It is in the power of everybody, with a little courage, to hold out a hand to someone different, to listen, to attempt to increase, by even a tiny amount, the quantity of kindness and humanity in the world.
Interpretation
Everyone has the power to show kindness and humanity to others, regardless of differences.
This quote emphasizes the idea that acts of kindness and empathy are within everyone's reach. It suggests that even small gestures of support and understanding can contribute significantly to increasing compassion and humanity in the world, encouraging individuals to be courageous in their interactions with others who may be different from themselves.
In practice
During a speech on community service, to inspire volunteers.
Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.
We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.
So much of what passes for conversation today is degraded. It's either about one-upmanship, or dreary trivia. Even the cut and thrust of wit and bons mots is a form of bedazzlement designed to stop conversations dead rather than broaden them.
I think one of the most important changes of our time has been our attitude to fear. Every civilisation defends itself by keeping fears out and saying 'we protect you from fear'. But it also produces new fears and throughout history people have changed the kind of fears which have worried them.
Conversation creates a new kind of network within organizations. Current networks are used for competitive advantage, but conversation is focused on encouraging people to realize their potential.
However fascinating you may think you are, there is a limit to what you can know about yourself.
The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.
It is a good face. I am glad this war is over at last.
No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.
You survived the abuse, you’re going to survive the recovery.
If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me - I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.
If people don't vote, everything stays the same. You can protest until the sky turns yellow or the moon turns blue, and it's not going to change anything if you don't vote.
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