Quotes About Empathy

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love, especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on, we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them, held their hand, looked in their eyes, been there.

Psychopaths, rather than having an impairment in recognizing the emotions of others, indeed have a talent for it. And that the problem lies not in emotional recognition per se, but in the dissociation between its sensory and affective components: in the disconnect between knowing what an emotion is and feeling what it's like.

With his immaculately coiffured blond locks and his impeccable cut-glass accent, he looks, and sounds, like a dab hand. 'People are as nice as you make them,' he enunciates. 'Which gives you a heck of a lot of power over them, of course.

The most prolific and accomplished hunters were not the most bloodthirsty and indefatigable. They were the most cool and empathetic. They were the ones who were able to assimilate their quarry's mind-set--to see through the eyes of their prey and thus reliably predict its deft, innate trajectories of evasion.

Sadistic serial killers feel their victims' pain in exactly the same way that you or I might feel it. They feel it cognitively and objectively. And they feel it emotionally and subjectively, too. But the difference between them and us is that they commute that pain to their own subjective pleasure.

College kids today are about 40 percent lower in empathy than their counterparts of twenty or thirty years ago," Konrath reports.

Reading a book carves brand-new neural pathways into the ancient cortical bedrock of our brains. It transforms the way we see the world. Makes us, as Nicholas Carr puts it in his recent essay 'The Dreams of Readers', 'more alert to the inner lives of others'. We become vampires without being bitten. In other words, more empathic. Books make us see in a way that casual immersion in the Internet, and the quickfire virtual world it offers, doesn't.

Their analysis revealed that a number of psychopathic attributes were actually more common in business leaders than in so-called disturbed criminals--attributes such as superficial charm, egocentricity, persuasiveness, lack of empathy, independence, and focus--and the main difference between the groups was in the more "antisocial" aspects of the syndrome: the criminals' lawbreaking, physical aggression, and impulsivity dials were cranked up higher.

Leer un libro va tallando senderos neuronales totalmente nuevos en el antiguo lecho de roca cortical de nuestro cerebro. Transforma la manera que tenemos de ver el mundo. Nos hace más alerta a la vida interior de los demás.

We become vampires without being bitten—in other words, more empathic.

College kids today are about 40 per cent lower in empathy14 than their counterparts of twenty or thirty years ago,' Konrath reports. More worrying still, according to Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University,15 is that, during this same period, students' self-reported narcissism levels have, in contrast, gone in the other direction. They've shot through the roof.

The Buddha said everything starts with thoughts; that we speak and act based on thoughts; that our words and actions turn into habits—or addictions; and that those habits shape our character into something inflexible. So, he says, "Watch the thought and its ways with care, and let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings…. As the shadow follows the body, as we think, so we become." This

Now smile a real smile for me so I know you`re not suffering inside.

As she wove in and out of all the people - rushing, talking, eating, laughing; some in clumps, some alone - she realized that no one, no one at all in the airport, or on the entire planet for that matter, knew her thoughts, knew what she was carrying inside her head and heart. And at that very minute, what was inside her head and heart made her feel as though there was no one else in the whole world she would rather be.

What do you do when you are really, really sad?" When you are full of dread, is what she really meant. Godbee exhaled through her nose, making a whistling sound. "Hmm. When I`m genuinely suffering I try to think of someone worse off than I am. And then, if it happens to be someone I know and I`m feeling particularly saintly, I try to do something nice for him or her.

We must think beyond ourselves

Don't treat people as bad as they are. Treat them as good as you are.

Learn how to learn from those you disagree with or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.

Listening well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them "Is there more?" until there is no more.

Anger is not the proper response to anger. When you see someone angry you are seeing their pain. Compassion is the proper response to anger.

Instead of asking your child what they learned today, ask them who they helped today.

You can reduce the annoyance of someone's stupid belief by increasing your understanding of why they believe it.

Before you are old attend as many funerals as you can bear and listen. Nobody talks about the departed's achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.

The purpose of listening is not to reply, but to hear what is not being said.