Distinctive human qualities of a great person:
Sympathy & Compassion:
One of the most important of all human qualities is sympathy. Right from our school days, we are taught to be sympathetic and compassionate towards others. Sympathy for others would mean sharing one’s feeling of sorrow. Being sympathetic towards a person in a difficult time would mean to lend the emotional support needed during that time. Everyone, indeed, has a claim to kindness and compassion, no matter what class or community he may belong to. "Those whose hearts are devoid of mercy for others, will not obtain the mercy of God."
Kindness:
Kindness is one of the human qualities that better reflects the human essence, because a kind person is essentially good, benign and benevolent. Sometimes it is related to amiability. It is the inclination to do good, and it implies affection towards fellow men, condescension, understanding towards the others. Kindness, generosity, mercy, sympathy, peace, disinterested goodwill, scrupulous fairness, and truthfulness towards all creation in all situations nourishes noble qualities from which only good may be expected.
Empathy:
Having empathy for others is a great human quality you can have. Showing empathy towards a person would require you to be open minded and compassionate enough to experience the pain of what somebody else is going through. To instill this quality in you, you would need to let go of your own selfish needs and pay attention to someone else’s suffering as if it were your own. This great human quality would help you to establish a deeper connection with people who really need your love and support.
Justice:
To stand out firmly against any injustice and be witness to fair dealing. Not to allow the hatred of others to make you swerve to do wrong and depart from justice. To stand for justice even if it is against yourself or your family and not to follow your desires in matters of justice. To be just when you are giving people their rights and not to commit mischief and corruption. To be a just person and to fight injustice is therefore great piety.
Patience & Perseverance:
We should not let our emotions get the better of us. It is certainly difficult for a person to look at the tragedies of the world today and not feel helpless and sad. But one must be patient and not fall into despair or hopelessness. We must continue to do good deeds, and stand as witnesses for justice and truth.
Trust:
To love someone is to trust someone. The more you develop the ability to trust people, the more complete you would feel. Having faith in a person and building up the trust between people would surely give a whole new meaning to one’s life. Often in this rat race, we lose our ability to trust people for our own personal fears.
Morality:
To be a good human being you would also need to have your sense of morality intact. However, this is yet another quality which is often forgotten in our daily lives. To have the quality of morality would make you capable of distinguishing between what is good and evil. It is about practicing the right ethics in your personal as well as professional life. Having your sense of ethics intact would always make you a more responsible human being.
Humility:
Humility is not only a great quality in humans, but also a virtue. Humility means being humble towards others no matter the proportions of your wealth or your achievements. A humble person is known by the greatness of his/her acts in helping people rather than harping about materialistic achievements in life. A humble person is rarely arrogant and contemptuous. They are courteous and respectful of others, and will be modest about their own wealth and accomplishments. They understand that they are only one part of a larger whole and should therefore not place any great emphasis on themselves.
Forgiveness:
To forgive someone’s mistake would take a lot of courage and open mindedness from your side. Forgiveness towards others for their selfish and hurtful acts, which may have hurt you, is a very fine human quality one can have. To forgive such people would give you complete peace of mind instead of nurturing ill feelings towards that particular person. Besides, if a person asks for forgiveness, it would always be better to forgive a person to keep you happy from within.
Persistence:
This is the ability to keep going. Too many people fail because they stop before they get to the finish line. A persistent person only stops when their goal or commitment is achieved. The ability to keep on going against challenging odds, to never quit even when it gets hard to follow through, and reaching the glory of a journey completed with great respect for one’s intentions.
Being an Inspiration to Others:
Becoming an inspirational person requires acknowledgment of your own talents, skills, and worth in this world. You will need to be someone who is willing to beat a path that may be rarely trodden but you will shine the way and show others how things can be done, and usually for the better. Being inspirational is about speaking to other humans from your heart, so that no matter how many people you touch in your life, each of them will come away thinking about your verve for life, your energy, and your faith in their ability to be great too.
What people have said about Gareth Peirce:
The Independent Profile
- The man who first hired Peirce when she became a solicitor in the 1970s – Benedict Birnberg – believes nothing less than that Peirce has "transformed the criminal justice scene in this country almost single-handedly".
- Her personal style is characterised by a modesty bordering on asceticism, according to one of her neighbours in the north London street where she lives with her American husband Bill. They have two grown-up sons, and between work and home, Peirce has had little scope for much else.
- In a rare interview last year in The Marxist, the magazine of the Marxist Party, she hinted at the passion that drives her work when she spoke of the need for "instinctive, reactive, imaginative work in criminal defence, responding to a state which has unlimited resources to prosecute". She also admitted that "the work I do is almost always financed by Legal Aid or it is not financed at all; it is without remuneration." While other lawyers enjoy an affluent lifestyle thanks to high fees, Peirce lives in a modest, Victorian terrace in need of a lick of paint.
- Peirce herself is not like that. In fact the intensity of her dedication to her clients' causes is matched only by her determination to keep out of the limelight. The idea of the glory-seeking lawyer is anathema to her, no matter that, metaphorically speaking, her trophy cabinet is full to bursting. She hated being portrayed in the film version of the Guildford Four story. She refuses to be interviewed. "She is not one to blow her own trumpet," says Deborah Coles of the legal pressure group, Inquest. "She is driven by her clients' interests." Peirce would see any action that might be interpreted as self-promotion as inconsistent with that aim. Even the way she presents herself reveals a desire for anonymity; her face is framed by long hair, severely parted down the middle, a style that has never changed over the years. Her clothes are plain, functional, and never memorable.
- Her desire to avoid the limelight has had an effect on those around her, many of whom aren't prepared to talk about her even off the record. Yet the power she imparts is of an unobtrusive kind. "She comes in with her view, and nothing's going to change it," says one barrister. "She's very firm, but quiet and unassuming." Benedict Birnberg speaks of her "enormous persistence and incredible attention to detail. You only win cases like those Peirce takes on by spending hours of concentrated time on them. She's the most prodigious worker I've ever met."
- The writer Sir Ludovic Kennedy, a lifelong campaigner against miscarriages of justice, dedicated his last book, Thirty-Six Murders and Two Immoral Earnings, to Ms Peirce as "doyenne of British defence lawyers". He told the Guardian: "She is the most impressive by far and away. Once she has taken up a case, which she comes to believe in, what is impressive about her is her certainty that an injustice has occurred. It's never on the one hand, on the other. And she expresses that certainty in such convincing terms. She never wants publicity for herself. It's for what she does. She almost wants to be invisible."
- Johnny Walker, one of the Birmingham Six, said: "She is just unbelievable. She is the salt of the earth, a brilliant person. I remember we were shot down on one of our appeals shortly before Christmas. She came up to Long Lartin prison to visit us on Christmas Eve. I told her she should have been with her own family. But she said, 'You are part of my family now.' We didn't know what to say ... not only do you become a client of Gareth but a personal friend."
- Her attitude towards "the establishment" remains ambiguous. Six years ago she accepted a CBE for "services to justice", but later wrote back declining the honour. "It was not my intention to accept it and, through undoubtedly my own error, it was included in the list," she later explained to the Times.
- Deborah Coles of the group Inquest, which supports relatives at coroners' courts, described her as "the voice for some of the most powerless and disadvantaged in society". Jane Winter of British Irish Rights Watch calls her a hero, who "often comes at cases from an unusual angle ... a lateral thinker ... tremendously modest".
- Ms Christian, the solicitor who has fought cases alongside her, said: "She is 105% on the side of her client. She has huge empathy with people. She knows the importance of having proper evidence ... and she knows the way governments have tried to convict people by association and ideas rather than criminal activity."
- Estella Schmidt, who is organising the demonstration next week at Downing Street on behalf of the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, praises Ms Peirce's dedication. "She has given all her time. I have never seen her not working from 8am to 9pm and sometimes much later."
- "For over 30 years, she has worked in an area where the most vulnerable are often facing the full might of the state," says her colleague, Dame Helena Kennedy QC. Among her clients have been the Tipton Three, the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four, former spy David Shayler, and Jean Charles de Menezes's family. "She specialises in representing pariahs of society," says Moazzam Begg. "I know because I'm one of them."
- Begg tells me that some of the Arabic-speaking detainees she has represented in the last nine years call her al-Umm. "In Arabic, 'al-Umm', which means mother, can signify the greatest. She's organised rotas with people in her office for babysitting so men on control orders can go to hospital. Sympathy is the word that comes to mind. She genuinely cares.
