11 Quotes by Patricia Sun

The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step.

When we don't have information, we go to the simplest outlook, to black and white. But then we have to lie to ourselves. Black is never as black as you're painting it and white is never as white.

We have magnificent brains, but we use a great deal of our brilliance to keep ourselves stuck and ignorant, to keep ourselves from not shining. We are so afraid of our beauty and radiance and brilliance because it scared the adults around us when we were children.

We mostly feel fearful because we feel powerless. We feel powerless, I contend, because of a style of thinking that splits information in two poles that makes us lose all the operative information we need to solve the problem.

You can't take sides when you know the earth is round.

There is only one thing keeping us from having heaven on earth: we can't believe it! Why? Because we don't want to be wrong - so we'll be right and make it hell!

Nothing will ensure war more certainly or entrench rivalries more seriously than for or against thinking!

We need to make judgments, of course - to observe what works and what doesn't, but not to be judgmental. Being judgmental is a form of madness that screams powerlessness and ruthlessness. When we can make good judgments and update them and not stay rigid, we come from goodwill and promote goodwill back to us.

I always say that it's much more powerful to be good than to be right. Why? Because good guides us in moving towards that which is good. Being right makes a deadlock, an enemy, and it sucks us down from expanding our perception. It also frightens the other person and makes the position more stubborn.