Quotes About Empathy

What's the point of being better than someone else?

but unless Western populations can rise to the level of Egyptians they're going to remain victims.

NC: You're right, but I think it tells you something very interesting about Western culture. When they went to the concentration camps and were appalled, they did not say, "Let's save the survivors"; they said, "Let someone else pay for saving the survivors." IP: Exactly.

Global warming has an abstract feel. Who understands the difference between 1.5ºC and 2ºC (2.7ºF and 3.6ºF respectively)—in contrast to having food to put on the table for your children tomorrow?

If the traditional victims see matters somewhat differently, that merely reveals their moral and intellectual backwardness. And

Now I know I've got a heart because it is breaking. - Tin Man

I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I just can't believe I'm here without her."- on losing her best friend

Helen is one of those people who never say anything, not because she's shy but because she's learned—in a way I always mean to—that if you don't say anything, you make people far more nervous and self-conscious and careful around you than if you do. People like me, we just rush into the vacuum of silence people like Helen float around in; we blather and dither and yakyakyak, and people like Helen just sit there and smile into the wind.

Show me a woman who cries when the trees lose their leaves in autumn and I'll show you a real asshole.

Men … I hate them. I've always hated them. You wonder why I always hang around with women and never with men, it's because men do things like this.

Vera looked at me, and her eyes filled with tears. She does this sometimes, especially when I'm being hateful and difficult; she responds by having all the feelings I'm refusing to have. Now she reached over and took my hand, and we both began to cry.

it takes two people to hurt you," I said. "The one who does it and the one who tells you.

I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I can't believe I'm here without her.

Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.

Try flying any plane with a baby if you want a sense of what it must have been like to be a leper in the fourteenth century, but try the shuttle for the ultimate in shunning. All those men in suits, looking at you as if your baby is going to throw up over their speech drafts; all those men in suits who used to look at me with respect when I pulled out my American Express gold card, now barely able to conceal their contempt for me and my portable Wet Ones.

Try flying any plane with a baby if you want a sense of what it must have been like to be a leper in the fourteenth century.

I almost felt sorry for myself. But it was time for lunch.

Everyone needs] a woman who'll listen, take your side, tell the truth - or not, as you need it. A woman you can count on, no matter what, and who'll love you no matter how much you screw up.

But when two people feel something, they ought to respect that enough to figure it out

Why don't you put your ego down for a while, Justin. It must be getting heavy.

Courage comes in different forms. There's strength--that's the muscle. But love's the heart. When you put them together, you can do anything.

Couples take care of each other, Clare, that's what makes them a couple. And couples tell each other when something happens that scares them.

I think those who have impact and influence over us are often unaware.

Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them?