At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.
—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850Quotes
Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.
—The Upanishads, c. 800 BCChildren are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984Strangers are an endangered species.
—Adrienne Rich, 1980Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
—George Bernard Shaw, 1903No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.
—Woodrow Wilson, 1915There is no foreign land; it is the traveler only that is foreign.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883Nothing 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, 1909If 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, 1625It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for a while their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.
—Maya Angelou, 2011All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac, 1949