Quotes About Empathy

In the eeriest way possible, I suddenly had a glimpse of what white people must go through at a dinner table when they are trying to prove that Negroes are not subhuman. I had almost said, after all, Well, take my friend Mary, and very nearly descended to a catalogue of those virtues that gave Mary the right to be alive. And in what hope? That Elijah and the others would nod their heads solemnly and say, at least, Well, she's all right - but the others!

Yet, hope—the hope that we, human beings, can be better than we are—dies hard; perhaps one can no longer live if one allows that hope to die. But it is also hard to see what one sees. One sees that most human beings are wretched, and, in one way or another, become wicked: because they are so wretched.

He could not endure being very far from me for very long. I was the only person on God's cold, green earth who cared about him, who knew his speech and silence, knew his arms, and did not carry a knife.

I dropped my brick and went to him. In a moment I heard his fall. And at moments like this I felt that we were merely enduring and committing the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder.

what was the point, the purpose, of my salvation if it did not permit me to behave with love toward others, no matter how they behaved toward me?

Sometimes you were here all day long and you read or you opened the window or you cooked something - and I watched you - and you never said anything - and you looked at me with such eyes, as though you did not see me. All day, while I worked to make this room for you.

White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want.

We've got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other's only hope.

I missed the way the dark face closes, the way the dark eyes watch, the way the dark face opens and lights up the room.

A few years ago, I would have hated these people with all my heart. Now I pitied them, pitied them in order not to despise them. And this is not the happiest way to feel toward one's countrymen.

There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one's head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. You ought to have some apprehension that the man you see before you was once even younger than you are now and arrived at his present wretchedness by imperceptible degrees.

Birden Giovanni'nin beni neden istediÄŸini, neden bu son s???na??na getirdiÄŸini anlad?m. Bu oday? y?kacak, Giovanni'ye yeni ve daha iyi bir yaÅŸam armaÄŸan edecektim. Bu yaÅŸam ancak benim kendi yaÅŸam?m olabilirdi ve Giovanni'nin yaÅŸam?n? deÄŸiÅŸtirebilmesi için benim yaÅŸam?m?n da bu odan?n bir parças? olmas? gerekecekti.

I've never come across any shame down here, except shame like mine, except the shame of the hardworking black ladies, who call me Daughter, and the same of proud Puerto Ricans, who don't understand what's happened—no one who speaks to them speaks Spanish, for example—and who are ashamed that they have loved ones in jail.

It is a terrible, an inexorable, law that one cannot deny the humanity of another without diminishing one's own: in the face of one's victim, one sees oneself.

and Rufus realized that he had not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy.

The distance between us, and I had never thought of this before, was that they did not know this, and I now dared to realize that I loved them more than they loved me. And I do not mean that my love was greater: who dares judge the inexpressible expense another pays for his life? who knows how much one is loved, by whom, or what that love may be called on to do? No, the way the cards had fallen meant that I had to face more about them than they could know about me, knew

but the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain.

White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this—which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never—the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed. People

We cannot be free until they are free.

Then Leona surprised him. "You talking about that boy? He's just bored and lonely, don't know no better. You could probably make friends with him real easy if you tried." He laughed. "Well, that's what's the matter with most people," Leona insisted, plaintively, "ain't got nobody to be with. That's what makes them so evil. I'm telling you, boy, I know.

Judgment," she said, "has nothing to do with love.

Well,' she said, 'you may not be a stranger now. But you were once and I'm sure you will be again — many times.

I am sure that if any of the girls we whistled at that day had shown any signs of responding the ocean would not have been deep enough to drown our shame and terror.

Whoever debases others is debasing himself. That