it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight!

Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

inexhaustible...our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.

He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like.

People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves.

Leadership isn't just legislation, that it's a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone.

Making Compassionate Decisions: The Role of Empathy in Decision Making READING TIME: 19 MINUTES "The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

We will learn to live together, cooperate with one another, and recognize the dignity of others, or we will perish.

Despite all that, they'd given me a chance. Through the noise and chatter of the political circus, they'd heard my call for something different. Even if I hadn't always been at my best, they'd divined what was best in me: the voice insisting that for all our differences, we remained bound as one people, and that, together, men and women of goodwill could find a way to a better future.

Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.

What I'm saying is nobody feels sorry for anybody anymore, nobody even pretends they do. Not even the President. It's like it's become unpatriotic.