cannot remake the world.

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.

Gandhi was right: if we all live by 'an eye for an eye' the whole world will be blind. The only way out is forgiveness.

In order to do anything about the suffering of the world we must have the strength to face it without turning away.

After the terrible events of last week, there is still the shock and disbelief; there is anger; there is fear; but there is also, throughout the world, a profound sense of solidarity; there is courage; there is a surging of the human spirit.

It is not violence that best overcomes hate -- nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.

More courage is required to forgive than is required to take up arms.

I feel like I was transformed by the kindness of people who had every reason to show me cruelty and the transformative power of their decision to treat me like a human being, that was so huge, that anytime somebody wants me to talk about that I feel like I absolutely want to do that.

I've learned powerful lessons about the nature of forgiveness from human rights defenders. For example, for the greater good of his country, Kofi Woods emerged from a torture chamber in Liberia to later defend the very men who had brutalized him.