Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

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.

I envy people who have the capacity to sit with another human being and find them endlessly interesting, I would rather watch TV. Of course this becomes eventually known to the other person.

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

I would say I'm humanly engaged.

I cannot stress enough that the answer to a lot of your life's questions is often in someone else's face. Try putting your iPhones down every once in a while and look at people's faces.

It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.

No, I'm not clever. I've always cared more for people than for ideas.

Leadership is not a formula or a program, it is a human activity that comes from the heart and considers the hearts of others. It is an attitude, not a routine.

That is what is wrong with cold people. Not that they have ice in their souls - we all have a bit of that - but that they insist every word and deed mirror that ice. They never learn the beauty or value of gesture. The emotional necessity. For them, it is all honesty before kindness, truth before art. Love is art, not truth. It's like painting scenery.

If I could have one wish, it would be for people to look at one another with open hearts and minds. Most of all, to look at each other with compassion. No matter who they are.

Do you value people who won't benefit you or only those who might contribute in some way to your success? Great team players truly value others as people, and they know and relate to what others value.

One who has learned to love all people will find plenty of people who will return that love.

I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.

Surgery has trained me better than anything else to connect with people.

We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.

Often people who are wonderful with animals aren't always terribly good with human beings.

If you treat people with dignity, respect and friendliness, you can turn enemies into friends. An enemy is nothing but a friend in disguise.

I don't understand why people aren't a little more generous with each other.

The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand, and touch another person.

Instead of condemning people, let's try to understand them. Let's try to figure out why they do what they do. That's a lot more profitable and intriguing than criticism; and it breeds sympathy, tolerance and kindness.

All my life I've been interested in other people's stories. I wanted to know them, understand them, feel them.

I'm sensitive to how people are feeling if they feel like they got it wrong, and sensitive to the people who are kind of gloating that they knew all along, they figured it out. I'm loving them through this process, because I know that it took me a while once I found out that it was me.

Writing about people helps us to understand them, and understanding them helps us to accept them as part of ourselves.

I hope you will be yourself, human, even a little sentimental, possessed of a sense of humor and a sense of humility. . . . There are arrogant people in this world and, what is worse, arrogant judges.

One can no more approach people without love than one can approach bees without care. Such is the quality of bees.