“What we see is never raw reality, pure as spacetime — what we see is our interpretation of reality, filtered through the lens of our experience and our conditioned worldview. Always, the way we look at things shapes what we see; often, the lens we mistake for a magnifying glass turns out to be a warped mirror — we see others not as they are but as we are. (We know this the way the human animal best understands anything — by turning selfward: We all know that horrible, hollowing feeling of being seen by another not as we are but as they are, being achingly misunderstood and misinterpreted in our motives and the core of our being.)

It is a service to reality to see with greater charity of interpretation. It is a service to other human beings to look at them, confused and self-concerned as they may be, with the eyes of love and to resist for as long as possible letting the cataract of judgment occlude our view.

To place the wish to understand above the wish to be right — and to see, with Thich Nhat Hanh, that ‘understanding is love’s other name’ — that is the greatest gift we can give one another.”

— Maria Popova

“You must get an education. You must go to school, and you must learn to protect yourself. And you must learn to protect yourself with the pen, and not the gun.”

― Josephine Baker