Empathy lies in our ability to be present without opinion.

Behind intimidating messages are simply people appealing to us to meet their needs.

In these long-standing conflicts, I find that most cases it gets resolved in about twenty minutes after each side can tell me the needs of the other.

Peace requires something far more difficult than revenge or merely turning the other cheek; it requires empathizing with the fears and unmet needs that provide the impetus for people to attack each other. Being aware of these feelings and needs, people lose their desire to attack back because they can see the human ignorance leading to these attacks; instead, their goal becomes providing the empathic connection and education that will enable them to transcend their violence and engage in cooperative relationships.

Once you have access to key people in an organization, if you go into a meeting with enemy images of those people - then you are not going to connect.

When we are angry, killing people is too superficial.

Every moment each human being is doing the best we know at that moment to meet our needs. We never do anything that is not in the service of a need, there is no conflict on our planet at the level of needs. We all have the same needs. The problem is in strategies for meeting the needs.