Quotes About Empathy

Nobody likes war not even those who survive it, not even the winners.

Everyone has a pipeline through which he pushes what he is willing and able to share of himself out into the world, and through which he takes in all of the world that he is willing and able to bear. Max's conduit wasn't bigger than anyone else's, it was simply unclogged. What

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. But I knew that there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

I asked her why she was getting so upset about such a small thing. She said, 'It doesn't feel small to me.

In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.

I couldn't tell what he was feeling, because I couldn't speak the language of his feelings.

I have witnessed Grandfather cry, and I implore myself to say that I desire to never witness him cry again. If this signifies that I must do things for him so that he will not cry, then I will do those things. If this signifies that I must not look when he cries, then I will not look.

What we forget about animals we begin to forget about ourselves.

The justifications for eating animals and for not eating them are often identical: we are not them.

We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families, and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe. But I knew there couldn't be pockets that enormous. In the end, everyone loses everyone. There was no invention to get around that, and so I felt, that night, like the turtle that everything else in the universe was on top of.

There are only so many times that you can utter 'It does not hurt' before it begins to hurt more than the hurt. You become enlightened of the feeling of hurt, which is worse, I am certain, than the existent hurt.

One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about.

Most people behave badly when wounded. If you can remember the wounds, it is far more possible to forgive the behavior.

Cruelty: Not only the willful causing of unnecessary suffering, but the indifference to it.

I said, not knowing what the next words out of my mouth would be, but wanting them to be mine, wanting, more than I'd ever wanted anything, to express the center of me to and be understood.

We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a hunk of wood and extreme to treat an animal like an animal.

Lo que olvidamos de los animales es lo que empezamos a olvidar de nosotros mismos.

that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there

She died in my arms saying, "I don't want to die." That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore.

I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how. After

Sitting with her now, rehearsing the horrible conversation, Jacob wondered if maybe, all those years, he had misunderstood the spaces surrounding Julia: her quiet, her steps back. Maybe they weren't buffers of defense, but of the most extreme humility, the purest generosity. What if she wasn't withdrawing, but beckoning? Or both at the same time? Withdrawing and beckoning? And more to the point: making a world for their children, even for Jacob.

Golda Meir had told Anwar Sadat: "We can forgive you for killing our children, but we will never forgive you for making us kill yours.

And there are no cures for the hurt that hurts most. There is only the medicine of believing each other's pain, and being present for it.

What's weird, I said, is that I've never seen you cry. He said, I cry all the time.