• I'm all for taking responsibility for my actions, I just like to make sure I've explored all the other options first.
• The only way to truly defeat an enemy is to turn him into a friend.
• All behaviour makes sense.
• Shift judgement to curiosity.
• In a conflict, each person feels hit first.
• What we don't say controls us.
• All that is not given is lost.
• Awareness is the first step towards change.
• Resistance is an unmet need.
• A hero is a self-righteous villain; a villain, a misunderstood hero.
• A villain is an unhealed victim.
• A hero is a victim with a gun (or a good lawyer).
• There are no difficult people, only people we have difficulty with.
• Before I criticize someone, I like to walk a mile in their shoes.That way, if they get mad, they're barefoot and a long way away.
• Broken bones well set mend stronger.
• A conclusion is simply a place where you stopped being creative.
• Holding resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for your enemy to die.
• There is no situation so bad that getting angry can't make it worse.
At the boy's level, hero worship gravitates toward the doer of spectacular deeds; on the average adult level, toward the wielder of power; and in the eyes of a more critical judgment, toward idealism and moral qualities.
— Dixon Wecter
Change the way you look a things and the things you look at change.
— Wayne Dyer
Grant that I may not so much seek...to be understood, as to understand.
— The Peace Prayer of St. Francis
Don't try to win over the haters. You're not the jackass whisperer.
— Scott Stratten (author of Unmarketin
If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.
— Mary Engelbreit
Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.
— Ambrose Bierce
Every form of blame, criticism and judgment is just a tragic expression of an unmet need.
— Marshall Rosenberg, Non Violent Communication
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
— Hermann Hesse
Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
—The Buddhas
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don't worry about who gets the credit.
— Harry Truman
Villainy wears many masks; none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
— Icabod Crane in Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving
Stories are the creative conversion of life itself into a more powerful, clearer, more meaningful experience. They are the currency of human contact.
— Robert McKee
I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.
— Barack Obama, Acceptance Speech
He who blames others has a long way to go on his journey. He who blames himself is halfway there. He who blames no one has arrived.
— Chinese proverb
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness.
— Stephen Covey, The 8th Habit
It pays to know the enemy - not least because at some time you may have the opportunity to turn him into a friend.
— Margaret Thatcher
Don't speak unless you can improve on the silence.
— Spanish Proverb
Not the fastest horse can catch a word spoken in anger.
— Chinese Proverb
What I began to learn that day is that I seldom have enough data to play God, to pass judgment on someone else. When I get the whole story, or when I get more information, I find that my judgment decreases. I may not always like what I learn about another person, but invariably, my increased understanding makes a cooperative relationship much more likely.
— Dr. Alan Zimmerman
All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.
— Isak Dinesen
There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few we can solve by ourselves.
— Lyndon Johnson
The quieter you became the more you can hear.
— Baba Ram Das
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
— George Orwell
Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
— Stephen Covey
Give everyone their "one minute".
— Danaan Parry
You can't shake hands with a fist.
— Indira Ghandi
In the midst of conflict, there is absolutely nothing that produces gains as dramatically as listening.
— Dr. Neil Warren
The second word makes the quarrel
— Japanese proverb
"What mighty contests rise from trivial things."
— Alexander Pope, "The Rape of the Lock" 1720
Say not "I have found truth" but rather "I have found a truth".
— Kahlil Gibran
Greetings! I am pleased to see that we are different. May we together become greater than the sum of both of us.
— Vulcan greeting from Star Trek
Although feelings are not supposed to intrude on business discussions, they do anyway - we just disguise them as logic.
— Edward DeBono
Out beyond all the ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there.
— Rumi
We are lonesome animals. We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - 'Yes, that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.
— John Steinbeck
When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.
— Stephen Levine
So why is it so hard for us to conceive of or accept that everybody...[is a spiritual being at their core]? As we have seen, beings have all these adventitious emotions that are not their nature, but that are nevertheless a temporary manifestation. The problem is that this is the first thing that we see in others, and so we think: That's it; that's what's real, without looking at what's behind that. I would call it. Emotion at first sight.
— Khyentse Rinpoche
The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it's still on the list.
If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!
A diplomat is someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you will look forward to the trip.
In conflict, each person feels hit first.