We’ve collected more thought-provoking quotes about philanthropy. Let’s start with Bob Hope.
If you haven’t got any charity in your heart, you have the worst kind of heart trouble.
- Bob Hope
Charity begins at home but should not end there.
- Sir Francis Bacon
A gift is pure when it is given from the heart to the right person at the right time and at the right place, and when we expect nothing in return.
- The Bhagavad Gita
The manner of giving is worth more than the gift.
- Pierre Corneille
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
- Albert Pike
Philanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind.
- Henry David Thoreau
Charity looks at the need and not at the cause.
- Jewish Proverb
Every dollar makes a difference. And that’s true whether it’s Warren Buffet’s remarkable $31 billion pledge to the Gates Foundation or my late father’s $25 check to the NAACP.
- Michael Bloomberg
It is every man’s obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
- Albert Einstein
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself… Serve and thou shall be served.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
- Maya Angelou
I would rather have it said, ‘He lived usefully,’ than, ‘He died rich.’
– Benjamin Franklin
Help thy brother’s boat across and lo! thine own has reached the shore.
– Hindu Proverb
Being kind to others is a way of being good to yourself.
- Rabbi Harold Kushner
Do your givin’ while you’re livin’… then you’ll be knowin’ where it’s goin’.
- Ann Landers
The Levels of Tzedakah (Charity)
Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant
Giving when neither party knows the other’s identity
Giving when one knows the recipient’s identity, but the recipient doesn’t know the donor’s identity
Giving when one does not know the recipient’s identity, but the recipient knows the identity of the donor
Giving before being asked
Giving after being asked
Giving less that one should, but giving it cheerfully
Giving begrudgingly
– Moses Maimonides
I was trained from the beginning to work, to save. I have always regarded it as a religious duty to get all I could honorably and to give all I could.
- John D. Rockefeller
As I started getting rich, I started thinking, ‘what the hell am I going to do with all this money?’… You have to learn to give.
– Ted Turner
If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
– Booker T. Washington