Quotes About Compassion

Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.

He walked down the corridor, lined with his soldiers, who looked at him with love, with awe, with trust. Except Bean, who looked at him with anguish. Ender Wiggin was not larger than life, Bean knew. He was exactly life-sized, and so his larger-than-life burden was too much for him. And yet he was bearing it. So far.

And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for a place where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time.

Aw, Poke, you poor, kind, decent, stupid girl. You saved me and I let you down.

Carn Carby left, and ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

I'll go from world to world until I find a time and place where you can come awake in safety. And I'll tell your story to my people, so that perhaps in time the can forgive you, too. The way that you've forgiven me.

Don't judge me until you understand me. You can't understand me if you've already judged me.

Eko brushed a tear from her eye, and Immo jeered at her, but father held up a hand. Never mock a tender heart, he said.

When you walk on the face of a world, then forgiveness comes.

Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

And then the queen wept with all her heart. Not for the cruel and greedy man who had warred and killed and savaged everywhere he could. But for the boy who had somehow turned into that man, the boy whose gentle hand had comforted her childhood hurts, the boy whose frightened voice had cried out to her at the end of his life, as if he wondered why he had gotten lost inside himself, as if he realized that it was too, too late to get out again.

Poke had never shared out so many raisins, because she had never had so many to share. But the little kids wouldn't understand that. They'd think, Poke gave us garbage, and Achilles gave us raisins. That's because they were stupid.

The world is full of grief - to the exact degree we allow ourselves to love other people. (Mazer Rackham)

You can deny any sacrifice by claiming that it made the sufferer feel so good to do it that it really wasn't a sacrifice at all, but just another selfish act.

Compassion is what you're good at. I'm better at complex searches through organized data structures.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.

If there were no goodness in people, mankind would still be confined to loping across a Savannah somewhere on Earth, watching the elephants rule, or some other more compassionate species.

The highest beings of all are the ones who are willing to pay any personal cost for the good of those who need them.

Those eyes had seen people weep, and had cared, and had hurt them again anyway. It's a look that no human eyes should ever have.

I'm not one to despise other people for their sins. I haven't found one yet, that I didn't say to myself, I've done worse than this.

Once you understand what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

Maybe it isn't based on what you deserve. Maybe it's based on what you need.

Never mock a tender heart.

If you could make them feel as you can make me feel, then perhaps they could forgive you.