Respect for the dignity of the human person is the foundational principle of any just society. From a Catholic perspective, it also forms the foundation of all of our Church's social teachings.

Finding common ground means reaching out with respect and aloha - despite the issues that divide us, despite the hurt, despite the fear - and recognize what unites us as human beings.

Americans, the eyes of the world are upon you. How can you expect the world to believe in you and respect your preaching of democracy when you yourself treat your colored brothers as you do?

There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.

When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a parent and the job of our church, Sunday school, and youth group.

As Americans, we're not sure we share values. We're sometimes even afraid to use the word 'values.' We talk about teaching ethics in schools - people say, 'What ethics? Whose ethics? Maybe we can't.' And they confuse that with teaching of religion.

You should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.

What I am teaching is religiousness, a quality. Religion is a dead dogma, fixed principles, frozen fossils. What I am teaching to you is a living, flowing religiousness - an experience like love.

The tension between the essence of spiritual teachings and the harmful fundamentalism that often arises in the name of religion is an issue that has engaged my mind practically as far back as I can remember.

The reason Buddhism can be so naturalised is because, stripped of its supernatural elements, its core teachings can be giving a sound, secular philosophical interpretation. In other words, it becomes a religion acceptable to the contemporary, naturalistic mind only when it ceases to be a religion.

Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, 'Be still, and know that I am God.' But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don't need to carry it around with you after you've crossed the river.

I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

Approaching people looking for something in return isn't a relationship, it's a transaction.

Each person holds so much power within themselves that needs to be let out. Sometimes they just need a little nudge, a little direction, a little support, a little coaching, and the greatest things can happen.

Teaching's hard! You need different skills: positive reinforcement, keeping students from getting bored, commanding their attention in a certain way.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

What she did was to open our eyes to details of country life such as teaching us names of wild flowers and getting us to draw and paint and learn poetry.

Teaching writing over the years intrudes on your own writing in important ways, taking away some of the excitement of poetry.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.

Coaching is a very different skill. You need patience, you need a lot of organisation. I don't have any.

Kevin McHale was a master communicator and knows how to coach stars, and that's a unique gift because you take an old-school guy that's used to coaching his way, he'd have a hard time coaching them cats now, but Kevin knows how, and he has the patience of Job.

Coaching takes patience. I'm more enthused when teaching players who want it versus when I have to.

The relation between parents and children is essentially based on teaching.