Ella Maillart Quotes

A dialogue among civilizations can be seen as a dialogue between the individual and the universal.

If people in this country think of Africa as a place with kids and flies swarming around their heads, then they won't understand that these people are you and you are them.

I feel like the world would be a better place if more people experienced a little bit of someone else's experience.

Meeting people from different countries makes you realise that everyone around the world has the same needs and aspirations.

We have to realize only in communication, in real knowledge, in real reaching out, can there be an understanding that there's humanity everywhere, and that's what I'm trying to do.

I tell my students, it's not difficult to identify with somebody like yourself, somebody next door who looks like you. What's more difficult is to identify with someone you don't see, who's very far away, who's a different color, who eats a different kind of food. When you begin to do that then literature is really performing its wonders.

The world only makes sense to me given my life and my background if, in fact, we're not just an assortment of tribes that can never understand each other, but that we're, rather, one common humanity that can meet and learn and love each other.

People have to start talking to know more about other cultures and to understand each other.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

My trademark at CNN was really asking insightful questions and making sure people are understanding the connections in humanity, and I think that is the core of education.

Travel is one of the best anti-war weapons that there are. I've been to Iran, and if you're there you see little kids, cops, old people, cemeteries. Once you see that, you can't say, 'Oh, Iran, let's bomb them.'

The only bond worth anything between human beings is their humanness.

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 wanted to live the inner life of every man I saw, look at the world through his eyes.

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.

All this misjudgment that we have of each other is based on ignorance. The second you get to travel, you see that human beings, no matter where they come from, they are the same.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

Believing in each culture's right to be understood by the other party without any form of falseness or distortion is paramount.

[There must be] recognition of the Other as an interlocutor having rights equal to one’s own. Real dialogue is when you recognize the same dignity in the other. No dialogue is possible between a master and his slave. Dialogue assumes equality…. To understand the Other, first we have to try and know him in his entirety, know his beliefs, his customs, his rites, his civilization.

National culture can act as a bridge, instead of an obstacle, to mutual spiritual and intellectual understanding.

If we were able to see people in other countries and learn about our differences, why would there be any misunderstandings? War would be a thing of the past.

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

I think that's important: to know 'the other,' as a means of coming to understanding.

There's a lot of people in this world, and it's important to learn about them.

Who could think that children from the pockets of Himalaya sing folklore from Scotland and vice versa? Such an education in the initial years develops compassion and mutual respect for each other's skills.