Hugh Prather People Quotations

Letting people in is largely a matter of not expending the energy to keep them out.

Before, I thought I was actually fighting for my own self-worth; that is why I so desperately wanted people to like me. I thought their liking me was a comment on me, but it was a comment on them.

Very seldom will a person give up on himself. He continues to have hope because he knows he has the potential for change. He tries again - not just to exist, but to bring about those changes in himself that will make life worth living. Yet people are very quick to give up on friends, and especially on their spouses, to declare them hopeless, and to either walk away or do nothing more than resign themselves to a bad situation.

When someone disagrees with me, I do not have to immediately start revising what I just said. People don't want me to always agree with them. They can sense this is phony. They can sense I am trying to control them: I am agreeing with them to make them like me. They feel; "I don't want to exist to like you. I DON'T exist to like you."

We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don't -- and those feelings are probably realistic.

There were seventy-five people in the lobby and only a seven-year-old girl was finding out what it felt like to sit on the Marble Floor

Some people will like me and some won't. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I'll know that the people who like me, like me.

Love, the magician, knows this little trick whereby two people walk in different directions yet always remain side by side....