Jidenna Quotes

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

There's so much importance in honoring your everyday hero. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take connections. What matters is that people get involved. Whether your passion is gun control or food or whatever it may be, everybody needs to stop being so self-absorbed.

In my mind, as long as I did what was right for me, I was cool. But that's not the way it works. You have to think about other people and take their feelings into account.

The end of all education should surely be service to others

Democracy is based upon empathy and the recognition that some decisions are solely for the community's benefit without regard to one's own narrow self-interest.

As my parents taught me, by both words and deeds, a life of public services is as much a gift to the person who serves as it is to those he's serving.

No man (sic) has learned to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Length without breadth is like a self-contained tributary having no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. In order to live creatively and meaningfully, our self-concern must be wedded to other concerns.

Sometimes you have to take the focus off of you and put it on someone else and it's funny what you can accomplish and how much strength you really have.

What I always wanted to do when I was a kid was to speak out and help people which I continue to do afterwards.

I think the main thing is to find something you care about. A cause. I think it starts with others. Who do you look up to? Who do you want to help? Start in your own community.

You should think about the world and feel about your heart.

Good character consists of recognizing the selfishness that inheres in each of us and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire. It is a difficult balance to strike, but no definition of goodness can be complete without it.

Altruism is one of the most fundamentally social impulses, and doing things for others without expecting anything in return is core to what makes us human. This is why, from the day Facebook Platform launched in 2007, Causes has been honored to be one of the most popular applications, with over 140 million users.

I am a firm believer that you can make a difference in someone's life - whether they're thousands of miles away, or on your own block.

What makes the meaning of life is people, so you try to be good to people immediately around you and in your broader community. So a lot of my projects are about how I can affect the world in the hundreds of millions.

He who doesn't consider himself is seldom considerate of others.

I hope it's enabling me to deal with another human being who's more important to me than I am.

My mother taught me that to maximize your philanthropic potential, you need to constantly challenge your capabilities and put yourself in situations that are not always comfortable. Through her example, I discovered that there is no more beautiful way to live a life than to live a life of service.

I think I'm still figuring out how to be a little less selfish.

I'm very aware there are lots of other people who are just bright and working just as hard, with just the same dedication to make the world a good place.

I have vanity and greed enough for one person. But at the same time, I feel in my bones you lose a lot of life's value if you don't see yourself as a member of the family of man.

I'm very aware that just driving blindly towards money won't get me anything. I drive blindly towards making the world a better place.

To be compassionate is not a joke. It's not that simple. One has to discover a certain bigness in oneself. That bigness should be centered on oneself, not in terms of money, not in terms of power you wield, not in terms of any status that you can command in the society, but it should be centered on oneself.

Just the service aspect of running a nonprofit is so gratifying because it takes the attention off yourself. I'm not an acting monk or anything. I'm not, like, the most well-adjusted actor. But it's really designed to focus on yourself, or it can be. So it's good to have something else to focus on that reminds you that it's not always about you.

Those who believe in the importance of serving others should lead the way by fighting against the temptation we all have, and maybe especially as we age, to close in upon ourselves.