Quotes on Empathy

An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like.

Film is this incredible medium that allows us to feel empathy for people that are very different than us and worlds completely foreign from our own.

You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example.

Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing.

Sympathy is what you have for someone after they die, pity you have for someone when they don't have a date to the biggest dance of the year. Empathy is what I do to you when you judge me. Envy is having pity on yourself. Can you discern the rest for yourself?

...the core values that underpin sustainable development - interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice - are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed

Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

I have so much empathy for these young actors that are 19 and all of a sudden they're beautiful and famous and rich. I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'd be dead.'

Your presence is the most precious gift you can give to another human being.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.

The greater good is achieved by not only telling people what they need to know, but also filling them with a sense of empathy and love.

That's what happens in a good horror movie: there are always metaphors of greater subjects like humanity and empathy and compassion. It's not about the action and scary moments: You really care about these characters because they're mirrors of our own reflections.

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.

'Me Too' is about letting - using the power of empathy to stomp out shame.

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Empathy requires something extremely difficult: accepting the fact that we are not and never will be in the other person's shoes. There's no rational, universal course because individuals have different goals, different worldviews and different experiences.

We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others - both human and animal.

Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy.