Welcome to our collection of quotes about respect - self-respect and respect for others - and about how that plays a key factor in all our social relationships. We hope you enjoy pondering them, please share widely, and we wish you a perfectly respectable day!

One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say.

--Bryant H. McGill

We do not covet anything from any nation except their respect.

--Winston Churchill

Respect depends on reciprocity.

--Nyang Proverb

A person that does not value your time will not value your advice.

--Orrin Woodward

Nothing resembles selfishness more closely than self-respect.

--George Sand

It is mutual respect which makes friendship lasting.

--John Henry Newman

The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them.

--Steve Hall

When we love and respect people, revealing to them their value, they can begin to come out from behind the walls that protect them.

--Jean Vanier

He who loves others is constantly loved by them. He who respects others is constantly respected by them.

--Mencius

If men are to respect each other for what they are, they must cease to respect each other for what they own.

--A.J.P. Taylor

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

--Hunter S. Thompson

Most good relationships are built on mutual trust and respect.

--Mona Sutphen

Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human.

--John Cogley

Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.

--Leo Tolstoy

Respect depicts acceptance while disrespect is rejection.

--Fawad Afzal Khan

Renunciation is dropping the fear, anger, respect, and disrespect but continuously radiating unconditional love for everyone.

--Amit Ray

A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.

--Criss Jami

What goes around, comes around.

--Willie Nelson

Shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal, and the withholding of affection damage the roots from which love grows. Love can only survive these injuries if they are acknowledged, healed and rare.

--Brené Brown

If you do not respect your own wishes, no one else will. You will simply attract people who disrespect you as much as you do.

--Vironika Tugaleva

Treat people the way you want to be treated. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given.

--Hussein Nishah

Nothing of real worth can ever be bought. Love, friendship, honour, valour, respect. All these things have to be earned.

--David Gemmell

Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained. Loyalty is returned.

--Unknown Author

You can demand courtesy but you have to earn respect.

--Lawrence Goldstone

Respect requires empathy, the capacity to anticipate and understand the feelings of others. It requires consideration.

--Deborah Norville

Politeness is a sign of dignity, not subservience.

--Theodore Roosevelt

Tolerance only for those who agree with you is no tolerance at all.

--Ray Davis

The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.

--William Hazlitt

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

--George Bernard Shaw

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn.

--Andre Gide

You should show some respect for what other people see and feel, even though it be the exact opposite of what you see and feel.

--Luigi Pirandello

Men are respectable only as they respect.

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

A lack of boundaries invites a lack of respect.

--Unknown Author

Only those who respect the personality of others can be of real use to them.

--Albert Schweitzer

You should respect each other and refrain from disputes; you should not, like water and oil, repel each other, but should, like milk and water, mingle together.

--Gautama Buddha

An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

--Martin Luther King Jr.

If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

--Fyodor Dostoevsky

What women want is what men want. They want respect.

--Marilyn vos Savant

This is the final test of a gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible value to him.

--William Lyon Phelps

Respecting someone indicate the quality of your personality.

--Mohammad Rishad Sakhi

Give to every other human being every right that you claim for yourself.

--Thomas Paine

Respect a man, he will do the more.

--James Howell

Respect is how to treat everyone.

--Richard Branson

Longer Version:

Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.


Respect is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.

--Annie Gottlieb

Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

--Mahatma Gandhi

If we could learn to like ourselves, even a little, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.

--John Steinbeck

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.

--Michel de Montaigne

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

--Henry Waxman

Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue.

--John Herschel

Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

--Will Durant

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

--Winston Churchill

Every human being, of whatever origin, of whatever station, deserves respect. We must each respect others even as we respect ourselves.

--U Thant

The great thing in the world is not so much to seek happiness as to earn peace and self-respect.

--Thomas Huxley

Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.

--Tecumseh

I look for these qualities and characteristics in people. Honesty is number one, respect, and absolutely the third would have to be loyalty.

--Summer Altice

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

--Samuel Johnson

The biggest ingredient in a best friend is someone whose actions you respect and who you can truly be yourself around.

--Renee Olstead

Life is short, and we should respect every moment of it.

--Orhan Pamuk

Awe and respect are two different things.

--Oliver Reed

Respect is what we owe; love, what we give.

--Philip James Bailey

The first duty of love is to listen.

--Paul Tillich

There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.

--Nathaniel Branden

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

--Napoleon Hill

My approach is that you have to earn the respect of people you work with.

--Mark Pincus

Someone once told me that if you respect a person, listen to their opinion. And if you do not respect someone, then do not listen to their opinion. And that works both ways.

--Maisie Williams

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

--Michel de Montaigne

I respect myself and insist upon it from everybody. And because I do it, I then respect everybody, too.

--Maya Angelou

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

--Martin Luther King Jr.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

--Martin Luther King Jr.

Longer Version:

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools. Because of our involvement in humanity we must be concerned about every human being.


Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

--Malcolm X

Treat everyone with respect and kindness. Period. No exceptions.

--Kiana Tom

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

--Louis D. Brandeis

I firmly believe that respect is a lot more important, and a lot greater, than popularity.

--Julius Erving

If you have some respect for people as they are, you can be more effective in helping them to become better than they are.

--John W. Gardner

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.

--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Responsibility and respect of others and their religious beliefs are also part of freedom.

--Horst Koehler

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

--George Bernard Shaw

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

--Friedrich Nietzsche

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

--Frederick Douglass

Longer Version:

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence. From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace.


The people I respect most behave as if they were immortal and as if society was eternal.

--E.M. Forster

When you practice gratefulness, there is a sense of respect toward others.

--Dalai Lama

I respect only those who resist me, but I cannot tolerate them.

--Charles de Gaulle

Knowledge will give you power, but character respect.

--Bruce Lee

To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.

--Bono

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

--Billy Graham

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

--Abraham Joshua Heschel

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