Mark Takano Quotes

When we see people that are impoverished and people who are dealt an unfair hand, then if we have the power to help them, we should try to do that.

When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something.

When people said Africa would change me, I didn't understand what they meant. To see the poverty in the townships, for instance, is overwhelming. I found it heart-wrenching to see young children walking barefoot and hungry in the dirt. I'm the kind of person who wants to change the world right here and now, so I got frustrated.

You’ve got to help people that are downtrodden and poor, and I just think that that’s part of our culture. You’ve got to help people that can’t help themselves.

An experience that shaped me happened early in my TV career when I filmed in Mozambique, Angola and Bangladesh for 'Blue Peter' and Comic Relief. Places with extreme poverty. When you see that first-hand as a young person, you take it with you for life.

If all alms were given only from pity, all beggars would have starved long ago.

Philanthropy and social change work are at their best when they are driven by your values and connected to what you care about most.

We have the potential to help people out of poverty, out of disease, out of slavery and out of conflict. Too often, we turn the other way because we think there's nothing we can do.

My mother taught me that to maximize your philanthropic potential, you need to constantly challenge your capabilities and put yourself in situations that are not always comfortable. Through her example, I discovered that there is no more beautiful way to live a life than to live a life of service.

For my part, I try to do my bit to make people's lives more bearable, in particular children across the globe who are having problems.

I've personally demanded that tyrants let their people go. I've tried to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, protect the elderly and infirm, and defend the needy from the aggressively greedy. I've led a blessed life. What a kick for a kid from the projects.

As I got more successful, I felt it was more incumbent upon me to help the other people. I did more and more and the more I did the more I wanted.

I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.

We can't turn our back on people who need help.

Though we cannot relieve all the distressed, we should relieve as many as we can.

Throughout my life, I always remember that consideration of people who were less fortunate than we. We lived in an atmosphere of awareness, and we certainly did not live a life whereby we ignored, or felt that we could ignore, that which was in evidence around us.

Though easy to define, it is important to understand the significance of philanthropy. I believe it is really a state of mind: where one feels empowered and equipped to fill the huge gaps in the existing system.

As a young man, I was a navy officer in Vietnam. I made $320 a month and would always give away $50 a month to a family I felt that was in greater need than me, in addition to my tithing to my church. I've just always felt in my heart, coming from a very humble background, that there are plenty of people who need a break in life.

I believe, as do most people, that we have an obligation to assist the truly destitute.

I'm one of those people who want to give back and see other people do better.

Not to share one’s goods with the poor is to rob them and to deprive them of life. It is not our goods that we possess, but theirs.

If we see someone who needs help, do we stop? There is so much suffering and poverty, and a great need for good Samaritans.

By going into third world countries and serving, by actually feeding and helping people, I've been led to focus a little more on how people here try to be happy by ignoring other people who are unhappy.

When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.

The difference between charity and philanthropy is the distance of the soul... To be philanthropic is to give something, to be charitable is to give one's own heart.