Quotes About Empathy

A diner having a row with a waiter in a swanky restaurant chills the blood in a way that a quarrel over a pizza order elsewhere would never do. Compassion is rarely the custom of the privileged.

A good communicator affects our physiology. The power of voice can entrance us even induce or remove pain.

When we are customarily annoyed by what we see as the failings of others, we are judging them by a ludicrous standard: we are assuming that they fully understand our desires, quite possibly better than we do, and that they have nothing to do but arrange things to fall seamlessly into place around our probably ill-communicated wishes.

The single most valuable human trait, the one quality every schoolchild and adult should be taught to nurture, is, quite simply, kindness.

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

Beyond the ebb and flow of racial progress lies the still viable and widely accepted (though seldom expressed) belief that America is a white country in which blacks, particularly as a group, are not entitled to the concern, resources, or even empathy that would be extended to similarly situated whites.

If you're comfortable with who you are, however, it becomes no problem to let others be their own selves around you: you have faith that whoever they are and whatever they do, you will be able to respond appropriately.

The thing about human beings they're not emotional enough, but they are sure enough with a heart of coldness. -MillYentei

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.

Exclusion is never the way forward on our shared paths to freedom and justice.

In God's family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

Family isn't about whose blood you have. It's about who you care about.

Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.

Don't raise your voice, improve your argument." [ Address at the Nelson Mandela Foundation in Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa , 23 November 2004]

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering--remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

Differences are not intended to separate, to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another.

When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.

A person is a person through other persons. None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are. A person is entitled to a stable community life, and the first of these communities is the family.

There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

We are made for loving. If we don't love, we will be like plants without water.

It is through weakness and vulnerability that most of us learn empathy and compassion and discover our soul.

Dear Child of God, I am sorry to say that suffering is not optional.