Phil Klay Quotes

What I generally tell a class is that if you're not interested in anybody else's work but your own, take another class.

I want to suggest a feeling. It's ridiculous to assume you can state an opinion. Somebody else can never relate to the lyric in the same way because their whole experience is different. You can only suggest, then people add their own history and experience to the lyrics.

I value unity because I believe we learn truth from each other in this process.

It's important to contribute to group discussions, but if all you're thinking about is when you'll get the opportunity to speak - and stressing about whether you'll sound smart - you won't be fully engaged in the conversation.

I try to speak from a place of understanding and most times I'm speaking from a place of experience.

The radio is good for taking somebody else's experience and making you understand what it would be like. Because when you don't see someone, but you hear them talking - and, uh, that is what radio is all about - it's like when someone is talking from the heart. Everything about it conspires to take you into somebody else's world.

Diversity is not a politically correct idea. Diversity in a boardroom or in a Parliament means that you just have different minds, different life experience, different ways of thinking about patients or customers or voters so that when you bring that intellect, you look at opportunity and risk, and then you have it in much better balance.

Truth springs from argument amongst friends.

It's often difficult to get perspective on your own stories, on your own experiences, without talking them through with someone who is genuinely interested in thinking about them. And that's the key.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

Writing is how I find out what I believe and what I care most deeply about. It's how I sort through the mess of daily experience and try to make sense of it - by stepping out of it for a while. Writing is how I train a searchlight into the darker corners of my self and the world, as I'm sure I'd never do otherwise.

Nobody sees reality whole; we all need others to show us the parts of it that they see better than we do. Nobody sees reality with total accuracy; we all need others to correct our own vision.

Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what another person sees.

The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters.

Nations should live in an atmosphere of self-criticism because it is healthy, but always with one heart and one mind.

I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

I want to encourage open conversation, which allows people to discuss issues and learn from each other.

Criticism is fine and conversation is fine, but the person who's criticizing should know what they're saying and whom they're criticizing.

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

Collaboration is about listening to someone else and adding your own feelings about that thought.

One does not see his thought distinctly till it is reflected in the image of another's.

No one can shed light on vices he does not have or afflictions he has ever experienced.

When we would show any one that he is mistaken, our best course is to observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of if is generally right on this side,--and admit to him that he is right so far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole case.

A man must know when to retreat from a woman, but a wise man knows that sometimes he must stand and face her.

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.