“Trainers use humor to point out negative behaviors in ways that teach rather than preach. Mediators tell us that the right joke, or the right moment of levity, can reduce tensions to the point that two adversaries can sit down at the table to consider the possibility of agreement. So why does humor work? Because it shatters preconceptions at the moment when people are forming new perceptions—about their work, their spouse, or life itself. Laughter is a release; it is a moment of sheer pleasure. And in our world of tension and turmoil, the belly laugh is a physical escape valve. Choosing the humor is another matter. We live an era of the put-down, the snide aside, the searing retort. These comments do have their place, but all too often they make us laugh at someone else’s expense. Good humor, nourishing humor for example, enables us to laugh at ourselves for being human. It serves as a window into our souls.”
“Anger closes the mind and cools the heart when both are need most”
“Character is doing the right thing when no-one is watching.”
“After thinking long and hard about what life will be like when we die, I’m convinced that so much is dependent on our life now and on our state of mind at the moment of death. To prepare yourself for that inevitable journey you must begin to take responsibility for all that you are in this life, to look at your life with clarity and assess it with truth. It seems that our delusions about what life holds for us in the hereafter arise from our delusions about who we are in the here and now. If we can accept that we are already spirit beings living in a spirit realm, we can accept that death is not so much a journey to a different world but to a different state of mind.”
“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.”
“Laughter is good for thinking because when people laugh,
it is easier for them to admit new ideas to their minds.”
“Women and girls hardly ever fight the world’s wars, but they often suffer the most. Increasingly, they are the direct targets of fighting, when sexual violence is deliberately used as a tactic of warfare. And yet fewer than 10 percent of the people who negotiate peace deals are women, and only about three dozen individuals have been convicted and jailed by international war crimes tribunals for committing or commanding widespread sexual violence. Sexual violence in conflict is NOT inevitable. It can be stopped.”
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”