"Most people when asked for advice are happy to give it. This desire to help is a manifestation of the better part of human nature; it costs nothing, can be shared infinitely and will last indefinitely."

"‘I’ve come to believe that one of the most important things is to see people. The person who opens the door for you, the person who pours your coffee. Acknowledge them. Show them respect. The traditional greeting of the Zulu people of South Africa is “Sawubona”. It means “I see you”. I try and do that.’"

"She sees cultivating inner-awareness as the best way to disentangle ourselves from the artificial structures of society, so we don’t feel disempowered or helpless."

"So one related piece of wisdom he is keen to pass on is that every disaster, or seeming disaster, in life can usually be turned around and something creative can emerge from it."

"It’s the same lesson I learnt in that cell. What you have to do is live for the day, you have to say, now is life, this very moment. It’s not tomorrow, it’s not yesterday, it’s now, so you have to live it as fully as you can. Invest in every day."

"The secret, darling, is to love everyone you meet. From the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt.  Start from a position that they are lovely and that you will love them. Most people will respond to that and be lovely and love you back and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things.’"

"It is never right to look at someone successful and think “That person’s got money, that person’s got looks, that person’s good at cricket … so it’s easier for them.” Chances are, 90 per cent of the time you’re wrong. But even if it is somehow true, thinking that is a very self destructive thing. It leads only to resentment, which is corrosive and destroys everything but itself.’"

"It is the secret of art, and it is the secret of life: the more time you spend imagining what it’s like to be someone else, the more you develop empathy for others, the easier it is to know yourself and to be yourself.’"

"We have gone, at this point, into a digitalised way of life, a generation that has been clicking away forever, in environments that are sensorially deprived. And it creates a corrective need, for human contact, for face-to-face relationships, but after the digital world we can often struggle with the imperfect nature of real people."

"My interest in people, in humanity, in the way people live, whether they create a life of meaning or not, it goes back to my two parents, who are Holocaust survivors. They both spent four years plus in concentration camps and came out with nothing. All they had was themselves, their sense of decency and their relationship. That is what endured. And my dad said that was all that mattered.’"

"Ultimately at the end of your life, if people commend you, they will say what a wonderful human being you were, and when they talk about the human being that you were, it won’t be the fact that you had a big bank account, it really won’t. It will be about how you treated the people around you and how you made them feel."

"We evolved because of eating and the things around eating … when we discovered fire we moved away from eating only raw starches, our lower digestion started to shrink, our neck and therefore our larynx lengthened, which allowed us over time to start to vocalise. And that ability to communicate meant we could start to spread ideas, build up our imaginations and from that everything became possible."

"It felt like I’d gone down this rabbit hole into wonderland and I found something that fascinated me and I knew right then I wanted to be a chef.’"

"I thought, “That’s bizarre!” and then I started questioning why was it bizarre, who says ice cream has to be sweet? And
once I started questioning that, I began questioning everything. I found that thread and just kept on pulling."

"The opposite of question everything is question nothing. And if you don’t question things, there’s no knowledge, no learning, no creativity, no freedom of choice, no imagination. So I always ask why. And why not. I ask question, question, question, question. And then I listen. And that’s how I discover something new."

"There will be “Ah ha!” moments in life when a light might go on, when you think to yourself, “I MUST do that” – whatever it is. It’s not because someone says you should do it, but it’s because you feel absolutely compelled to and there would be something wrong with the world if you didn’t. If you find that light – acknowledge it. Find other people who share that passion. Cultivate it. Find that deeper purpose in your life.’"

Quotes of wisdom by Richard Reed
If I Could Tell You Just One Thing

Motivating Quotes

More Motivational Quotes:

• Gretchen Rubin

For a happy life, it’s important to cultivate an atmosphere of growth—the sense that we’re learning new things, getting stronger, forging new relationships, making things better, helping other people.
 
• Shauna Niequist

Along this passage, my life has become decidedly less impressive. It has, though, become so much more joyful, here on the inside, here where it matters only to me and to the people closest to me.
 
• David Brooks

Love depends on the willingness of each person to be vulnerable and it deepens that vulnerability. It works because each person exposes their nakedness and the other rushes to meet it.