Empathetic Quotes

#1. What songwriting does better than almost anything is empathy - it's incredibly empathetic. The reason people sat around in bars when they were bummed out and listened to country songs is because it made them feel better in the long run.

Steve Earle

#2. Everywhere, people are beginning to question masculine notions of control, aggression and black-and-white thinking - and instead are favoring more empathetic, nurturing and collaborative approaches.

John Gerzema

#3. I've always thought that one of the least successful encounters is meeting a writer one admires. For one thing, writers are generally much kinder, more empathetic, more generous people on the page than they are in person.

Hanya Yanagihara

#4. I feel like I'm kind of a bit of a sponge in a way. Like, if people around me are going through things, I find it very hard not to be empathetic.

Win Butler

#5. If we're highly empathetic and emotionally sensitive we're at greater risk of becoming involved with a manipulator.

Adelyn Birch

#6. The senator was the kind of man who, having expended all his empathetic capital on marrying someone surprising, wanted to make sure no other people had the ability to make their own choices for themselves. He was anti-immigration, antiwoman, antigay, and that was just for starters. To

Lauren Groff

#7. My personality is very good for nurturing. I'm very empathetic to my artists. You speak to anyone who's worked with me and they'll say, "Oh yeah, Steve's great. He doesn't have the ego."

Steve Lillywhite

#8. I think fiction is all about the exercise of the empathetic imagination. Part of what I do is let the stuff I read about meld with what I have experienced.

Jim Shepard

#9. I think if there's some kind of crisis in news journalism ... a crisis of credibility, then it's been created by journalists. I'm empathetic, I understand it and I see it, but I'm not sympathetic about it. If you want people to think of journalism with higher regard then do better work.

Russell Crowe

#10. Empathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart.

Gary Chapman

#11. To me, a political song is also a personal song. Most political activism has been driven by empathy for other people and the desire for a world that's less divisive. Even if songs aren't overtly political, they can make a listener more empathetic.

Conor Oberst

#12. The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.

Jerry Leiber

#13. I'm interested in thinking about how are we contributing to the culture, what we can write that might help us deepen the culture, make us more reflective, make us more empathetic, make us feel our connectedness in other ways.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

#14. When we used to go to the car-wash where people would wipe the windows, my dad would go out and help them and then tip them as well, so I learned my empathy from my dad, and my mum is very empathetic too, but in a very stern way; she will always check my ego.

Charlie Puth

#15. When you have kids, for me, it really changed me. I was always empathetic to other children, but now I'm so much more sensitive to children that aren't my own.

Sam Trammell

#16. The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.

Ryan Hurst

#17. Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.

Frans De Waal

#18. Readers will stay with an author, no matter what the variations in style and genre, as long as they get that sense of story, of character, of empathetic involvement.

Dean Koontz

#19. Without television and mass communication, that knowledge wouldn't exist. So I think it actually has the possibility of turning people into more understanding and more empathetic people.

John Warnock

#20. When you research someone, you actually get beyond your own preconceptions and become aware of the human being other than the image. You become empathetic and sympathetic in turn.

Jim Broadbent

#21. Make intercessory prayer a priority in your life and the life of your family. It will cause you to be more empathetic, less self-obsessed, and increasingly more like Christ.

Monica Johnson

#22. It is not an aesthetic misstep to make the viewer aware of the paint and the painter's hand. Such an empathetic awareness lies at the heart of aesthetic appreciation.

John Updike

#23. We've reached a point where we are not a very empathetic people, and art without empathy is art without an audience. My basic viewpoint is that without art we're alone.

Jamake Highwater

#24. I feel like one of the things I'm trying most to do is stretch my empathetic reach, as far as it will go. I got as far as Gilles de Rais' assistant, for example, and not really as far as de Rais himself.

Jim Shepard

#25. Our painful experiences strengthen us in becoming more empathetic, more caring, and deeper human beings. We grow in depth of understanding, with greater appreciation for the miracle of life.

Alexandra Stoddard

#26. I'm empathetic to a fault. I really do - embarrassingly enough - tear up when someone squishes a bug in front of me.

Kristen Bell

#27. Don't expect things to happen fast. Be empathetic with the people you are photographing. Don't be concerned about money.

Lynsey Addario

#28. Digital leadership must be extremely visionary, mindful, creative, empathetic, generous, conscious, passionate, and humble.

Pearl Zhu

#29. I usually don't find myself reacting to my characters. I just create them ... And let the audience decide whether they're empathetic or scared or compelled to cheer me on.

Doug Hutchison

#30. Empathetic people are superb at recognizing and meeting the needs of clients, customers, or subordinates. They seem approachable, wanting to hear what people have to say. They listen carefully, picking up on what people are truly concerned about, and respond on the mark.

Daniel Goleman

#31. No matter how old you are, if you're just not an empathetic person, it's a lot easier to concentrate solely on something that is injuring another person to even some score. Hopefully as people grow older, their ability to empathize deepens.

James Scott

#32. I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite.

Justine Larbalestier

#33. I think to be empathetic is the greatest gift you can have as a designer. Hopefully, people will look at me and say, 'He really loved women.'

Michael Kors

#34. My ideal world was the early days of Twitter, where everyone was curious about each other and everyone saw it as kind of a window into people's lives where we could be compassionate and curious and empathetic and we could tell each other secrets.

Jon Ronson

#35. There's a lot of lying and these are people who are incredibly flawed, and not in very sort of empathetic ways, either. Some of the things they do are pretty awful and some of the things they do to each other are pretty awful.

Will Arnett

#36. She comes off as very empathetic, and even a little vulnerable herself, but she wouldn't be where she is today if she weren't a wolf under that wool suit.

C.J. Roberts

#37. There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality.

Scott Stossel

#38. Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.

Peter A. Levine

#39. It's easy for me to play bad guys because it's a very linear acting. Bad guys aren't empathetic. Being a bad guy is great because you're not friendly and you don't have to do much with your face.

Henry Rollins

#40. Empathetic silence is one of the most underused weapons in the world.

George R R Martin

#41. This was classic Lockwood. Friendly, considerate, empathetic. My personal impulse would have been to slap the girl soundly around the face and boot her moaning backside out into the night. Which is why he's the leader, and I'm not. Also why I have no female friends.

Jonathan Stroud

#42. I would like to think that as a result of not just my own experiences, but at least being empathetic and compassionate about other people's experiences and plights and tragedies, that I am affected by it and learn from it.

Terry McMillan

#43. Surrendered people know themselves and are empathetic toward others. They don't measure themselves by how much they are liked, nor do they compete for attention. When they sit quietly in a room, others always seem to come to them. They feel successful apart from their job or net worth.

Judith Orloff

#44. If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.

Yann Martel

#45. I think sometimes the very reason we go through something is so that we can be empathetic with another person later on.

Kathie Lee Gifford

#46. You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathetic listening skills to do it.

Stephen Covey

#47. To be empathetic to everyone around you, I think, is such a powerful thing to hold.

Misty Copeland

#48. I think the issue to bring progressives together should be this most central of all issues - raising children to become responsible, empathetic adults.

George Lakoff

#49. The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

Frans De Waal

#50. Cancer has given me a dose of humility. I'm much more empathetic. It's a club I would rather not have joined, but it is a club.

Tom Brokaw

#51. I was always empathetic with animals. It's a terrible and self-involved point of view that we do something because someone else is exploitable.

Lily Tomlin

#52. Having been in front of the camera just a couple of times, I'm empathetic, because it's very disconcerting. Someone shuffles you off to the trailer; you sit there for eleven hours wondering what the hell's going on.

Kurt Voss

#53. As a musician and a songwriter, it is an act of the ego to believe that other people might be interested in your point of view. But it is usually an empathetic nature that gets you going in the first place.

Bono

#54. A certain amount of anger doesn't make us less empathetic, less humane, less loving. It just makes us real.

Lindsay Duncan

#55. Empathy and joy of life are closely connected. For most of us, deep and intense moments of happiness are often, if not always, tied to deep and intense contact with others.
Training our empathetic abilities is therefore also training joy of life.

Iben Dissing Sandahl

#56. I think my politics are just inclined to be empathetic and humanistic. I grew up with so many different kinds of people with different politics, different religion, no religion, no politics, education, no education, and I was infatuated with all of them.

Lily Tomlin

#57. Victoria was, at the time, far more empathetic and forgiving, chiding Albert for his narrow view of humanity. 'I always think that one ought always to be indulgent towards other people, as I always think, if we had not been well brought up and well taken care of, we might also have gone astray.

Leslie Carroll

#58. On stage and in person, I think I am nice, thoughtful, and empathetic. But for some reason when I'm online, I become super aggressive and unhinged. I should probably get off of Twitter and see a therapist.

Joe Mande

#59. When humanity suffers from the darkness of violence, I will bring the empathetic, soft, kind, light from the moon to enlighten humanity.

Debasish Mridha

#60. Political correctness is anti-empathetic because it has correctness in it. We all have biases, we all have prejudices and if we cant talk about them openly - if we get attacked for it then this is an anti-empathetic movement and therefore it cannot complain about a lack of empathy.

Stefan Molyneux

#61. I am really drawn to damaged characters, and I have a lot of sympathy for them. Making those complicated characters empathetic is something to strive for. It's too easy to create a good guy or a good girl.

Paul Haggis

#62. What is your personal definition of "good"?
A world in which everyone is universally empathetic and exercises love and respect with full change-making power.

Bill Drayton

#63. The Iraq I returned from was, in my mind, a fairly simple place. By which I mean it had little relationship to reality. It's only with time and the help of smart, empathetic friends willing to pull through many serious conversations that I've been able to learn more about what I witnessed.

Phil Klay

#64. It was about finding creative, original musicians. Musicians who are strong composers. Flexible, empathetic musicians, who are great individually but who also have a great sense for cooperation and collaboration, great listeners as well as great players.

Joshua Redman

#65. When it comes to social issues, Republicans don't just need to be more empathetic. They also need to be more emphatic in explaining to voters what they believe, and why.

Gary Bauer

#66. All too often, parents and kids struggle to find an empathetic ear when confronting bullying situation; these escalate and too often result in marginalization, on top of what may well be a daily gauntlet of harassment and abuse that is fundamentally torture.

Lee Hirsch

#67. To go through the agonizing process of learning how to walk again and write again and speak again makes you much more empathetic to people.

Mark Kirk

#68. As he talked, I thought, "Maybe I'm wrong about the guy." Put him with someone like Anna Gunderson, a nice woman who has suffered a great tragedy, and his empathetic side came out.
And then I realized he was faking it.

Kelley Armstrong

#69. Maybe that's partly why I'm an actor, I'm a fairly empathetic, emotional person, so I get very, very involved when it's really, really great when I'm watching - so it takes me a second to click back into reality again.

Gabriel Mann

#70. All art to me is an empathetic act. Whoever's telling a story is trying to transfer emotion into someone else.

Elliot Ackerman

#71. Ben Says: Be kind and empathetic to all ... so that in your time of need, they may be the same to you.
Timothy Pina
Bullying Ben

Timothy Pina

#72. To close the empathetic gap, you really want to get the person emotionally identifying [with your subject and characters], and then when you do that, then you want sneak in a lesson about history and about politics and whatever else you might think about.

Fred D'Aguiar

#73. The news can be poison to your soul, don't let it kill your joy, be compassionate but not consumed. Be empathetic not enraged.

Rob Liano

#74. The successful recruit must be empathetic. This condition rules out the sadistic, the vengeful, and the enthusiastic. Therefore, many of the garden-variety killers who applied so far have had no chance of success, especially those who are already behind bars.

Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

#75. People didn't feel so much shame around it and that they didn't feel so much humiliation around it. And the other thing that people have given me a lot of feedback about - something I'm very excited about - is all the stuff around chemo as an "empathetic warrior."

Eve Ensler

#76. We have allowed the system to be so corrupted that many want justice to be "empathetic," not blind.

Glenn Beck

#77. Positive culture comes from being mindful, and respecting your coworkers, and being empathetic.

Biz Stone

#78. Studies have proved that checking records, possible diagnoses and drug interactions on a computer during a medical examination can interfere with what should be not only a fact-based investigation but a deeply human, partly intuitive and empathetic process.

Anonymous

#79. there is no creature more empathetic toward those who suffer social injustice, more compelled by optimism and faith in humankind, or more aspirational in her beliefs than a middle schooler.

Michelle Icard

#80. Obama and the Democrats are not focused on the moderates. They're focused on getting their base out, and they're trying to expand that base by forming sympathetic, empathetic alliances with the downtrodden, and there are a lot of downtrodden because Obama has made them that way via his policies.

Rush Limbaugh

#81. I think was overly empathetic for a while in my life.

Paul Dano

#82. We kid ourselves that we're trying to be empathetic with the human condition from a distance, but I don't think that is it at all. It's stupid; it's a waste of time. But when the earth flexes its muscles, that's rather different. That's a powerful reminder of where we are.

Simon Winchester

#83. It is time to teach society on how to be empathetic with people grieving.

Nathalie Himmelrich

#84. I think Caesar is one of the most empathetic characters that I've played. I think that's the key to a successful leadership. Being able to keep your ears open at all times.

Andy Serkis

#85. It's not that I bounce ideas off of my children as much as it is that having children has had a profound effect on the way I see the world. They have mined my soul. They've made me a better person and therefore a more empathetic writer.

Julianna Baggott

#86. I moved frequently because my dad was in the army, so I was always new in school. I think if you've ever done that, you know what it means to not matter in a room. I think it's a good experience for everyone to have, to feel like they're not noticed, because it teaches you to be empathetic.

Julianne Moore

#87. You need to be empathetic in your own personal life and we help our neighbors and our friends out who are struggling in our neighborhoods. But we don't make bad decisions based on empathy.

Thomas Sowell

#88. And after my mother's death I became more open to and empathetic about other people's struggles and losses.

Meghan O'Rourke

#89. The absence of an empathetic listener, or more radically, the absence of an addressable other, an other who can hear the anguish of one's memories and thus affirm and recognize their realness, annihilates the story

Dori Laub

#90. I never go into a scene - ever, ever, ever - thinking, I have to make myself more empathetic toward the audience. Once you start doing that, you get into really dangerous territory. I think you start to become kind of untrue to the character.

Dean Winters

#91. When you overcome a profound loss, or there's some catalyst in your life that shifts everything, if you're able to take it in stride and heal, it can make for much more three-dimensional and empathetic people.

Rose McIver

#92. To be a strong and empathetic person always requires us to trust that God will send angels to the people's heart we tried to reach, but couldn't.

Shannon L. Alder

#93. It takes critical thinking to frame the right problem and empathetic thinking to address the correct need.

Pearl Zhu

#94. I have this weird sort of Gemini thing where I can really be empathetic and a loving person. But if you piss me off, I can be one of the meanest, most sadistic people.

Bill Burr

#95. I lay my hand over his and give it an empathetic squeeze. "I know what it's like to be damaged."
Brad raises his eyes to mine. "I don't know, Gabby. We're all damaged, right? It's what we make of the wreckage that matters.

Beth Michele

#96. As a teenager, my struggle was how do I balance being empathetic and compassionate towards my peers, while also living my life for myself and not basing my decisions on those around me, and really living a life where I receive my happiness from my own experiences rather than from people pleasing.

Shailene Woodley

#97. There's a lot of evidence in evolutionary sciences that show that altruism and acting in ways that are empathetic to others are actually beneficial on an evolutionary basis.

Neill Blomkamp

#98. Neapolitans are extremely empathetic, whereas the typical northern attitude is more about not showing or sharing your feelings.

Toni Servillo

#99. We have a lot to learn from [bonobos], because they're a very egalitarian society and they're a very empathetic society. Sexual behavior is not confined to one aspect of their life that they set aside. It permeates their entire life.

Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

#100. I always wondered what it must be like to lose a twin - if somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain.

Francesca Lia Block