Quotes About Empathy

How can we bridge the gap between... African-American males and white cops?

I'm a white, middle-aged, married, middle-class male with kids. I couldn't be disenfranchised if I tried.

I'm a white, middle-class male who had a happy childhood in Ohio. The world does not need me to be a novelist.

I don't think any of us that are white can ever fully understand what it's like to be a black person in America today.

As a person of color, I was trained from very early on to see 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Gilligan's Island,' or 'Hamlet' and look beyond the specifics of it - whether it be silly white people on an island or a family living in Nowheres or a Danish person - to leap past the specifics and find the human truths that have to do with me.

We say Black lives matter, but a lot of white folks don't know Black folk.

I tend to look for the good in bad people and the bad in good people, to make them human. 'Cause I don't think that people generally are that black and white. Maybe in movie-land they can be... but that isn't necessarily all there is.

White folks, no matter how well-meaning or open-minded, have no true idea what it's like to be black in America. That's not a slam against white people or an accusation of latent bigotry. But the fact is that we all live in an Anglo-dominated society.

When you're not engaged in the day-to-day struggles that everybody feels, you slowly start losing touch. And I think it's important for the people in the White House to have a finger on the pulse.

To the families of special needs children all across this country I have a message for you: for years you have sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters, and I pledge to you that if we're elected, you will have a friend, an advocate, in The White House.

Pick somebody who knows what it's like to live on an average income and to deal with the problems that most Americans face. Pick somebody who's traveled this country and who will remember who put him in the White House - not to be a king but to be a public servant.

In his 4 years in the White House, President Carter worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.

'What I would give,' I thought, 'to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective.'

I guess there were things about the Obamas I discovered that I do think are universal to marriage. I found it very interesting in my reporting that their most difficult periods in the White House almost never seemed to coincide. When one was down, the other one was holding it together. In my experience, that's true of marriage generally.

With Ronald Reagan in the White House, somebody had to look out for those who were not so fortunate. That's where I came in.

I feel like I don't hit the radio button ever - or not enough, even on the good stuff. I do shout some stuff when I'm mad at myself, but I'm pretty good about not hitting the radio button.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that hurt people hurt people, and kindness is just as contagious. So if you can focus your efforts on engineering kindness, it will prevail.

Besides all this, if you are idle, and take to bad courses, you will hurt those of your brethren who are slaves, and do all in your power to prevent their being free.

At the end of the day, we're just trying to prevent each other from going mad.

I hope that anyone facing or experiencing discrimination will, first of all, take to heart that this is not their fault, and they are not alone in this. Secondly, I hope they find ways to plug into communities to help prevent negative feelings of discrimination from festering.

I believe in preventing cruelty to all living beings in any form.

It is insufficient to say that my experience as a bully haunts me. Rather, my experience as a bully has been fundamental to the creation of my conscience, because it is what prevents me from making the basic human claim that I am a good person.

Meeting Marta, who she is as a person, and hanging out with her, seeing her watch my fight, screaming and cheering for me, being proud of me the same way I am proud of her, that's priceless. It was really cool. I never imagined that.

Oh my God, my girlfriends are everything to me. They celebrate with you, they cry with you, they hold you when you need to be held. They laugh with you. They're mean with you! They're always there, and it's just a priceless thing to have.