Richard Powers Quotes

I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.

So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Wise is the man who does not disdain any character and instead, examining him with a searching look, plumbs him to the very main-springs of his being.

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, 'I don't believe they meant to hurt me.' 'Maybe they're having a bad day or don't feel well.' 'They probably don't even realize how they sound.'

To understand is to forgive, even oneself.

We're a whole culture of people who have a really hard time seeing beyond themselves.

Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer; into a selflessness which links us with all humanity.

The folly which we might have ourselves committed is the one which we are least ready to pardon in another.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

I could be less impatient with people. I sometimes judge by impressions.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

After this whole acting thing is over and done, you eventually have to be human. Some people are never human. It's very weird.

Well, I think when we can turn to the person sitting next to us and really see them with kindness and see ourselves reflected back - when there's some dignity and compassion traveling back and forth.

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.

I'm very human.

The other half is to dramatize the fact that we still 'are' human beings, now. Or can be.

Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.

Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.

I look for the humanity in people, however big the politics or oppressive the situation may be, whether it's subsumed within a human being or between two human beings. I want to help us hold a mirror to ourselves.