• Everything brings me back to compassion.
• Role models remind us of what one person can achieve. Person who is compassionate draws people like a magnet. People were drawn to the Buddha. Anyone who puts in a regimen of compassion can become such a person (a person that people are drawn to).
• Compassion is tough. It requires that you put yourself on the backburner. Socrates said that dialogue is about opening your heart and receiving dialogue.
• Need to make place for another. Need to practice compassion all day and every day. It’s not that you do something and say, “that was my good deed for the day,” and then go back to living lives of spite and compassion.
• Have to be able to have your own mind changed. Socrates said that at the point that you can say you know nothing, you are wise.
• We act so omniscient. We say “she does this, because..” But in reality, you have no idea!
• Mustn’t identify with your opinions, that is your ego speaking. Socrates told us to open our mind and listen to the other person. We need to empty our minds and forget what you think that you know. Go into dialogue willing to be changed. Fight for cause, but be willing to change your mind.
• There is no good in speaking with spite and anger.
• A spot of time is something you go back to and drink from. Similar with an unkind word.
• To become a sage is hard work.

~Karen Armstrong, Toronto Reference Library, Jan 17th 2011