Quotes About Empathy

Why wouldn't you want to be as close as you could to another person's glow, when you felt it? I still think that, to tell the truth. It makes being married hard.

Imagine—if you can—not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members.

Sociopaths are masterful at using other people's seemingly innocuous personal information against them.

Understanding sociopathy can teach us that, at those times when we focus only on ourselves and our group and ignore our intrinsic ties to others—when we turn a blind eye to the importance of everyone's well-being—even those of us who do have conscience begin to lose our way, and the shadow of evil looms closer. Goodness lies in sensing our bonds with others; evil happens when, for whatever reasons, those feelings are numbed.

Pity … should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.

There is simply no known way to create a conscience in an individual who does not have one.

strong characters are often specially targeted by sociopaths.

you are rewarding and encouraging him each and every time you allow him to see your anger, your confusion, or your hurt.

in many situations where the narcissist would be clueless, unresponsive, and perhaps annoyed, the sociopath will be responsive, often charmingly so, creating a better disguise than the narcissist has.

and for every limitation conscience imposes on us, it gives us a moment of connectedness with an other, a bridge to someone or something outside of our often meaningless schemes.

I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.

A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her prosocial sense, you are damaging it--and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.

Sociopathy is the inability to process emotional experience, including love and caring, except when such experience can be calculated as a coldly intellectual task.

If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath.

We raise our children, especially girls, to ignore their spontaneious reactions-we teach them not to rock the societal boat...By the time she is thirty, the valient little girl's "Ick!"-her tendency to respond, to rock the boat, when someone's actions are really mean, may have been exciese from her behavior, and perhaps from her very mind.

Sociopaths have no regard whatsoever for the social contract, but they do know how to use it to their advantage. And all in all, I am sure that if the devil existed, he would want us to feel very sorry for him.

If all you had ever felt toward another person were the cold wish to "win," how would you understand the meaning of love, of friendship, of caring? You would not understand. You would simply go on dominating, and denying, and feeling superior. Perhaps you would experience a little emptiness sometimes, a remote sense of dissatisfaction, but that is all.

Conscience- protects the privileges of intimacy, makes ,friends keep their promises, prevents the angered spouse from striking back.

Rather, the best clue is, of all things, the pity play. The most reliable sign, the most universal behavior of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy. I first learned this when

To admit that some people literally have no conscience is not technically the same as saying that some human beings are evil, but it is disturbingly close. And good people want very much not to believe in the personification of evil.

When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are not strengthening her prosocial sense;you are damaging it--and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.

Sometimes when I am feeling down, I am my own worst enemy. Let me be my friend.

Women agonize... over cancer; we take as a personal threat the lump in every friend's breast.

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn't want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.