Quotes About Empathy

people, including types that I didn't like much at all but felt I had something to learn or to gain from.

If we cannot fully understand the acts of other people, until we know what they think they know, then in order to do justice we have to appraise not only the information which has been at their disposal, but the minds though which they have filtered it.

That was why so many Jews back then understood the American Negro; in Europe the Jew had been a Negro for more than a thousand years.

Making friends has always been hard for me.

Sure can. But you know a white man got to go through sumpin' 'fore he could call a black man friend. White man got to see the shit an' smell it too before he could really know a black friend." Jean-Paul

I wanted to say to the little white man, "Listen, brother, we're not enemies. I just want to go up in an elevator like anybody else. You don't need to worry about me. It's the men that own this building that are making you poor and uneducated and angry.

When you get old you begin to understand that no one talks unless someone listens, and no one knows nuthin' 'less somebody else can understand.

I ate with them and slept with them, and I killed enough blue-eyed young men to know that they were just as afraid to die as I was.

I always talk about down home like it really was home. Like everybody who looked like me and talked like me really cared about me. I knew that life was hard, but I hoped that if someone stole from me it would be because they were hungry and needed it. But some people will tear you down just to see you fall. They'll do it even if your loss is their own.

Some people live according to love and being loved—if only a little.

Women didn't necessarily need good men to excite them. What they needed, and most men needed too, was somebody who understood their desires and their fears—not necessarily in that order.

No word of commiseration can make a burden feel one feather's weight lighter to the slave who must carry it.

Great God! hast Thou given men Thine own image that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!

All my life long I have been more melted by the distress under which a strong, proud, and powerful mind is compelled to give way, than by the more easily excited sorrows of softer dispositions.

Remember as you go about your day that you may be the only Jesus some of your friends, neighbors, and family will ever see.

God gave people tear ducts for a good reason, and folks shouldn't be too stubborn to use them.

Don't live with writers. Writers are bastards.

Of course I don't care if you're bleeding! I'm fucking autistic !

I've said I love you when I've meant it, and I've said I love you when it was the right thing to say, and I've said I love you when saying anything else would have hurt someone without reason. And I couldn't say a word, there in the dark.

Carnstein, with a soft smile and a grace and attention that bordered on the tender, very precisely beat Isaac Goldmark to death.

It is in the interests of both sexes to hear the other sex's experience of powerlessness.

When a man is able to connect with his feelings, he is able to care more.

A literary work ... is, during the time one reads it, a friend with whom one has chosen to spend one's time. The question now is, what does this friendship do to my mind? What does this new friend ask me to notice, to desire, to care about? How does he or she invite me to view my fellow human beings?

If it is a choice to be right or kind, always choose kind.