Quotes About Empathy

The command to love our enemies reminds us that our first task towards oppressors is pastoral: to help them recover their humanity. Quite possibly the struggle, and the oppression that gave it rise, have dehumanised the oppressed as well, causing them to demonise their enemies. It is not enough to become politically free; we must also become human. Nonviolence presents a change for all parties to rise above their present condition and become more of what God created them to be.

Friendships across the world make near neighbours of far horizons.

I don't really know why I care so much. I just have something inside me that tells me that there is a problem, and I have got to do something about it. I think that is what I would call the God in me.

Whenever someone does you a wrong or speaks ill of you, remember that he is doing what he thinks is proper. He can't possibly be guided by what appears right to you, but only by what appears right to him. So if he sees things wrongly, he is the one who is hurt, because he is the one who has been deceived. . . . Starting from this reasoning, you will be mild toward whoever insults you. Say each time, "So it seemed to him." Epictetus, Enchiridion

Our criticisms of others therefore have a side benefit. They provide an unintentional glimpse at what is ugliest within us.

You could never know what transpired beneath another's skin.

Each patient ought to feel somewhat the better after the physician's visit, irrespective of the nature of the illness.

How can anybody hate nurses? Nobody hates nurses. The only time you hate a nurse is when they're giving you an enema.

If you can't imagine you could be wrong, what's the point of democracy? And if you can't imagine how or why others think differently, then how could you tolerate democracy?" As

Keith Yamashita says companies can try to find their cause by asking, What does the world hunger for?

Contextual inquiry is about asking questions up close and in context, relying on observation, listening, and empathy to guide us toward a more intelligent, and therefore more effective, question.

All women's issues are to some degree men's issues and all men's issues are to some degree women's issues because when either sex wins unilaterally both sexes lose.

Throughout my life I have always been amazed that people couldn't listen to other people, that they couldn't hear their best intent, that there seemed to be an enormous need to demonize.

After Petty's therapist heard the song "Wildflowers," he asked who the singer was addressing. "I told him I wasn't sure," Petty says. "And then he said, 'I know. That song is about you. That's you singing to yourself what you needed to hear.' It kind of knocked me back. But I realized he was right. It was me singing to me.

The author Karen Blixen once said, "All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them." But what if a person can't tell a story about his sorrows? What if his story tells him?

In the same degree that we overrate ourselves, we shall underrate others.

How easy is it for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him, and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles.

If, however, I can by any lucky chance, in these days of evil, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sorrow, if I can now and then penetrate through the gathering film of misanthropy, prompt a benevolent view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow beings and himself, surely, surely, I shall not then have written entirely in vain.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

My madness is my love towards mankind.

I wasn't ready to feel as bad as I did. I'd never felt so lonely.

A tough hide with a tender heart is a goal that all leaders must have.

Arguing is really saying, "If you were really more like me, then I could like you better.