Quotes About Empathy

Looks were nice in the beginning, but intelligence, stimulating conversation, empathy, loyalty, humility, and chemistry were the key for a relationship to go to the next level.

empathic ability, without ensuring that psychopathic tendencies didn't come along for the ride.

And you can't be told the essence of a person, anyway. That's something you have to experience

from Booker T. Washington himself: "You can't hold a man down without staying down with him.

The only time you truly become an adult is when you finally forgive your parents for being just as flawed as everyone else.

We can rarely tell others what we really think about them--not just because it would so wound them, but also because it would so wound ourselves.

We all want to fix things. Just as we all believe that so much in life can be rectified. Mend fences, build bridges, reach out, engage in mutual healing.

On that occasion Lilla provided an insight into one of the other central conundrums of our time. He said, 'You cannot tell people simultaneously "You must understand me" and "You cannot understand me".' Evidently a whole lot of people can make those demands simultaneously. But they shouldn't, and if they do then they should realize that their contradictory demands cannot be granted.

What if – Sarah asked her daughter – after choosing to transition she then felt the need to de-transition? What if having made this change she decided she didn't want it? Her daughter's response was, 'So. I'll kill myself.' While no parent should ever take such a threat lightly there does seem to be a pattern to it, as Germaine Greer had claimed much earlier.

Which leads to a question that everybody in genuinely diverse and pluralistic societies must at some point ask: 'Do we take other people at face value, or do we try to read behind their words and actions, claim to see into their hearts and there divine the true motives which their speech and actions have not yet revealed?

To speak for the people of Europe was to be on the side of the devil. And all the time there existed that strange assumption that Europe was simply letting one more person into the room. Whether that person was genuinely about to be killed in the corridor became immaterial. If he was cold, poor, or just worse off there than the people inside the room, he too had the right to come in.

You cannot tell people simultaneously "You must understand me" and "You cannot understand me".' Evidently a whole lot of people can make those demands simultaneously. But they shouldn't, and if they do then they should realize that their contradictory demands cannot be granted.

A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.

But further research has suggested that after people have gained power, they tend to behave like patients with damage to the brain's orbitofrontal lobes. That is, the experience of wealth and power is akin to removing the part of the brain "critical to empathy and socially appropriate behavior.

Limbic consonance is the little-known process through which the mood of a room changes when a happy or nervous person walks in.

Honestly, I am less concerned about gangs with guns than the woman at the end of the driveway holding a baby and asking for food." He paused, and sighed, "I don't want to be in that moral dilemma.

Human beings connect so easily, it's as if we share the same brains.

Don't just invest in ammo and electric fences, invest in people and relationships.

The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that. . . . Remind yourself that if you think you already understand how someone feels or what they are trying to say, it is a delusion. Remember a time when you were sure you were right and then discovered one little fact that changed everything. There is always more to learn.

difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values.

People almost never change without first feeling understood.

Often we go through an entire conversation – or indeed an entire relationship – without ever realizing that each of us is paying attention to different things, that our views are based on different information.

Learning that you can't control the other person's reaction, and that it can be destructive to try, can be incredibly liberating. It not only gives the other person the space to react however they need to, but also takes a huge amount of pressure off you. You will learn things about yourself based on their reaction, but if you are prepared to learn, you'll feel free from the desperate need for their reaction to go one certain way.

Paradoxically, there is also considerable persuasion power in inquiry and listening.