Quotes About Empathy

Our inability to think beyond our own species, or to be able to co-habit with other life forms in what is patently a massive collaborative quest for survival, is surely a malady that pervades the human soul.

But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal.

It is about the elephants - it was they who whispered to me and taught me how to listen.

It is a terrible indictment against the human race that it's possible for such places of brutality to exist.

until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves.

Something I learned long ago. It is not necessary to know what a person is afraid of. It is enough to know the person is afraid.

I'm always amazed when adults say that children "just did that to get attention". Naturally children who need attention will do all kinds of things to get it. Why not just give it to them?

My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily.

For the robot classes and masses are only kept sane by the kindness of living women and men.

The appalling thing is the degree of charity women are capable of. You see it all the time... love lavished on absolute fools. Love's a charity ward, you know.

A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.

Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.

Empathy involves at least emotional sensitivity to others and at most an ability to understand another's point of view.

Lawrence Freedman

Try to make at least one person happy every day. If you cannot do a kind deed, speak a kind word. If you cannot speak a kind word, think a kind thought. Count up, if you can, the treasure of happiness that you would dispense in a week, in a year, in a lifetime!

Strength of character means the ability to overcome resentment against others, to hide hurt feelings, and to forgive quickly.

Nobody needs a smile so much as the one who has none to give. So get used to smiling heart-warming smiles, and you will spread sunshine in a sometimes dreary world.

The practice of patience toward one another, the overlooking of one another's defects, and the bearing of one another's burdens is the most elementary condition of all human and social activity in the family, in the professions, and in society.

At one point in one's life you get a sense of your own mortality. You view death in a certain way. From that point on you look at your fellow man with a new understanding. I have some feelings for it now. They say it happens in your mid-thirties. Sometimes I have a fantasy of my corpse being carried around in a box, people mourning me. Saying, "We shouldn't have treated him so badly.

Our common humanity, viewed realistically, can be as much a source of despair as hope.

To gaze into another persons face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.

You must learn to respect," Papa said. But I do not respect her," I said. Papa paused for a moment, and patted my leg. "Then you must learn to hide your disrespect.