I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you.
Conan O’Brien’s ‘Tonight Show’ Farewell Speech 
In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.
Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl                                   
Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.
George Sand
…nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.
Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
…whatever love you can get and give, whatever happiness you can filch or provide, every temporary measure of grace, whatever works. And don’t kid yourself. Because its by no means up to your own human ingenuity. A bigger part of your existence is luck, than you’d like to admit. Christ, you know the odds of your fathers one sperm from the billions, finding the single egg that made you. Don’t think about it, you’ll have a panic attack.
Larry David, Whatever Works
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘try to be a little kinder’
Aldous Huxley
I was helpless in trying to return people’s kindness, but also helpless to resist it. Kindness is a scarier force than cruelty, that’s for sure. Cruelty isn’t that hard to understand. I had no trouble comprehending why the phone company wanted to screw me over; they just wanted to steal some money, it was nothing personal. That’s the way of the world. It made me mad, but it didn’t make me feel stupid. If anything, it flattered my intelligence. Accepting all that kindness, though, made me feel stupid.

Human benevolence is totally unfair. We don’t live in a kind or generous world, yet we are kind and generous. We know the universe is out to burn us, and it gets us all the way it got Renee, but we don’t burn each other, not always. We are kind people in an unkind world, to paraphrase Wallace Stevens. How do you pretend you don’t know about it, after you see it? How do you go back to acting like you don’t need it? How do you even the score and walk off a free man? You can’t. I found myself forced to let go of all sorts of independence I thought I had, independence I had spent years trying to cultivate. That world was all gone, and now I was a supplicant, dependent on the mercy of other people’s psychic hearts.
Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape
When we talk about values, I think of rationality in solving problems. That’s something I value. Fairness, kindness, generosity, tolerance.
Bill Maher
Let us be kinder to one another.
Aldous Huxley, on his deathbed
Just because an animal is large, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t want kindness; however big Tigger seems to be, remember that he wants as much kindness as Roo.
A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
When you are kind to someone in trouble, you hope they’ll remember and be kind to someone else. And it’ll become like a wildfire.
Whoopi Goldberg
Maybe you don’t like your job, maybe you didn’t get enough sleep, well nobody likes their job, nobody got enough sleep. Maybe you just had the worst day of your life, but you know, there’s no escape, there’s no excuse, so just suck up and be nice.
Ani Difranco
Adventure is a path. Real adventure - self-determined, self-motivated, often risky - forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind - and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.
Mark Jenkins
To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.
What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.
And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Howard Zinn
One kind word can warm three winter months.
Japanese Proverb