Respect quotes
743 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all others, charity."
"Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery."
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
"Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."
"Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something."
Quote collection
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"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
"I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence."
"This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect."
"I am not going to respect... gray hairs unless there is wisdom beneath them."
"We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves."
"Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy."
"Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose."
"Let us develop respect for all living things. Let us try to replace violence and intolerance with understanding and compassion. And love."
"Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized."
"Respect is not fear and awe; it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me."
"Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power."
"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love."
"No one is happy unless he respects himself."
"I believe in human beings, and that all human beings should be respected as such, regardless of their color."
"A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone."
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
"The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself."
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence."
"If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself - as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation - you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality."
"This will be the day when we shall bring into full realization the dream of American democracy - a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few."
