There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866Quotes
If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.
—Terence, 163 BCLet the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.
—Horace Walpole, 1745Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.
—The Upanishads, c. 800 BCI want to be the white man’s brother, not his brother-in-law.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962Strangers are an endangered species.
—Adrienne Rich, 1980Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655