Paddy Ashdown Quotes

Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.

No one wants to be picked at. At the end of the day, we're all human beings with feelings and emotions. Nobody wants to be critiqued and picked apart, but it's the nature of the business. It comes with the territory. For me, if they're not talking about you, that's where you can run into some trouble.

I will make it a point to voice my opinions. But if I am at fault, I will also apologise.

Emotional information is very, very rich in influence. You're giving somebody something to connect with, to see themselves in.

I think when you call someone out, you have to be ready.

It's not easy that everything you do, everybody has to come in and critique it and give their opinion. Sometimes it does help me and sometimes it hurts me as a person. That's life. I have feelings.

There's a lot of responsibility involved in sharing a very personal story with a lot of people, and it's easier for others not to know about things - and I know that. But in terms of the general climate, socially, these are things people have to deal with on a daily basis. We hear so many negative stories but rarely do we get positivity. We have memes of cute cats and puppies and things like that, but if they didn't exist, people would be a lot more unhappy. We need more things like that.

I believe that love is the main key to open the doors to the "growth" of man. Love and union with someone or something outside of oneself, union that allows one to put oneself into relationship with others, to feel one with others, without limiting the sense of integrity and independence. Love is a productive orientation for which it is essential that there be present at the same time: concern, responsibility, and respect for and knowledge of the object of the union.

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse.

And whenever you feel that essence in another, you also feel it in yourself.

You're my friend, Danny. You understand? There's no debt between friends." Maybe it's just that the debt gets so high you stop counting it.

Do not tell me what to do, tell me what you do. Do not tell me what is good for me, tell me what is good for you. If, at the same time, you reveal the you in me, if you become a mirror to my inner self, then you have made a reader and a friend.

To be aware of a single shortcoming within oneself is more useful than to be aware of a thousand in somebody else. Rather than speaking badly about people and in ways that will produce friction and unrest in their lives, we should practice a purer perception of them, and when we speak of others, speak of their good qualities.

People will never forget how you made them feel.

Why is it so much easier to talk to a stranger? why do we feel we need to disconnect in order to connect? If I wrote "Dear Sofia" or "Dear Boomer" or "Dear Lily's Great-Aunt" at the top of this postcard, wouldn't that change the words that followed? Of course it would. But the question is: When I wrote "Dear Lily," was that just a version of "Dear Myself"? I know it was more than that. But it was also less than that, too

And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.

When you know a person particularly well, you cannot escape their ruffled feelings.

Arthur Miller said one of my favorite lines ever, that he had the mother say to her two sons about a very unstable father in Death of a Salesman. She said, "Attention must be paid." It's one of the most resonant lines that I think he ever wrote, and I think attention must be paid to the truth.

I bought a cactus. A week later it died. And I got depressed, because I thought, Damn. I am less nurturing than a desert.

Criticism is painful when it's not done with love.

Liberals always feel your pain. Unless of course, they caused it.

We shall hurt others less. Isn't it, after all, what you always wanted?

Thank everyone who calls out your faults, your anger, your impatience, your egotism; do this consciously, voluntarily.

The boldest stroke and best act of friendship is not to disclose our own failings to a friend, but to show him his own.

I don't talk about these things if I haven't lived them, and I've hurt people in my life. It's something I still have to think about when I sleep at night.