Quotes About Compassion

There is room in our ranks for the old and decrepit, as well as the young and vigorous.

I believe that the freedom of speech should be protected, but so should a family's right to privacy as they grieve their loss. There is a time and a place for vigorous debate on the War on Terror, but during a family's last goodbye is not it.

It's totally irrational, patently insane to condemn an entire race - to despise an entire nation - to vilify an entire religion.

I realized why I can cook for different environments. Because of everything I've gone through growing up. Why can I cook for a Hollywood event without blinking an eye? Because I cooked at the Beverly Hilton and because I moved to Villa Park. Why can I cook for kids on Hollywood Boulevard at night? Because I went through it.

Sometimes it takes a child to raise a village - or to take down an injustice.

People in my village had this mindset that in big cities like New York, if you are lost or without directions, no one will help you. The first time I came here, I tried to make sure not to walk by myself, because it would be difficult for me if I got lost. But people will help you.

I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens.

There is no way you are going to be forgiven for blowing up a village and killing a bunch of people.

A rescue mission doesn't involve going in and just taking a child and leaving. You can't just choose any child at random. Every kid has a case that is based on that child's original family. So, we made it over to a village, found the child; we were interacting with the child.

In 1965, I went to what was called the worst Bihar famine in India, and I saw starvation, death, people dying of hunger, for the first time. It changed my life. I came back home, told my mother, 'I'd like to live and work in a village.' Mother went into a coma.

When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God's eyes or even in just your eyes, then your life is forever changed; you see something that you can't un-see.

I like to think about the biblical story of the woman at the well and how out of order her life was. Jesus pointed out she'd had five husbands and was living with a sixth. But Jesus chose her to be the one who would take the good news of the Messiah's arrival to her village.

One of the lessons I learned was that there are good people everywhere. That village, Sabray, saved my life.

I began my career as a medical doctor in Ama Keng, a poor village in Lim Chu Kang. The people I cared for were ordinary Singaporeans. They were simple people who despite their hard work, had barely enough for themselves.

We are not intoxicated by power. We are concerned about the betterment of the poor, marginalised, oppressed, farmers, women, those living in villages, and every section of society.

Something which is easy for me to give is money. I feel detached from it. I look after myself and my family but I won't forget people who struggle. My father lives in Senegal. They are from the smaller villages and know how to distribute money to people who need it.

I feel like life is much greater than a hero or a villain: there's good people that sometimes make mistakes.

The challenge is, how do you take someone who's supposed to be a villain and make that appealing and lovable? You have to empathize with him and put yourself in his shoes and root for him and want him to have the things he wants.

Sometimes someone that is the 'villain' in your life, when you look deeper and you think of what their issues are and why they behave like that and where they came from - they become less of a villain and more of someone that you can understand.

The best strategy for making people care about what happens is if they empathize with both sides. If you just have a Villain with a capital V, it becomes very two-dimensional.

Empathy is much bigger than sympathy. When the character is empathised with, that means you have succeeded as an actor. So even if it's a villain, the audiences don't hate you... they understand why you have turned into a villain.

Even the toughest people have a backstory, and villains don't feel like they're the bad guys.

I'm always interested in getting to know people, and that means vilified people as much as those celebrated. You find out that heroes aren't always so heroic, and villains have some bit of humanity in them.

You don't play villains like they are villains. You play them like you know exactly where they are coming from. Which hopefully you do.