The people who are suspicious of certain things are the very ones who are the most capable of doing that of which they are suspicious. - Sydney J. Harris

If you treat someone under your control like a dolt, he will react like a dolt; treat him like an animal, and he will respond like an animal; treat him as an object of contempt, and he will become filled with a self-contempt that must sooner or later erupt in rage, hate and violence.

The core in the mystery of what we call personality resides in the individual mix between character and temperament. The most successful personalities are those who achieve the best balance between the strict demands of character and the lenient tolerance of temperament. This balance is the supreme test of genuine leadership, separating the savior from the fanatic. The human Jesus is, to my mind, the ultimate paradigm of such psychic equilibrium. He was absolutely hard on himself and absolutely tender toward others. He maintained the highest criteria of conduct for himself but was not priggish or censorious or self-righteous about those who were weaker and frailer. Most persons of strength cannot accept or tolerate weakness in others. They are blind to the virtues they do not possess themselves and are fiercely judgmental on one scale of values alone. Jesus was unique, even among religious leaders, in combining the utmost of principle with the utmost of compassion for those unable to meet his standards. We need to understand temperament better than we do and to recognize its symbiotic relationship to character. There are some things people can do to change and some things they cannot do — character can be formed, but temperament is given. And the strong who cannot bend are just as much to be pitied as the weak who cannot stiffen.

For most people read not with their minds, but with their emotions and prejudices. They read into or read out of a piece of writing what they want to. And when they disagree, it is usually not with what the writer says, but with what they imagine he said... People filter what they read through the fine strainer of their feelings and preconceptions, their prejudices and fears.