Compassionate Response Quotes

All violence is injustice. Responding to violence with violence is injustice, not only to the other person but also to oneself. Responding to violence with violence resolves nothing; it only escalates violence, anger and hatred. It is only with compassion that we can embrace and disintegrate violence. This is true in relationships between individuals as well as in relationships between nations.

In my religion I really cannot think of cases where violence is justified.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

All attack is a call for help.

Anger cannot be overcome by anger. If someone is angry with you, and you show anger in return, the result is a disaster. On the other hand, if you control your anger and show its opposite - love, compassion, tolerance and patience - not only will you remain peaceful, but the other person's anger will also diminish.

Empathy is the antidote to shame.

Can one be a follower of Jesus Christ... have countries attacked. The lives, reputations and possessions of people destroyed and on the slight chance of the presence of a few criminals in a village, city, or convoy for example, the entire village, city or convoy set ablaze.

Religion taught us to return good for evil.

Our tendency is to run from the painful realities or try to change them as soon as possible. But cure without care makes us into rulers, controllers, manipulators.

The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.

If you want to know who we are, who America is, how we respond to evil-that's it: selflessly, compassionately, unafraid.

I will never tell anyone to pick up a gun. But I will pray for the man who picks up a gun, pray that he will be less cruel than he might otherwise have been.

I consider non-violence to be compassion in action. It doesn’t mean weakness, cowering in fear, or simply doing nothing. It is to act without violence, motivated by compassion, recognising the rights of others.

Our job is unconditional love. The job of everyone else in our life is to push our buttons.

Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil... a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons... never to truth.

It's unnatural to fight somebody who has nothing against you and never did anything to you or to your family, who never stole anything from you. And now you've got to go and try to dismantle this guy.

Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

When we face problems with compassion, sincerity, and good motivation, our solutions may take longer, but ultimately they are better.

Compassion is of little value if it just remains an idea. It must motivate how we respond to others and be reflective in all our thoughts and actions

If appeasing our enemies is not the answer, neither is hating them.... Somewhere between the extremes of appeasement and hate there is a place for courage and strength to express themselves in magnanimity and charity, and this is the place we must find.

After September 11th, nations from across the globe offered their generous assistance to the people of New York. And whenever our friends around the world need our assistance, New York is there.

You can't answer violence with counter violence ... The answer is love. The best sabotage is love.

I believe, in general, that even people that are self-pitying, you can feel for them.

If someone comes to you with, 'It's my kid's graduation,' you don't tell them, 'Sorry, you can't go to that.' You just don't do that. You figure out some other way.

No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own.