Quotes About Empathy

If you can't empathize with Charlie Brown, you likely lack an ability to empathize with any fictional character. Here is a child continually humiliated for desiring nothing more than normalcy - the opportunity to kick a football, the aptitude to fly a kite, the freedom to walk down the sidewalk without having a random acquaintance compare his skull to a block of lumber.

If you aspire to be truly open-minded, you can't just try to see the other side of an argument. That's not enough. You have to go all the way. Over

As of the writing of this particular book, I have 43 "close friends,"* 196 "good friends,"** and 2,200 "affable acquaintances."*** *These are people I would phone immediately if I was diagnosed with lung cancer. ** These are people whose death from lung cancer would make me profoundly sad. *** These are people I would generally hope would recover from lung cancer.

So this, I suspect, is where we really begin: In any situation, the villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least.

A ten-year-old boy doesn't want a hyper-dexterous giant to choke, just as a ten-year-old girl doesn't feel good when Britney Spears has a nervous breakdown on live TV. Only an adult can feel good about someone else's failure.

The matter forever, you have to matter to those who don't care.

If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of a different color, or women, please do this one favor for us—leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records.

The damaged loves the damaged.

Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.

If we can forgive what's been done to us . . . If we can forgive what we've done to others . . . If we can leave all of our stories behind. Our being villains or victims. Only then can we maybe rescue the world.

Rant would tell people: 'You're a different human being to everybody you meet.

You can't fool people into loving you.

You only ask people about themselves so you can tell them about yourself.

Do you know why most survivors of the Holocaust are vegan? It's because they know what it's like to be treated like an animal.

There are a lot of things we don't want to know about the people we love.

Without animals, there would be no humanity. In a world of just people, people will mean nothing . . .

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.

And it's funny how when somebody saves you, the first thing you want to do is save other people. All other people. Everybody. The kid never knew the man's name. But he never forgot that smile. Hero isn't the first word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

There are worse things you can do to the people you love than kill them. The regular way is just to watch the world do it. Just read the newspaper.

Please know that there are much better things in life than being lonely or liked or bitter or mean or self conscious. We are all full of shit. Go love someone just because, I know your heart may be badly bruised, or even the victim of numerous knifings but it will always heal even if you don't want it to, it keeps going. There are the most fantastic, beautiful things and people out there, I promise. It's up to you to find them.

The only person we'll hate more than each other is ourselves.

Someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff.

Everybody looks a little crazy if you're looking close enough and if you can't look that close, then you don't really love them.

The little boy smiled back at all the angry faces glaring in at him. And the little boy blew kisses.