Quotes About Compassion

one, because it treats every human life as having equal value rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic.

After all, other mammals fight to stay alive, appear to experience pleasure, and undergo pain, fear, and stress when their well-being is compromised. The great apes also share our higher pleasures of curiosity and love of kin, and our deeper aches of boredom, loneliness, and grief. Why should those interests be respected for our species but not for others?

Imagine the tragedy; then try to imagine it another million times. That's a quarter of the number of children who did not die last year alone who would have died had they been born fifteen years earlier.

The God of the Hebrew Bible, ever merciful, told the first woman, "I will multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.

Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind.

legítimas, rápidas, justas, moderados y humanas diferencian sus consejos de la retórica de la mano dura contra la delincuencia preferida por los políticos de derechas.

Those who condemn modern capitalist societies for callousness toward the poor are probably unaware of how little pre-capitalist societies of the past spent on poor relief. It's not just that they had less to spend in absolute terms; they spent a smaller proportion of their wealth. (2010s USA would be considered uber-socialist to 1960s USA).

A]s moral philosophers through the ages have pointed out, a philosophy of living based on "Not everyone, just me!" falls apart as soon as one sees oneself from an objective standpoint as a person just like others. It is like insisting that "here," the point in space one happens to be occupying at the moment, is a special place in the universe.

Quienes condenan a las modernas sociedades capitalistas por su insensibilidad hacia los pobres probablemente ignoran lo poco que las sociedades precapitalistas del pasado invertían en el alivio de la pobreza.

in support of the idea that moral progress is compatible with a biological approach to the human mind and an acknowledgment of the dark side of human nature. 3

Those who condemn modern capitalist societies for callousness toward the poor are probably unaware of how little the pre-capitalist societies of the past spent on poor relief.

The first piece of wisdom they offer is that misfortune may be no one's fault.

In that regard we are different from our ancestors of a few centuries ago, who approved, carried out, and even savored the infliction of unspeakable agony on other living beings. What were these people feeling? And why don't we feel it today?

we enjoy the peace we find today because people in past generations were appalled by the violence in their time and worked to reduce it, and so we should work to reduce the violence that remains in our time.

Darwin's words, "If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.

From the point of view of morality, it is not important everyone should have the same. What is morally important is that each should have enough."6

A quantitative mindset, despite its nerdy aura, is in fact the morally enlightened one, because it treats every human life as having equal value rather than privileging the people who are closest to us or most photogenic

For one thing, empathy can subvert human well-being when it runs afoul of a more fundamental principle, fairness. Batson found that when people empathized with Sheri, a ten-year-old girl with a serious illness, they also opted for her to jump a queue for medical treatment ahead of other children who had waited longer or needed it more. Empathy would have consigned these children to death and suffering because they were nameless and faceless.

So not just vengeance, but also forgiveness and contrition, are necessary for social organisms

A humanistic morality rests on the universal bedrock of reason and human interests: it's an inescapable feature of the human condition that we're all better off if we help each other and refrain from hurting each other.

The overall picture that has emerged from the study of the compassionate brain is that there is no empathy center with empathy neurons, but complex patterns of activation and modulation that depend on perceivers' interpretation of the straits of another person and the nature of their relationship with the person.

Yet it would be mad to suppose that Sally is not better off, and positively depraved to conclude that one may as well not try to improve Seema's life because it might improve her neighbors' lives even more and leave her no happier.

Sympathy, recall, tends to be expressed in communal relationships, the kind that are also accompanied by guilt and forgiveness. Anything that creates a communal relationship, then, should also create sympathy.

I've seen hatred and I have seen love. And love is more powerful.