Quotes About Empathy

We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas, and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live.

People can disagree politically and philosophically on all the issues that confront our nation, but if more of our elected officials had served in causes other than their own advancement, I believe they would approach their jobs with less certainty in their own assumptions and more sympathy for the needs of others.

The true foundations for those buildings are not brick and stone, but our Constitution, our rule of law, our traditions, our work ethic, our empathy, our pragmatism, and our basic decency. As I have seen over the years, when we cultivate these instincts, we soar. When we sow seeds of division, hatred, and small-mindedness, we falter.

What sticks with me more than even that act of kindness was how my mother talked to me about it... So I asked my mother why we gave those families gifts at Christmas when we ourselves didn't have much. I remember then answering for myself: "It was because we felt sorry for them, right?" "We do not feel sorry for them," my mother said sternly, "We understand how they feel.

I worry that our nation today suffers from a deficit of empathy, and this is especially true of many in positions of national leadership

I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

We either choose to be part of a community that stretches beyond ourselves, our material needs, and our creature comforts, or we do not. In our society, it is possible for the selfish and self-centered to live at the expense of the rest of the population.

The true foundations for those buildings are not brick and stone, but our Constitution, our rule of law, our traditions, our work ethic, our empathy, our pragmatism, and our basic decency. As I have seen over the years, when we cultivate these instincts, we soar. When we sow seeds of division, hatred, and small-mindedness, we falter. As a wave of anxiety sweeps our nation, as big challenges loom before us, I feel an urgency.

How can people be so blinded by prejudice as to not see the common humanity?

The more we are around people with a variety of life experiences, the more we can understand and value the needs and worth of our fellow citizens.

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, said, "I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere.

The bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.

the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.

Jesus commanded his followers to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, and care for the sick. Making health care available to all seems like a no-brainer, Jesus-wise, among the most Christian projects a president, or a nation, could possible undertake.

Terry gets annoyed when I describe his mother as cold. She isn't cold, he insists, just a little standoffish, and not so gabby as certain members of my family. While Terry's mom doesn't believe in asking intrusive questions, like "How are you?", she's still a warm and loving mom; just quiet and undemonstrative.

Terry cooked for me, but I resented having to do dishes. As I saw it, Terry liked cooking-he enjoyed it, he told me so. Well, I didn't enjoy washing dishes- I hated it, and I'd told him so-and didn't see why I should have to do something I hated after he got to do something he liked. I mean, that wasn't fair, was it?

I'm a lesbian and I'd rather you bully me than a thirteen-year-old kid.

So many therapists tell their patients how to think and how to feel. That is awfully wrong" (Erickson, Rossi, and Rossi 1976, 101).

It occurs to me that our survival may depend upon our talking to one another.

There is a fullness and calmness there which can come only from knowing pain.

subjectivity of experience presupposes an apprehension of the distinction between one's own experiences and the experience of others,

Whatever the reasons, reading somehow awakens something in a kid's life that makes them take their own life more seriously and other people's lives more seriously.

They deserve forgiveness. Everyone does.

Can you hear me, Emmett Crane? You were my first real friend, the first person I really knew, who knew me too, so it doesn't surprise me that I want to say to you the very same things you said to me. Thank you. You saved me from drowning. Because of you, things are better.