Quotes About Compassion

If we be never obliged to relieve others' burdens, but when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbor's burdens, when we bear no burden at all?

8. Resolved, To act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings, as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.

When we love on the agape level," he wrote years later, "we love men not because we like them Ã¢â'¬Â¦ but because God loves them.

You can't condemn a man for wanting peace. If you do, you condemn peace itself.

calling him "a fierce fighter and a man of peace.

It's other people make be bad, love,' I said with conviction. 'Like you, I start out holy every single morning.

If torture is permitted, it's hard to imagine what isn't.

No animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.')

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them.

We humans have an extraordinary ability to care about things beyond ourselves, to circle around those things with other people, and in the process to bind ourselves into teams that can pursue larger projects. That's what religion is all about.

There's the unusual stuff that psychopaths do—impulsive antisocial behavior, beginning in childhood—and there are the moral emotions that psychopaths lack. They feel no compassion, guilt, shame, or even embarrassment, which makes it easy for them to lie, and to hurt family, friends, and animals.

If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism [us-versus-them thinking] and turn up the sense of common humanity.

The god Krishna says: I love the man who hates not nor exults, who mourns not nor desires … who is the same to friend and foe, [the same] whether he be respected or despised, the same in heat and cold, in pleasure and in pain, who has put away attachment and remains unmoved by praise or blame … contented with whatever comes his way.33

No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself. —SENECA

There is a principle in philosophy and rhetoric called the principle of charity, which says that one should interpret other people's statements in their best, most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible.

If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.23

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.

There's more to morality than harm and fairness.

If you know what your mind is up to, and why you so easily see the world through a distorting lens of good and evil, you can take steps to reduce your self-righteousness. You can thereby reduce the frequency of conflicts with others who are equally convinced of their righteousness.

Liberal moral matrices rest on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and Fairness/cheating foundations, although liberals are often willing to trade away fairness (as proportionality) when it conflicts with compassion or with their desire to fight oppression.

Empathy is an antidote to righteousness

When we dehumanise and demonise our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them. NELSON MANDELA

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. (MATTHEW 7:3–5)

acts like a kind of reset button: it makes people forget themselves and their petty concerns.