Fred Rogers

Love isn't a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, here and now.

Source: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, Fred Rogers, 2003

Genuine Fred Rogers. The 'active noun like struggle' formulation is distinctive and is consistently attributed to him; it appears in the authorized posthumous collection The World According to Mister Rogers (2003). Rogers used the line earlier in his own writings and talks, so 2003 is where it appears in print rather than necessarily its first utterance. Common variant ends 'right here and now' rather than 'here and now'.

Wikiquote

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

Source: The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember, Fred Rogers, 2003

Authentic Fred Rogers. He told the 'look for the helpers' story repeatedly - on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, in interviews, and in print - and the Fred Rogers Center has affirmed it as genuinely his. It appears in the 2003 collection 'The World According to Mister Rogers,' which is the citation I recall, though the story predates that book in his broadcast work. Wording in circulation is stable.

Wikiquote