Quotes About Empathy

Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

Everything Jane Austen read came alive, but, at the same time, her natural empathy with those she encountered through her reading was kept in check by a keen sense of the ridiculous and of the potential absurdity of emotional display.

There is no charm equal to the tenderness of heart.

I hate to hear you talk about all women as if they were fine ladies instead of rational creatures. None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.

I don't judge people by their bodies. Even when I was a young girl I liked men for their minds. Now that I'm middle-aged I see how right I was.

Lord, is it I . . .? There is so much good in the worst of us And so much bad in the best of us That it behoves not any of us To talk about the rest of us.

In every person's story there are unknowns-struggles only they know about, fears they've tried to overcome but still harbor, disappointments & sorrows they bear. The last thing any of us wants-or needs-is to be judged by others who don't know our stories, in part or at all.

The idle mind, which demands rules, i.e. recipes for making correct sentences, and shirks the subtler task of understanding the speaker's point of view and living into his emotion will never either use or understand aspects aright. If the speaker is living into the action, sympathizing with it, he will use imperfective, if he stands outside and merely states a fact or a judgment he will instinctively use the perfective

There was something about other people's grief that was so exposing, so personal, that she felt she shouldn't be looking.

she wants her own version of fulfilment. And I want that for her too.

You can tell a lot about someone's character from the way they treat waiters or shop assistants or bus drivers when they think no one is watching.

he realized he would only get that when they had reached some kind of accord, where painful subjects could be addressed without instantly causing defensive anger.

My mother killed herself when I was 12. I won't complete that relationship. But I can try to understand her.

I feel like my honesty gives people the freedom to talk about things they wouldn't otherwise.

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.

If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.

Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

We have so far to go to realize our human potential for compassion, altruism, and love.

Thousands of people who say they love animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs.

I'm not sure that insecurity is a good enough excuse for that sort of behavior. We're all insecure, and I really think he's old enough to have discovered the reasons behind his insecurity, and do something about them." ...Lucy

it always made him feel better, and calmer, and more sane, to hold a book. He had never been able to understand people who did not read. He had never been able to understand how they held on to themselves.