Mike Birbiglia Quotes

We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

In order to be great, you just have to care. You have to care about your world, community, and equality.

We must broaden the definition of who our neighbors are, and extend the boundaries of our interest and empathy.

You need a lot of different types of people to make the world better.

I think we need leadership that helps us remember that part of what we are about is caring about more than the person right next to us, but the folks across the way.

We, as Americans, do our level best to avoid being cruel to one another; we're led out of a diverse nation to come together and learn how to live with one another in a way that elevates everyone and our way of life. We've tried mightily to renew and imagine - imagine anew what it means to be free, what it means to be fair.

We had people of all backgrounds coming together - all races, all creeds, all colors, all status in life. And coming together there was a kind of quiet dignity and a kind of sense of caring and a feeling of joint responsibility.

For me, I grew up in a house doing charity work for homeless people, and my parents had a lot of homeless friends. We were always taught to not discriminate and not judge.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change.

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.

I call it people-to-people politics and that's what politics should be about, reaching out and helping one another and touching one another about what we're going to do.

If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.

In our own lives and in our communities, we need to find a way to include others rather than exclude them. We need to find a way to allow our pain and suffering, individually and collectively.

People with handicaps teach me that being is more important than doing, the heart is more important than the mind, and caring together is better than caring alone.

Liberals stand for tolerance, magnanimity, community spirit, the defense of the weak against the powerful, love of learning, freedom of belief, art and poetry, city life, the very things that make life worth dying for. Conservatives stand for tax cuts … and use of the tax refund to buy a gun and an attack dog to take with you when you drive your all-terrain vehicle through the barriers of Republicanville.

I love being the mayor of a city that is not defined by the hate filled act of a killer, but is defined by the way we respond: The Love and Compassion and Unity.

We must build relationships, get to know one another's children, open our arms rather than close our hearts.

The more we can be in a relationship with those who might seem strange to us, the more we can feel like we're neighbors and all members of the human family.

My idea of religion is we are supposed to bring people together. We are not supposed to judge other people.

Acting and philanthropy are braided together. I've tried to seek out things that speak not just specifically to the community that created me, but that speak in a way that's universal and all of humanity celebrates.

Maybe it's because my uncle and my parents were always very involved with the civil rights movement, so I just grew up and I was raised that you have to speak out and look out for your fellow man, woman, and child.

I would like that no citizen of the state feels alone and helpless. The entire nation is with them.