Quotes About Empathy

An apology is supposed to be a communion—a coming together. For someone to make an apology, someone has to be listening. They listen and you speak and there's an exchange. That's why we have a thing about accepting apologies.

I just want you to know that it makes me feel like shit to do this." "And Jonah paused," Michael told me. "And then he said to me, no joke, he said, 'You know, I really don't care how you feel.'" Michael shook his head. "It was icy.

So, yeah, the psychopath might cry when his dog dies and you think that's misplaced because he doesn't cry when his daughter dies." I

we have to think about what level of mercilessness we feel comfortable with.

I didn't want to write a book that advocated for a less curious world. Prurient curiosity may not be great. But curiosity is. People's flaws need to be written about. The flaws of some people lead to horrors inflicted on others. And then there are the more human flaws that, when you shine a light onto them, de-demonize people who might otherwise be seen as ogres.

I vaguely remembered hearing psychologists say there was a preponderance of psychopaths at the top—in the corporate and political worlds—a clinical absence of empathy being a benefit in those environments.

Please ejaculate, I silently urged the man, so I can go to sleep. (In this way I imagine I was like millions of women before me

Was he right? It felt like a question that really needed answering because it didn't seem to be crossing any of our minds to wonder whether the person we had just shamed was okay or in ruins. I suppose that when shamings are delivered like remotely administered drone strikes nobody needs to think about how ferocious our collective power might be. The snowflake never needs to feel responsible for the avalanche.

That's the psychopath: somebody who doesn't understand what's going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened." But

How you feed your family is not how we feed our family. For real. We're not out here just for the fun and just for the show-and-tell. This is real life." I am finding myself ostentatiously nodding at everything the crack dealers are saying, I suppose in the hope that if the shooting starts they'll remember my nods and make the effort to shoot around me.

predators who use charm, manipulation, intimidation, sex and violence to control others and to satisfy their own selfish needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse. What is missing, in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.

Why?" I asked, "What are you looking for?" There was a short silence. And Toto softly said, "I want to see if people like me.

As a group they tend to be more charming than most people," she said. "They have no warm emotions of their own but will study the rest of us.

we're raised to believe that deep down everyone has a conscience." At

But at the core of psychopathy is a lack of moral restraint.

Bryna is convinced her children are bipolar, and I wasn't going to swoop into a stranger's home for an afternoon and tell them all they were normal.

Sociopaths love power. They love winning. If you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win.

He said hurting people was better than sex.

we tend to automatically assume that everybody else is basically just like us.

when I became a vegetarian. I missed the steak, although not as much as I'd anticipated, but I could no longer ignore the slaughterhouse. I

be patient and curious instead of instantly judgemental.

The word forever had been coming up a lot during my two years among the publicly shamed. Jonah and Justine and people like them were being told, 'No. There is no door. There is no way back in. We don't offer any forgiveness.' But we know that people are complicated and have a mixture of flaws and talents and sins. So why do we pretend that we don't?

if you take loving kindness out of the human brain, there's not much left except the will to win

You remain with the person you've just been yelling at until the resentments fizzle. That's how wounds heal.