We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them to identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those.

The near cousin of optimism is hope: knowing the steps needed to get to a goal and having the energy to pursue those steps. It is a primal motivating force, and its absence is paralyzing.

For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when emotions hold sway.

Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

Leaders with empathy do more than sympathize with people around them: they use their knowledge to improve their companies in subtle, but important ways.

The Harvard Business Review recently had an article called 'The Human Moment,' about how to make real contact with a person at work: ... The fundamental thing you have to do is turn off your BlackBerry, close your laptop, end your daydream and pay full attention to the person.