Taylor Branch Quotes

In order to always treat others, as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we have to learn about each other. Not just relying on an op-ed piece we may have read here, or a half-remembered interview on the television program there that happens to chime with our own views.

It's never that hard for me to imagine what it must feel like to be someone else, whether it's an American teenage girl or a Japanese octogenarian man.

I like meeting people from other walks of life and finding out about other worlds, and knowing that I'm fairly adept at one world and really stupid in many others.

You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew.

Examine other points of view as if they were your own.

Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one's own.

One way to overcome our natural self-centeredness is to try to see things from other people's perspectives.

Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

You think the only people who are people, Are the ones who look and think the way you do, But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, You'll learn the things you never knew you never knew... You can own the Earth and still, All you'll own is earth until You can paint with all the colors of the wind.

I don't just want to talk to the choir. I want to sit down and be respectful of the people who are most unlike me, to get them to hear me and think. It doesn't mean you're going to change them right there, but just so they can hear you and what you're saying.

I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

The first step toward tolerance is respect and the first step toward respect is knowledge.

If somebody is different from you, that's not something you criticize, that's something that you appreciate.

When I am able to be present, listening - really listening - to a viewpoint described through someone else's lens, I am here in the now and alive.

Until you make the effort to get to know someone or something, you don’t know anything.

We ought not to make those people our enemies who might have become our friends, if we had only known them better.

We must teach the next generation to not just learn languages, but whole cultures and belief systems. We will then make more of an effort to understand people and their different cultures.

I try to consider people's perspectives and not just my own.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion. Even if somebody is an enemy you have compassion toward him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others.

In order to get inside their skin, I have to identify with them. That includes even the ones who are complete bastards, nasty, twisted, deeply flawed human beings with serious psychological problems. Even them. When I get inside their skin and look out through their eyes, I have to feel a certain - if not sympathy, certainly empathy for them. I have to try to perceive the world as they do, and that creates a certain amount of affection.

There are so many things admirable people do not understand.

Let's get used to other cultures. Portray the world for what it is and you will find truth.

We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.

What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.