George MacDonald Quotes

We lack social awareness because we're so focused on what we're going to say next - and how what other people are saying affects us - that we completely lose sight of other people. This is a problem because people are complicated. You can't hope to understand someone until you focus all of your attention in his or her direction.

What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people's dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats - and they in turn can listen to ours.

Working with different people anyway is like life and meeting different people... as long as you can be empathetic, you can take a bit of them on and see what you can do to help their process. That said, my relationship with Woody Allen was trying to hang on his every word so that I could tell everybody what he said afterwards. But certainly, he was a very good example of somebody who you didn't hear talk above a very low volume for the entire time he was on-set.

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

Explore your web: the needs, the beliefs, and the emotions that are controlling you so there's more of you to give and so you can appreciate what's driving other people. It's the only way our world's going to change.

Perhaps we think that we won't find another human being inside that person. Perhaps we think that there are some people in this world who I can't ever communicate with, and so I'll just give up before I try. And how sad it is to think that we would give up on any other creature who's just like us.

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other. . .

Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don't know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.

I've never been interested in things that sparkle and shine; I'm more interested in people.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

If I hadn't read all of Jane Austen and DH Lawrence, Tolstoy and Proust, as well as the more fun stuff, I wouldn't know how to break bad news, how to sympathise, how to be a friend or a lover, because I wouldn't have any idea what was going on in anybody else's mind.

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.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

In my experience with women that I've dated and my wife now, is you have to know what they care about. And even if you aren't a huge fan of it, you still have to have interest in it and it has to be genuine because women do it for men all the time.

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

All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.

One believes others will do what he will do to himself.

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.

Until you meet, you will never understand each other.

I want everyone to know what they deserve in relationships: that they can demand equality and kindness. Because everyone will have a relationship at some point in their life. It's what we all do, every day, and we need to know how to do it.

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

Being in relationship with others helps us know ourselves better.