Tennessee Williams Quotes

Our world is increasingly interdependent and pluralistic, and in order to ensure a civil future, we must get to know one another.

I had to adapt to other worlds, and that helped to educate me that we are all basically the same.

To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.

The more that we self-analyze ourselves, the nicer we are to people and to ourselves, and the more we understand each other.

I think we should have understanding and love and peace. I mean, peace and love has been my situation. You hear that in the song. I'm trying to promote that now: peace and love and understanding.

So you should remember that, when you're thinking about what other people can deal with. Maybe it's not so bad.

Let us often think of our own infirmities, and we shall become indulgent toward those of others.

Respect begins with this attitude: "I acknowledge that you are a creature of extreme worth. God has endowed you with certain abilities and emotions. Therefore I respect you as a person. I will not desecrate your worth by making critical remarks about your intellect, your judgment or your logic. I will seek to understand you and grant you the freedom to think differently from the way I think and to experience emotions that I may not experience." Respect means that you give the other person the freedom to be an individual.

I've become more forgiving, even though I have no patience at all for denial, justification of wrong, rationalization. I've become virtually a pacifist, so I feel that no atrocity is ever justified. I've become more vigilant about evil. I think I recognize its seeds more quickly. I see its source.

As a matter of fact, we are none of us above criticism; so let us bear with each other's faults.

Evil is the refusal to see one's self in others.

we don't have to agree with each other in order to think well together. There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are joined by our human hearts.

What we need is a dialogue amongst civilizations.

And I believe that I will never be able to hate any human being for his so-called 'wickedness,' that I shall only hate the evil that is within me, though hate is perhaps putting it too strongly even then. In any case, we cannot be lax enough in what we demand of others and strict enough in what we demand of ourselves.

Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

If any man thinks ill of you, do not be angry with him, for you are worse than he thinks you to be.

If you're talking about coexisting and tolerance then you have to live by example, and you can't have shiny people all the time everywhere, which is what breeds that sort of thinking - this is better than this, that is better than that.

We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.

This is the first lesson ye should learn: There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, it doesn't behoove any of us to speak evil of the rest of us. This is a universal law, and until one begins to make application of same, one may not go very far in spiritual or soul development.

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.

A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes that there is no virtue but on his own side, and that there are not men as honest as himself who may differ from him in political principles.

People must do what they must do. We all don't think alike or act alike and it's wrong to-to judge others by ourselves.

I can't expect others to share my virtues. It's good enough for me if they share my vices.

It is the evil that lies in ourselves that is ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells within others.