Quotes About Empathy

We do as we have been done by.

Despite the mayhem that followed, Bruno found that he was still holding Shmuel's hand in his own and nothing in the world would have persuaded him to let go.

He looked down and did something quite out of character for him: he took hold of Shmuel's tiny hand in his and squeezed it tightly. "You're my best friend, Shmuel," he said. "My best friend for life.

Maybe there were no villains in my mother's story at all. Just men and women, trying to do their best by each other. And failing.

only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all.

Very slowly he turned his head back to look at Shmuel, who wasn't crying anymore, merely staring at the floor and looking as if he was trying to convince his soul not to live inside his tiny body anymore, but to slip away and sail to the door and rise up into the sky, gliding through the clouds until it was very far away.'' -The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

J)ust because your version of normal isn't the same as someone else's version doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you.

But still there are moments when a brother and sister can lay down their instruments of torture for a moment and speak as civilized human beings and Bruno decided to make this one of those moments.

The job of parents is to model. Modeling includes how to be a man or woman; how to relate intimately to another person; how to acknowledge and express emotions; how to fight fairly; how to have physical, emotional and intellectual boundaries; how to communicate; how to cope and survive life's unending problems; how to be self-disciplined; and how to love oneself and another. Shame-based parents cannot do any of these. They simply don't know how.

Giving and receiving unconditional love is the most effective and powerful way to personal wholeness and happiness.

And what I'm conscious of now is of being part of a family. We don't have to explain anything to each other, we understand without words. And I am noting now, amidst my grief, that the men are sipping whisky and the women are sipping sherry.

A recent study found that non-abused six- to fourteen-month-olds who showed disregard for others' distress were significantly more likely to be antisocial as adolescents.

For me, the laws that apply to animals apply to us. And in that view of life, there is grandeur enough.

Are humans ever really capable of regarding others as ends in themselves?

to have beliefs different from ours.

Human beings are the unequivocal world champions of niceness. We act kindly not only toward people who belong to our own social groups or can reciprocate our generosity but also toward strangers thousands of miles away who will never know we helped them. All around the world, people sacrifice their resources, well-being, and even their lives in the service of others.

seminary students in a rush were far less likely to help a stranger than were seminary students who weren't late, in the experiment performed by John M. Darley and Dan Batson).

It's an illusion to believe that you can be happy when no one else is. Or that other people will not be affected by your unhappiness.

Narcissistic leaders. The ultimate weapon of mass destruction is a state. When a state is taken over by a leader with the classic triad of narcissistic symptoms—grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy—the result can be imperial adventures with enormous human costs.

We'd be unfeeling, unconscious zombies if we did.

If you're not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

The cartoonist Jules Feiffer, contemplating the communication problem in a nonindustrial context, has said, "Actually, the breakdown is between the person and himself. If you're not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

It is not a case we are treating; it is a living, palpitating, alas, too often suffering fellow creature.

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.