Most important thing for people

Always has been and always will be love.

Compassion.

i agree with the above two.  love and compassion.  i would like to add empathy and inner peace.  tolerance of all cultures and religions. 

Gezebel ~

But don't you think that love encompasses all those other things?  Maybe not inner peace.  That comes from being loved though.

All of the above four answers are good ones.  Before I read them I was thinking that other people are the most important to the vast majority of people.  That includes all our friends, loved ones, associates, etc.  Almost all of us care about other people and that certainly includes love, compassion, and empathy, all of which lead to inner peace. 

As a Christian I think of Jesus' two great commandments which are love of God and love of neighbor.  For me, love of neighbor means loving all my family, friends, etc. as well as all the suffering people around the world.  I also believe that love of neighbor includes tolerance for their various different cultures and religions even if they are far different from mine.  We cannot love people if we cannot tolerate their culture or religion, and that is something Christians have often failed to do.  So the "short answer" really is "love" as Skitch said because love in its fullest sense encompasses all of the others.   

I would have to agree with everyone else that love is the most important.

" And now abideth faith, hope, charity(Love), these three; but the greatest of these is charity(Love)."

Let's go back a few pages to Macedonioan Greek (not Classical Greek).

The word is Agapao.  It means "The love of God."  The sort of love God shows to us all, and we should show to others. 

It is the toughest sort of "tough love" to those who can understand nothing else, and the gentlest sort of "soft care" to those who so desperately need it.

Agapao is also love in the Quaker sense of intimate concern: we care enough about others to make reasonable accommodation to the mess that they have been through, and reasonable obedience to God's commandment to "Love one another as I have loved you."  So said Jesus.

Love has no limits.  Read the Love Chapter (1 Cor 13:--) 

As our boys and girls fight with unrelenting fury in Afghanistan and Iraq, remember that they fight to subdue the devil.  Gulf War 1 proved that cowards tyrannize the sick and helpless, shoot their casualties in the field rather than care for them, and murder non-combattants with insane glee.  Gulf War II proves that the devil is not all that easy to subdue but we will in time subdue him. 

We see false prophets claiming that they have a better way than belief in Christ but they always fall away in humiliating discredit once their cutesypie little tricks come to light. 

We see atheists fearing that others might not march to war if they do what is right and believe what is true, so that explains away the biased fraud of leftist-atheist hypocrisy.  We eventually come to our senses and accept the truth, if we are smart enough to do so. 

An arrogant tentmaker named Saul of Tarsus went that way.  Arrogant pharisee that he was, he tortured and murdered Christians by the hundreds, until he found out that he was acting amiss.  We now call him the Apostle Paul.  He was brass worth the casting.

Simon (called Peter) was iron worth the working.  He started out disobedient also but after he denied Christ three times, he returned to the true Faith.  Christ built his Church on that rock called Peter.  We now have love in the world because of Christ, and Peter put the matter to record before anyone else did.

The world desperately needs love, but no one will ever have one shreed of love as long as the atheist purveyors of hate play deceitful games, hoping to spread rebellion that shall only result in genocide, extortion, bloodshed, and psychotic madness.

Are you listening, Rodders/Skitch?  We're caling you out.  Answer, if you have a case against love.

Fletcher ~

I was the first one to answer on the page.  As you can see, I have nothing against love.