When we deny the poor and the vulnerable their own human dignity and capacity for freedom and choice, it becomes self-denial. It becomes a denial of both our collective and individual dignity, at all levels of society.
To be part of building a movement, you have to keep moving.
Our lives are so short. And our time on this planet is so precious. All we have is each other.
Each of us can work to change a small portion of events. And it’s in the total of all those acts that the history of this generation will be written.
We don’t see profit as a blind instrument.
Africa can stun you in an instant. It can throw floods and drought and disease at you, sometimes all at the same time. In the next moment, it will tease you with its magnificent beauty, so even if you don’t forget, you can find a way to forgive. Ultimately, it keeps you coming back for more.
I’ve learned that there is no currency like trust and no catalyst like hope. There is nothing worse for building relationships than pandering, on one hand, and preaching, on the other. And the most important quality we must all strengthen in ourselves is that of a deep human empathy, for that will provide the most hope of all – and the foundation for our collective survival.
Our actions, and inaction, touch people we may never know and never meet across the globe.
Language has very little to do with the words you say and everything with how you say them. Everyone understands what you are doing, even if the words sometimes don’t follow.
We are made from what came before. We make ourselves out of the promises that lie ahead. And we are always in the process of becoming.
When individual listening is ingrained in collective culture, the whole community is more likely to shine.
We can end poverty if we start by looking at all human beings as part of a single global community that recognizes that everyone deserves a chance to build a life worth living.
As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote long ago, the work of renewing a world based on extending dignity to every being on the planet begins in small places, close to home.
I’ve learned that generosity is far easier than justice and that, in the highly distorted markets of the poor, it is all too easy to veer only toward the charitable, to have low – or no – expectations for low-income people. This does nothing but reaffirm prejudices on all sides.
This book assumes that you are interested in being part of world-changing human capital that will help solve problems big and small. Maybe you are a teacher or a communicator, an activist or a doctor, a lawyer or an investor, or some new force for positive change. I have seen people like you alter the lives of schoolchildren and street children, refugees, the formerly incarcerated; of people living in forgotten communities and in places ravaged by war, poverty, or toxic industries.
Rather than being rewarded for what we give, we’re too often affirmed by what we take.
Solving complex problems is rarely accomplished with a silver bullet or a single approach.
With those you aim to serve or lead, your job is to be interested, to help make another person shine, not demonstrate how smart or good or capable you yourself are.
The point is this: We are the system. We decide how to define success, and we can reject purely individualistic terms.
When we dare to understand the other, we find the seeds of our best selves.
Moral leadership requires the judgment to make the right short-term compromises so as to realize the long-term change we seek.