Quotes About Compassion

That's what empathy does—it calls us all to task, the conservative and the liberal, the powerful and the powerless, the oppressed and the oppressor. We are all shaken out of our complacency. We are all forced beyond our limited vision.

how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

I realized that abiding by his rules would cost me little, but to him, it would mean a lot. I recognized that sometimes he really did have a point, and in that insisting on getting my own way all the time without regard to his feelings or needs, I was in some way diminishing myself. ...In one form or another, it is what we all must go through in order to grow up.

there are people in the world who think only about themselves. They don't care what happens to other people so long as they get what they want. They put other people down to make themselves feel important. "Then there are people who do the opposite, who are able to imagine how others must feel, and make sure that they don't do things that hurt people.

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit.

inexhaustible...our capacity to exempt from mercy those who look different or pray to a different God.

The idea that our common humanity mattered more than our differences was stitched into my DNA.

Barack Obama

Kyle was a good kid; he still cared about something. Would that be enough to save him?

Like any value, empathy must be acted upon.

not just Dr. King but John Lewis and Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. In their heroic efforts—going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs—I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up.

What an amazing gift to help people, not just yourself.

I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people — and this is accelerated by social media — there is this sense sometimes of: 'The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people, and that's enough.'" He added: "If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far. That's easy to do.

If people can learn to hate they can learn to love.

Thanks for sticking with this," Axe said, his voice choked up. I put my arm around him, feeling my own emotions swell. "This is why we do the work," I said. "This. Right here.

If we won, it would mean that I wasn't alone in believing that the world didn't have to be a cold, unforgiving place, where the strong preyed on the weak and we inevitably fell back into clans and tribes, lashing out against the unknown and huddling against the darkness

Duty compels us to care about people that we will never meet.

I don't distinguish between struggling with the world and struggling with myself . . . I enter a pact with other people, other forces in the world, that their problems are mine and mine are theirs . . . The minute others imprint my senses, they become me and I must deal with them or else close part of myself off and make myself and the world smaller, lukewarm.

En el mundo hay personas que solo piensan en ellas mismas. Les da igual lo que les pase a los demás, con tal de conseguir lo que quieren. Menosprecian a los demás para sentirse importantes. Y también hay gente que hace lo contrario, que es capaz de imaginar lo que sienten los demás y se esfuerza por evitar hacerles daño.

To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.

You can strive to be first in service, first in love.

Making Compassionate Decisions: The Role of Empathy in Decision Making READING TIME: 19 MINUTES "The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

In their heroic efforts—going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch counters, and marching to freedom songs—I saw the possibility of practicing the values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others down but by lifting them up. This was true democracy at work—democracy not as a gift from on high, or a division of spoils between interest groups, but rather democracy that was earned, the work of everybody.