Shirley MacLaine Quotes

I enjoy learning about other people. I really didn't understand that until 'Moonlight.'

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

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others.

If you can get to know a person, and you can really understand them, it can usually help you better understand yourself and why you believe what you believe.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

People are not problems to be solved. They are mysteries to be explored.

What a powerful thing to know: That one's own desires are mappable onto strangers; that what one finds in oneself will most certainly be found in The Other.

I think acting can bring you closer to yourself and help you understand other people.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

I taught myself to tune in to another person's wavelength, figure out what they were looking for, and try to project that thing back at them.

Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.

If you don't understand yourself you don't understand anybody else.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

People want to learn how other people live. It's just human nature.

In every person, you have a world of personalities and souls, a world of perspectives that you can share. You can get into anyone's shoes. You've got to be willing to stare at the ugliest part of yourself and deal with it.

Intimacy seems to be one of the major highs of life, whether it's getting to know yourself in a deeper way, or your partner, or the world and the society that you live in.

I take time to be with people, and I learn a lot.

I love to learn about people.

My agenda... is to learn about people.

I think the more we know the better we are. I mean not just facts. The more we know about each other, the closer we are to learn something about our selves.

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

The power of getting to know one another is so immense, eclipsed only by first getting to know ourselves.