Quotes & Sayings About Treating Others Better Than Yourself

To eat in a monastery refectory is an exercise in humility; daily, one is reminded to put communal necessity before individual preference. While consumer culture speaks only to preferences, treating even whims as needs to be granted (and the sooner the better), monastics sense that this pandering to delusions of self-importance weakens the true self, and diminishes our ability to distinguish desires from needs. It's a price they're not willing to pay. — Kathleen Norris

You can choose better relationships, better jobs, better places to live, better uses of your time and better ways of treating yourself. — Bryant McGill

There is nothing better than hearing that there is a drug that will fix a terrible problem, unless you also hear that the drug is for treating schizophrenia (or possibly that it kills fairies every time you take it). — Jenny Lawson

The principals are quite simple. We can love people who treat us well. We cannot love people who treat us badly because, treating someone badly is not a virtue and we can only love virtue. I don't think that's controversial. I mean, there is no marriage therapist that I can imagine in the world who would say to a woman being beaten, humiliated, verbally abused, or completely ignored by her husband, "You just need to love him more. You need to work at making him happier." That would be sadistic in the extreme to say to someone.
So, in the same way I say, if anyone, I don't care if they are your priest, god, father, mother, or your Siamese twin cousin coming out of your elbow or ass. I don't care. If someone is treating you badly, that is not good for you. The solution is not you being so great that you both become better. That's not a realistic solution. — Stefan Molyneux

Above all, it seems to me wrongheaded and dangerous to invoke historical assumptions about environmental practices of native peoples in order to justify treating them fairly ... By invoking this assumption [i.e., that they were/are better environmental stewards than other peoples or parts of contemporary society] to justify fair treatment of native peoples, we imply that it would be OK to mistreat them if that assumption could be refuted. In fact, the case against mistreating them isn't based on any historical assumption about their environmental practices: it's based on a moral principle, namely, that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate or exterminate another people. — Jared Diamond

Think we would understand misogyny and violence against women even better if we looked at the abuse of power as a whole rather than treating domestic violence separately from rape and murder and harassment and intimidation, online and at home and in the workplace and in the streets; seen together, the pattern is clear). — Rebecca Solnit

hurt your feelings, and then observe how they react (this naturally assumes that you yourself are treating them respectfully). If it's a psychopath, don't expect a lot of understanding. At best they may say "that's nothing to get hung up about!", which means that they take no responsibility and don't feel bad about it at all. But they may also get angry and say much worse things to you - but then at least you know what kind of person they are. If they on the other hand apologize, and you feel genuine understanding, love, compassion and empathy, that's a good sign! The most important thing however, is how they act from then on. Are they more considerate? Did they change for the better? Or was it no more than a false excuse to end your "nagging" for the moment? — Jonas Warstad

(On being in a position of leadership) Even if it's your dog, you've got authority over somebody. Start treating him better. — Joyce Meyer

Moral science is better occupied when treating of friendship than of justice. — Thomas Aquinas

My doctor said, for want of a better word, now that we've got medicines out here that can help, let's put you on one of them and say we're treating MS. — Teri Garr

We have made some great strides in terms of treating various types of cancer with early detection. The success rate of recovery for many people today is better than it was a decade or two ago so we can't give up. Yes, we would all love a quick "cure all" but that is not reality. Until then, we all are in this together and we have to keep working towards more progress! — Eva LaRue

Society as a whole is better off when information is available to the public. Whether you are talking about how to prevent disease, or about who does the best job of treating disease, it is useful to provide as much information to the public as possible. — Dave Obey

A society that could finally feed everyone, not just a chosen few; that could relieve the poverty and misery of even the weakest and least productive of its members; that recognized the sovereignty of the individual and his rights, and agreed to leave him alone to pursue his own ends; that put a premium on treating others with kindness and deference rather than disdain and exploitation; and, finally, that a society that recognized that it was better to do business with other nations than to try to conquer them, was not one on the verge of tyranny, but just the opposite. These were the conditions of modern liberty. — Arthur Herman

If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn't pass it around. Wouldn't be doing anybody a favor. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't say embrace trouble. That's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say, meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a terrible mistake to let drive and ambition get in the way of treating people with kindness and decency. The point is not that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself. — Robert Solow

If the way you've been treating me is a mark of fondness, maybe you'd better take a fresh look at your interpersonal communication skills. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

You're going to make your lip bleed, biting it like that," he said.
"I'm feeling ... kind of nervous."
"I can see that. Would it help if I held your hand?"
I shook my head vigorously.
No, it would make things worse, you idiot! Quite apart from the fact that I'm at a total loss to understand the way you're treating me now, anyway! Not to mention our relationship in general. What's more, Mr. Whitman is looking at us like some kind of know-it-all squirrel!
I almost groaned aloud. Would I feel any better if I told him any of what I was thinking? I thought about doing just that for a moment, but I didn't. — Kerstin Gier

As computer intelligence gets better, what will be possible when we interface our brains with computers? It might sound scary, but early evidence suggests otherwise: interfacing brains with machines can be helpful in treating traumatic brain injury, repairing spinal cord damage, and countless other applications. — Bill Maris

Recognizing and respecting differences in others, and treating everyone like you want them to treat you, will help make our world a better place for everyone. Care ... be your best. You don't have to be handicapped to be different. Everyone is different! — Kim Peek

Men are not born equal in themselves, so I think it beneath a man to postulate that they are. If I thought myself as good as Sokrates I should be a fool; and if, not really believing it, I asked you to make me happy by assuring me of it, you would rightly despise me. So why should I insult my fellow-citizens by treating them as fools and cowards? A man who thinks himself as good as everyone else will be at no pains to grow better. On the other hand, I might think myself as good as Sokrates, and even persuade other fools to agree with me; but under a democracy, Sokrates is there in the Agora to prove me wrong. I want a city where I can find my equals and respect my betters, whoever they are; and where no one can tell me to swallow a lie because it is expedient, or some other man's will. — Mary Renault

Net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently - say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes. — Marvin Ammori

If you want your life to come together, you have to start treating yourself better. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong. — Thomas Hardy

There is no evidence that suggests women are naturally better at caring for children ... with the fact of child-bearing out of the centre of attention, there is even more reason for treating girls first as human beings, then as women. — Margaret Mead

Little value comes out of the belief that people will respond progressively better by treating them progressively worse. — Eric Harvey

There is no cure for emphysema, but you can start treating it and have a better quality of life. — Loni Anderson

When I think back, I get mad at what they did to those poor men. Ernie must have had PTSD - they called it shell shock - and the doctors told him to keep it all bottled up inside. They didn't know any better, but it was like treating syphilis with candy bars. — Anita Diamant

WORTH IT?
It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [ ... ]
It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [ ... ]
The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that. — Simon Blackburn

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether? — William James

Set the tone for your day be treating people better than you expect to be treated by them. Be the first to smile. Express your appreciation for them. Expect the best out of them. If you act first, you will set yourself up for success. — John C. Maxwell

By contrast with history, evolution is an unconscious process. Another, and perhaps a better way of putting it would be to say that evolution is a natural process, history a human one ... Insofar as we treat man as a part of nature
for instance in a biological survey of evolution
we are precisely not treating him as a historical being. As a historically developing being, he is set over against nature, both as a knower and as a doer. — Owen Barfield

If a child stays quiet in the context of extroverted friends, or even prefers time alone, a parent may worry and even send her to therapy. She might be thrilled - she'll finally get to talk about the stuff she cares about, and without interruption! But if the therapist concludes that the child has a social phobia, the treatment of choice is to increasingly expose her to the situations she fears. This behavioral treatment is effective for treating phobias - if that is truly the problem. If it's not the problem, and the child just likes hanging out inside better than chatting, she'll have a problem soon. Her "illness" now will be an internalized self-reproach: "Why don't I enjoy this like everyone else?" The otherwise carefree child learns that something is wrong with her. She not only is pulled away from her home, she is supposed to like it. Now she is anxious and unhappy, confirming the suspicion that she has a problem. — Laurie A. Helgoe