A Quote by Bernie Siegel

I grew up caring about people and I would say again, that's what made me who I am. I became a doctor for what I like to call "healthy reasons." Not because I'm fascinated by the human body or want to understand death, but I like people and I want to help them. That also became my problem, because I couldn't help everyone, I couldn't fix everyone.
People see everything through a filter of them, of their own selves. And it's like, you can't be depressed because somehow that has something to do with me. And it's like - no, it doesn't. This is my brain. This is my body. These are my emotions. It's got nothing to do with you. You don't want me to get help for whatever reason you don't want me to get help. But I'm out here, and I need to get help.
I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone, and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful.
It is rather more noble to help people purely out of concern for their suffering than it is to help them because you think the Creator of the Universe wants you to do it, or will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it. The problem with this linkage between religion and morality is that it gives people bad reasons to help other human beings when good reasons are available.
I want to give something to the world that I feel I missed out on as a child, and I want to help people of all races, ethnicities, and orientations understand that no matter what differences we may think we have, everyone is a human, and everyone deserves to be respected and valued.
I believe that I am transgender to help people understand differences. It allows me to gain perspective, to be more accepting of others, because I know what it feels like to know you're not like everyone else.
Gaga and Stefani are my nicknames. I guess when people meet me for the first time and call me Stefani, it bothers me. Because it's something that's reserved for only the people who are closest to me. It's not because I don't like my given name; it's that I became somebody else. I became somebody else for a reason, you know. This is part of what my message is - you can become whoever you want to be, to escape your past.
I've never made a penny being a doctor, so that makes it not a job. My sense of a doctor is that one is a presence caring for health. So I'm never not a doctor. People call me from all over the world who are hurting, and I care for them. Chatting is what more people want than anything.
When I go in to see people - and I sell an occasional ad now - I never say, 'Help me because I am black' or 'Help me because I am a minority.' I always talk about what we can do for them.
Oh, my god. I'd be a terrible doctor. I don't like to touch other people. There's a lot of gruesome stuff in my line of work to feel or to admit. I'm sure everyone's expecting me to say "proctologist," but actually no, I don't want to be a proctologist. Probably want to be a dentist, because you don't have to touch much of the other person's body, just their face or mouth.
I don't want people who are in poverty, in pain, or suffering, to suffer because it's for their own good and they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I want to help them. I want us all to help them.
I help tons of people through their sobriety and getting help, but not because I have lived it but because I love them, care about them, and want them to live their best lives possible. If I can help anyone through that, then that it is my honor.
We have to understand in order to be of help. We all have pain, but we tend to suppress it, because we don't want it to come up to our living room. the most important thing is that we need to be understood. We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us, then we will suffer less, but everyone is suffering, and no one wants to listen. We don't know how to express ourselves so that people can understand. because we suffer so much, the way we express our pain hurts other people, and they don't want to listen.
As a doctor, when I was minister of health and would go somewhere, little girls would come up to me and say, 'I want to be like you one day, I want to be a doctor.' Now, they tell me, 'I want to be president just like you.' All of us can dream as big as we want.
I don't really want acknowledgement or want people to pat me on the back or whatever. I just want to help the people I feel like I can help and if there's an opportunity where I feel like I can help, I do it.
I think guilt is the biggest problem in America, people are always feeling guilty about being themselves. You can't say what you want because it's not politically correct. You can't look like you want because you, the people at the office aren't going to like you and so on.
Some people are embarrassed to say they came from East St. Louis, Ill., but now more people want to claim it. I grew up in a community center and I knew what it gave me. I always knew I wanted to give back and help people because people helped me.
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