More Thoughts About Philanthropy


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

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