Charles Bukowski Quotes

There's a saying I read recently; I painted it on the fireplace and in my studio: "Be kind to everyone you meet, for everyone is fighting a great battle." We all are. Everyone.

People who are homeless, they're not all addicts. A lot of times, they're just people who, through something like losing their job or losing someone in their life, ended up on the streets. So much of our time is spent in cars that sometimes you need to look out of those windows. And you see that a dollar, 50 cents, whatever you have, may not mean much to you, but it means everything to people who are hungry and who are in need.

I just like people. I'll hold a conversation at a gas station. It's not about the fame and the fortune, I just like people.

Wherever I go, there's always a child, an old woman, that comes to me and wants to meet me. Not because I am famous but because they suffered with my family.

I was able to do The Saint of Fort Washington, on the relationship between two homeless men.

I've always thought, and it gets tested at times, that I have a great faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings.

Every day, the people I meet inspire me... every day, they make me proud... every day they remind me how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation on earth.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

I haven't lost faith in human nature and I haven't decided to be less compassionate to strangers.

I just feel such a connection to the little kids in Naples. I remember being on the street wanting a small piece of candy.

When my son was 3 years old - I'll never forget this - there was this homeless guy walking toward us, and my son looked at me, and he said, 'Who's your buddy?'

When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they'll remember and be kind to someone else. And it'll become like a wildfire.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

It's a wild thing, that people have the ability to help each other by just relating to one another.

The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.

I understand the common man because I understand me in that regard at least.

I meet human beings who are flawed, who are mentally ill and have enormous problems, but I don't think I've ever met someone who was a totally dark energy that had no humanity or sense of love or affection for anything in their life. That's very rare.

Every once in a while, something happens to you that makes you realise that the human race is not quite as bad as it so often seems to be.

Try to love someone who you want to hate, because they are just like you, somewhere inside, in a way you may never expect, in a way that resounds so deeply within you that you cannot believe it.

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

I don't need to have my convictions confirmed by a show of numbers. However, being among people in front of a band leads me to believe that all is not lost, that humans, now and then, can communicate on a higher level than the political and the practical.

When you read the news, and you see all this bad stuff happening, there's a tendency to lose faith in humanity. But I meet so many people who restore it and realize that, actually, 99 percent of people are great.

I am an optimist, and I try to think that the light will always prevail in any situation, so it doesn't really make me sad about humanity because I think, deep down, everybody is full of love and light.

Remember that we are all human beings trying to do what we love to do.

I started a student organization that was basically designed to connect students with homeless folks. We visited them and sometimes brought food, but mostly we were there for swapping stories.