Quotes About Empathy

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with "lost" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

I liked animals better than people. That's one of the reasons I wanted to be a vet - then I found out that every pet had a person that owned 'em.

I was never one who sought to make the small man tall by cutting off the legs of a giant. I wanted to drag no man down to my size. Only to preserve a way of life which might make it possible for me, one day, to elevate myself until I at least partly matched his size.

When I was a kid - 10, 11, 12, 13 - the thing I wanted most in the world was a best friend. I wanted to be important to people; to have people that understood me. I wanted to just be close to somebody.

I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.

Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel.

I thought Mia Hansen-Love was a true auteur, and I always wanted to work with her. Mia's empathy for her characters and her ability to use the language of cinema to communicate real human depth is extraordinary. She's a humanist.

When I did 'Babe' I wanted to talk about animal rights without going through some convoluted justifications about using animal products.

All I wanted with that film was to represent the possibility that there might be normal people who are Muslim or Arab with the same fears, responsibilities, hopes.

People say it's not ambitious, but it is actually quite ambitious wanting to help people.

Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

Parading our own brilliance and exulting in other people's errors is not very nice. For that matter, even wanting to parade our own brilliance and exult in other people's errors is not very nice, although it is certainly very human.

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.

I wanted to give people that feeling of wanting to hug the TV and just admit that you're unhappy.

I'm definitely not above wanting to be liked. Because, I mean, that feels less... lonely? But to be honest, because it was never my dream, I live quite a pressure-less existence, y'know. And of course, that's not true, but it's partly true.

Perhaps all human interaction is about wanting and getting.

It wasn't about mechanics; it was about a feeling, wanting to give someone something, which in turn was really gratifying. That really resonated for me.

I remember being in New Orleans after Katrina hearing people calling, 'Help me,' and wanting to slide down in the seat of my car because it felt like I was invading their suffering. But I also know that our being there gave them a voice.

I complained to my mother about wanting to look less like myself and more like my friends. My mother then gave me a lesson in embracing my differences and loving them despite what others said.

When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get.

This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for it to change; and the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn't have.

I just feel such a connection to the little kids in Naples. I remember being on the street wanting a small piece of candy.

Wanting to be understood by an audience that didn't know Russian, I tried to paint musical pictures by emphasizing the phrasing, using voice color more boldly, and varying the shade and nuance.