Quotes on Empathy

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

There were some advantages to being a woman photographer. I think women have more empathy with the subject.

Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.

All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.

Photography is an investigation of both the outer and the inner worlds. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will 'capture' something 'seen.' The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events.

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person.

Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.

So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'

I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.

Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.

Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation.

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because,ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

I've always had a really developed sense of justice. As a child, I would rotate my dolls' dresses for fear that they might come alive at midnight and one of them would always have the best dress on. Whatever it was that made me worry about my dolls I suppose has paid off in my career because, really, an actor is all about empathy and imagination. And those are the cornerstones of activism.

In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding.