Ben Parr Quotes

It's a fact that it is much more comfortable to be in the position of the person who has been offended than to be the unfortunate cause of it.

Look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger.

I literally feel pity for a lot of the stupid idiots that I have to deal with.

I always think you have to show a degree of humanity and sensitivity when you're dealing with people in extreme circumstances.

I'm fortunate enough to have learned not to waste time getting frustrated with my kids, or co-workers, or friends and family for not doing everything I wish they would. If someone doesn't respond to me the way I want them to, I understand that it doesn't have anything to do with me.

When people express opinions that differ from yours, take it as a chance to grow. Seek to understand over being understood. Be curious, not defensive. The only way to disarm another human being is by listening.

It's always easier to dismiss other people than to go through the awkward and time consuming process of understanding them.

People are starting to understand the other side's perspective and that's where empathy can sort of begin - once you quit judging other people but just understand where they're coming from.

Whenever encountering a troublesome person, do not identify him as being cruel or stupid or rude or anything else like that. Instead, see him as a frightened person.

I would like to explain the meaning of compassion, which is often misunderstood. Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the rights of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend

Forgiveness requires a sense that bad behaviour is a sign of suffering rather than malice.

To understand all is to forgive all.

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.

Compassion is an act of tolerance where kindness and forgiveness reign. When we make the compassionate choice, we enhance the dignity of each individual, which is the very essence of loving them.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion. Even if somebody is an enemy you have compassion toward him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others.

Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

How barbarous, to deny men the privilege of pursuing what they imagine to be their proper concerns and interests! Yet, in a sense, this is just what you are doing when you allow your indignation to rise at their wrongdoing; for after all, they are only following their own apparent concerns and interests. You say they are mistaken? Why then, tell them so, and explain it to them, instead of being indignant.

Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

The ability to understand the cause of your own suffering gives you the ability to understand ours.

It doesn't do you any service to demonize any group of people. It's much better to try and understand from the inside.

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide

If her past were your past, her pain your pain, her level of consciousness your level of consciousness, you would think and act exactly as she does. With this realization comes forgiveness, compassion and peace.

We shouldn't have been so scornful; we should have had compassion. But compassion takes work, and we were young.