Quotes About Empathy

In Black Like Me, I tried to establish one simple fact, which was to reveal the insanity of a situation where a man is judged by his skin color, by his philosophical "accident" - rather than by who he is in his humanity.

The real story is the universal one of men who destroy the souls and bodies of other men (and in the process destroy themselves) for reasons neither really understands. It is the story of the persecuted, the defrauded, the feared and detested.

The vast difference between what this country was saying and apparently believing, and what the black man was experiencing, was embittering.

We were Negroes and our concern was the white man and how to get along with him; how to hold our own and raise ourselves in his esteem without for one moment letting him think he had any God-given rights that we did not also have.

Night coming tenderly Black like me.

My revulsion turned to grief that my own people could give the hate stare, could shrivel men's souls, could deprive humans of rights they unhesitatingly accord their livestock. I

In the context of today, this WAS heroism.

He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest.

If we could only put ourselves in the shoes of others to see how we would react, then we might become aware of the injustice of discrimination and the tragic inhumanity of every kind of prejudice.

I learned a strange thing - that in a jumble of unintelligible talk, the word n***** always leaps out with electric clarity. You always hear it and always it stings. And always it casts the person using it into a category of brute ignorance.

Though not all, by any means, were so open about their purposes, all of them showed us how they felt about the Negro, the idea that we were people of such morality that nothing could offend us. These men, young and old, however, were less offensive than the ones who treated us like machines, as though we had no human existence whatsoever. When they paid me, they looked as though I were a stone or a post. They looked and saw nothing.

One can scarcely conceive the full horror of it unless one is a parent who takes a close look at his children and then asks himself how he would feel if a group of men should come to his door and tell him they had decided - for reasons of convenience to them - that his children's lives would henceforth be restricted, their world smaller, their educational opportunities less, their future mutilated

I told them good night and returned to my room, less lonely and warmed by the brief contact with others like me who felt the need to be reassured that an eye could show something besides suspicion or hate

Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness - in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough.

How we love to love things for other people; how we love to have other people love things through our eyes.

When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark.

If you can't love crudeness, how can you truly love mankind?

It's not right to hurt or deceive someone who's already been hurt and deceived.

Everyone has a right to be a little happy, asshole.

there is no straightforward negotiation with a four year old…

It's natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you can't interfere with people you love anymore than you're supposed to interfere with people you don't even know.

There are always suicides, Garp wrote, among people who are unable to say what they mean.

No one but me ever put a hand on me to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen...You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick or listen to it move.

All I say is: Let us leave les folles alone; let's just leave them be. Don't judge them. You are not superior to them - don't put them down.