Quotes About Empathy

It's not only deep thinking that requires a calm, attentive mind. It's also empathy and compassion.

A Princeton University scholar, Susan Fiske, has used scans to show that the brains of high-achieving people see images of poor people and process them as if they were not humans but things.

If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention

You educate a boy, and you're educating an individual," Greg says, quoting an African proverb. "You educate a girl, and you're educating an entire village.

I went back to the women and said, 'Tell me exactly what you want us to do.' And they said, 'Don't do anything for us, do something for our children'.

The greatest threat to extremism isn't drones firing missiles, but girls reading books.

I think all teenagers feel alone, and that nobody else knows what they are going through and all that sort of stuff.

We're none of us, are we, just one thing? I am a policeman, but also a father, a husband for the time being, a nursemaid to a sister who I pray will survive her illness. You are a journalist, a writer, and I don't know what else besides. To look at a person from a single angle is to deform them. Even if Yolanda is guilty...she is also afraid of the dark. And I cannot forget that I put her there.

In a nutshell, loving someone is about giving, not receiving.

And when I came in with tears in my eyes, you always knew whether I needed you to hold me or just let me be. I don't know how you knew, but you did, and you made it easier for me.

I'm sure you think that I don't understand what you're going through, but I do. It's just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, opposed to what we want.

I finally understood what true love meant...love meant that you care for another person's happiness more than your own, no matter how painful the choices you face might be.

You have to suffer in order to be a human being who can help people understand suffering.

all we ever see of each other is the representation we hold inside our own minds.

It's madness really that society expects a newly bereaved person to jump through so many hoops.

Oh, you can't hate people forever, can you? Sooner or later it always becomes clear that however awful they were to you, they were still trying to do their best. Nobody sets out to be awful, do they? But we're all this collection of traumas and hurts and dysfunctional mumbo-jumbo trying to be functional and logical and wise.

We value cleverness and intelligence and strength. Money, too. But nice is incredibly special. And it's not so easy to be this way all the time, you know? Other people are very difficult. It takes a lot of effort to understand them and stay nice despite everything.

every person's biggest trauma is still that person's biggest trauma. There is no relativity within the realm of one's own subconscious.

I often think that if men realised how much time you spend as a woman pleading with men – pleading with them to stop doing what they're doing, or pleading with them to let you do whatever needs to be done – they'd understand a lot more about what our lives are like.

client once said that it was like a bottle full of pain, if you can imagine that. And each time you let yourself remember, each time you let yourself feel the pain, each time you cry, you empty the bottle a little bit. So it becomes easier to carry.

Later on, he would tell me that people often told him their problems, so perhaps he just had one of those faces. Actually, it wasn't his face, I don't think. It was his soul. He had one of those souls that makes you want to bare your own.

often think that if men realised how much time you spend as a woman pleading with men – pleading with them to stop doing what they're doing, or pleading with them to let you do whatever needs to be done – they'd understand a lot more about what our lives are like.

So it's a shame. They wasted precious time tiptoeing around each other when clearly all that was required was a good heart-to-heart.

Anyone can talk,' she said, 'but the cleverest people spend their time listening.' And that really pleased me. It provided me with an identity, a sort of camouflage, so I could sit and listen to you all and not get noticed an not be judged for not saying anything.