Quotes About Empathy

Denver had taught me that to love a man enough to help him, you have to forfeit the warm, self-righteous glow that comes from judging.

I cannot see into a person's heart to know his spiritual condition. All I can do is tell the jagged tale of my own spiritual journey and declare that my life has been the better for having followed Christ.

The more I learned, the more I hated the Man and wanted to right the wrongs of Louisiana's modern-day slave masters. I sang Denvery's story like a songbird to anyone who would listen. Then one day, a thought hit me like a right cross to the head: My own granddaddy had not been so much different from the Man. Fairer, yes. An honest and decent man in the Texas of his day. But the wages he paid were still no excuse for the pitiful way we treated the folks who worked his land.

Maybe my mission wasn't to analyze them, like some sort of exotic specimens, but just to get to know them.

I have learned that even with my $500 European-designer bifocals, I cannot see into a person's heart to know his spiritual condition. All I can do is tell the jagged tale of my own spiritual journey and declare that my life has been the better for having followed Christ.

Art teaches something we all need to learn, especially about people who are different from ourselves: "To see things the way they truly are, sometimes you have to look more deeply.

Looking back now, I mourn the mutual wounds inflicted in verbal battles with the "unsaved". In fact, I have chosen to delete that particular term from my vocabulary as I have learned that even with my $500 European-designer bifocals, I cannot see into a person's heart to know his spiritual condition. All I can do is tell the jagged tale of my own spiritual journey and declare that my life has been better for having followed Christ.

A man of principles," Jesse said. "People say that about themselves when really they only want to make you unhappy.

deepened with time. Nowadays I am often the veteran on the set. I try to be conscious of the effect that my words and actions have on the people with whom I'm working, mindful of how one single comment could affect someone's life trajectory . .

No one will ever again by my enemy, no matter how hard they try to frighten and intimidate me. No government will ever teach me to hate another human being.

Good books that often I would hate to finish because they took me into their lives and let me out of mine, for a while anyway.

You have to learn to look at someone you truly adore through eyes that really aren´t your own. It´s as if a person has to become another person altogether to be able to take a hard look. Good people protect people they love, even if that means pretending that everything is okay.

Silence is sometimes the only way to share the unsharable.

The longer you wait and put off the nice things you should do on a regular basis, the harder it is to do them, until finally you have to force yourself to be nice, to be thoughtful, and it isn't easy, because you're embarrassed about not having done those easy, nice things in a natural kind of way. Also, the people who you're nice to come to expect your regular niceness. That's it in a nutshell.

Respect is like air. As long as it's present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it's all that people can think about. The instant people perceive disrespect in a conversation, the interaction is no longer about the original purpose—it is now about defending dignity.

Governments are determined to dehumanize the enemy. Yet it is difficult for soldiers to forget their own humanity once they look into the eyes of the enemy they're directed to fight.

am quite sure that (bar one)II I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.

Too many of the mentally ill in our country live under conditions of atrocity. Storytelling

We can choose between the future and the past, between reason and ignorance, between true compassion and mere ideology.

Dare we care at all about current fashions if that means reducing our ability to help hungry neighbors? How many more luxuries should we buy for ourselves and our children when others are dying for lack of bread?

But some actors I have met possess an intelligence that I can only dream of. It's about character, it's about behavior. They understand things about people that I simply don't see.

A lawyer's empathy for her client deepens when she realizes that she has only seen the last couple of phases of his decline. How hard it must his initial adjustment have been to his loss of freedom?

But it can get so lonely, talking to yourself." my son, Owen, finally says. "You have to live in the world." Ron Suskind ~ Life, Animated

The key is to put your outrage in a place where you can get it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you're asked to explain new ideas or explain what you observed two people who share none of your experiences.