Jacqueline Woodson Quotes

Knowledge of other people's beliefs and ways of thinking must be used to build bridges, not to create conflicts.

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

What I do is I always try to educate myself about my neighbors, about the people I meet.

If we learn to understand each other, we will have a better understanding of ourselves.

[There must be] recognition of the Other as an interlocutor having rights equal to one’s own. Real dialogue is when you recognize the same dignity in the other. No dialogue is possible between a master and his slave. Dialogue assumes equality…. To understand the Other, first we have to try and know him in his entirety, know his beliefs, his customs, his rites, his civilization.

We're living with the Arabs; we have to understand them... Through knowing the Arabs, you know yourself better.

Once you have dialogue starting, you know you can break down prejudice.

I think art breaks down otherness.

I can understand that people who have a very different view to mine are motivated by the purest of motives. All I ask is that they might give the same benefit of the doubt to those with whom they might disagree with.

The more contact we have with one another and the more we come to understand each other's values, the greater will be our mutual respect.

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other's folly - that is the first law of nature.

It is through accepting other people in our own countries that we shall come to respect our neighbours and be respected in our turn.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

We must develop a deeper interest and greater understanding of the people we meet here or abroad. Like us, they are passengers on board that mysterious ship called life.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Traveling around I don't think people are that horrible, I think they just don't know.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Surely part of loving in this way is trying to understand what another person wants us to understand. I may not understand perfectly and I may not agree, but if I love you I should try to know what it is you wish I could know.

I just try not to judge. Don't judge me, and I won't judge you.

After September 11, 2001, I was feeling like I really wanted more understanding between cultures. It seemed to me that so much of what happened on September 11 was because people didn't understand each other and were suspicious of each other.

We have to realize only in communication, in real knowledge, in real reaching out, can there be an understanding that there's humanity everywhere, and that's what I'm trying to do.

You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.

It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.

One of the lines from my books is about having respect for different minds, and if I had to have an epitaph at this point in my life, that would be it.

I can now say that the more I learnt about Islam, the more tolerant I became.

Real tolerance means respecting other people even when they baffle you and you have no idea why they think what they think.