Margaret J. Wheatley Quotes

Intemperance and intolerance serve no one, and hatred guarantees failure.

We put labels on people and fight wars over them. If we truly want harmony, we have to get past the labels.

One thing I do know, you can't change hatred by showing those people that they're wrong about us.

...When we lift our voices tiny molehills of difference become great mountains of conflict.

Try to open up your mind a little, and move away from rigid opinions of what people should do and be - unless you have been there.

I wonder how often in the past I may have missed the good in people because I pre-judged, based on the differences?

A brother who recognizes that we have shortcomings, we, in the struggle, have faults, and that he wanted to reconcile differences.

You cannot reason with people who don't recognize the humanity in all of us.

The loudest voices we hear are those who advocate conflict, divisiveness.

It's easy to focus on the things that divide us. Sometimes too easy.

Never judge a person if you don't know him.

You don't get unity by ignoring the questions that have to be faced.

I have differences with every single human being I know, but that difference shouldn’t define our relationship.

Demonizing the other does not help our cause and does bad things to us.

We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

I live my life by these little church signs you see as you drive around, and there's one near me that says, 'If we really knew each other, we would neither idolise nor condemn.' And that's it: if we all knew each other, then we wouldn't treat anybody any different. And there wouldn't be any big stars, I guess.

I'm asking myself, 'What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?' Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

It is important to remember that if we treat people who could be allies as enemies, we can only alienate them from our cause.

Hate has a language, so we have to find a language to combat that.

Our differences needn't divide us, but unity takes work.

We [people] need to stop lumping folks together and start living together. Otherwise, we're going to kill each other off because you don't believe what I believe. That's crazy.

Why should I hate someone on the basis of their religion, when I can take a little time to get to know them and hate them for a myriad of real reasons.

Differences will always exist, but division doesn't always have to result.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

Stop labeling people just because they're not like you.