Top 100 Quotes About Empathy
#1. I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.'
Greil Marcus
#2. Because of empathy, we care more for, and devote far more resources to, someone who is familiar, from our country or our group, than a stranger.
Paul Bloom
#3. When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
Yann Martel
#4. Singing with others is an unmediated, shared experience as each person feels the same music reverberating in their individual bodies. Singing is part of our humanity; it is embodied empathy.
Jay Griffiths
#5. You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.
Laura Carmichael
#6. He had always been irreproachable in his conduct, and as a consequence, his capacity for empathy was small.
Eleanor Catton
#7. Contrary to the common misconception that loving yourself equates to being self-absorbed and lacking empathy or consideration for others, the true meaning of self-love is about caring, respecting and knowing yourself, taking responsibility for your life, and ultimately, your happiness.
Miya Yamanouchi
#8. There is a battle of two wolves inside us all. One is evil: it is anger, envy, greed, arrogance, jealousy, resentment, lies. The other is good: it is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, empathy, truth. The wolf that wins? The one you feed. - Cherokee proverb Spanning
Angela Stevens
#9. Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.
Roger Ebert
#10. This is what differentiates sympathy from empathy. No matter how much I care for you, it's not until I recognize me in you and you in me that the veil of gauze is lifted on the world.
Jackson Galaxy
#11. So I believe in the redeeming power of stories, I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in.
Neil Gaiman
#12. They're good, these stories," Mace continued, his cheeks stained with light color. "They teach the pain of others." "Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers.
Erika Johansen
#13. The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.
Oprah Winfrey
#14. The deepest form of understanding another person is empathy...[which] involves a shift from...observing how you seem on the outside, to...imagining
Indi Young
#15. the fine art of relationships - requires the ripeness of two other emotional skills, self-management and empathy. With
Daniel Goleman
#16. None of us get to choose our race but we all get to choose how we overcome its hurtles. Whether we jump or stumble...what matters most is that we take each moment in stride. Compassion, love, forgiveness and empathy will always win the human race.
Jason Versey
#17. When we are all mind, things can get rigid. When we are all heart, things can get chaotic. Both lead to stress. But when they work together, the heart leading through empathy, the mind guiding us with focus and attention, we become a harmonious human being.
Arianna Huffington
#18. Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
Cornel West
#19. I feel empathy for people who are trapped in a prison of self-consciousness in an uncomfortable way. We can be free, but we're so held back. So perhaps that's why I feel a duty to make my work. I feel liberated when I'm doing it, and I want other people to feel liberated through it.
Bat For Lashes
#20. Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good.
Roger Ebert
#21. Fiction challenges us and works its miracles by placing us in the skin of another human being and teaching us empathy.
Hugh Howey
#22. As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures.
Alison Hawthorne Deming
#24. The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.
Alison Gopnik
#25. Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.
Sue Monk Kidd
#26. I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.
Alex Flinn
#27. Writing a poem is a lesson in the truest empathy. And to truly have empathy is to truly know power, or at least the only kind of power I'm interested in.
Zachary Schomburg
#28. My heart goes out to him. Sort of. Because empathy depends on how you've spent your day.
George Saunders
#29. A turn in fortune should move us toward empathy and solidarity....But we live in a time when merchants of division draw us away from mutuality and toward the undoing of democracy itself.
Jeff Chang
#30. I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.
John Connolly
#31. Most people assume that autistic people are not capable of empathy.
Claire Danes
#32. Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful.
Frans De Waal
#33. In my opinion, works of art should be viewed as gifts; something precious given from a point of empathy, where personal enrichment is vastly superior to the value of the gift, and the giver begs for nothing but for the gift to shine on its own.
Kevin Focke
#34. I think one of the biggest political failures, and the biggest social failures, over the past few years has been the failure of empathy; not being able to look at the other person down the street.
Colum McCann
#35. All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.
Gloria Steinem
#36. Filmmaking is challenging for men and women. In both cases, it is incredibly difficult. And gender is neither a guarantee of greater sensitivity, capacity for empathy or aperture.
Claudia Llosa
#37. Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.
Patrick Rothfuss
#38. When bad things happened to other people, I imagined them happening to me. I didn't know if this was empathy or theft.
Leslie Jamison
#39. Empathy is a virtue, but it should not be a guiding judicial principle.
Gary Bauer
#40. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.
Barack Obama
#41. His words had caused her to laugh, cry, yell, throw things across the room, and feel sympathy, empathy, anger, arousal and disgust. It was the best non-novel she had ever read.
Ella Dominguez
#43. I see Lord Buddha in the 21st Century across national borders, across faith systems, across political ideologies, playing the role of a bridge to promote understanding to counsel patience and to enlighten us with tolerance and empathy.
Narendra Modi
#44. If the spectrum linking everyday depression to Major Depression sometimes hinders understanding of it, it also offers an opportunity for empathy. Because almost everyone, at some point, experiences feelings of sadness, of hopelessness, of emptiness, not to mention lethargy and irritability.
Gayle Forman
#45. Your empathy for other mothers is such a natural instinct and it's such a beautiful thing that we all connect, and we should all help each other.
Salma Hayek
#46. Greater empathy motivates you to change yourself, as your empathy encapsulates the planet, you become motivated to make a positive impact on the world.
Ilchi Lee
#47. It has been a period where people have been far nicer to one another in every possible way. I'm not saying it's because we're dropping our empathy that we're nicer to each other, just that the drop doesn't seem to be causing any harm.
Paul Bloom
#49. There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.
Bryant McGill
#50. the most important element of delightful design is empathy.
Anonymous
#51. I believe in love. I believe it transforms, transports, and transcends. I believe it fine-tunes goodness, solidifies strength, ripens resolve, eradicates rage, alleviates stress, and elevates empathy.
Lisa Kogan
#52. If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.
Daniel Goleman
#53. I want a future abortion conversation known for its openness, respect and empathy, so instead of generating more heat, anger and conflict, I practice pro-voice.
Aspen Baker
#54. It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent.
Paul Bloom
#55. I know Bret Easton Ellis has said he has some amount of empathy for every character he has written about, though, so maybe I am similar to him in terms of that. I'm not sure what he thinks exactly.
Tao Lin
#56. Compassion and empathy are not the same as feeling sorry for oneself. They are emotions that extend our perceptual ranges.
Frederick Lenz
#57. Wouldn t it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, and a little more loving, have a little more empathy, and maybe we'd like each other a little bit more.
Judy Garland
#58. Spirituality without hate is a lie. If you can't feel anger, you can't feel love. Empathy without disgust isn't truly empathy. When you become more aware, you become more aware of everything. That makes you more sensitive too - sensitive to cry and sensitive to hate.
Robin Sacredfire
#59. Tragedy was a strong bond, a common denominator that united people in a community of empathy, however different their lives and how they operated as individuals.
Howard Rosenberg
#60. We develop more empathy, when we realise that we are all ultimately looking for the same things - love, peace and acceptance.
Chikamso C. Efobi
#61. Although emotionally delicate and eminently bruisable, teenagers are short on empathy. That comes later in life, if it comes at all.
Stephen King
#62. Everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#63. Listening is an important skill to spark creativity and cultivate empathy.
Pearl Zhu
#64. Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.
John Barton
#65. I think we are living in selfish times. I'm the first one to say that I'm the most selfish. We live in the so-called 'first world,' and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy.
Javier Bardem
#66. You - who are smarter than cruise ships - can empathize, but also, however, you cannot.
from "Cruise Ship Disaster Empathy
Forest Lewis
#67. Listening is understanding. The skill of empathy is a must to be able to listen ... One can listen better if one sees the whole.
Bill Drayton
#68. Digital is the age of empathy.
Pearl Zhu
#69. During a peak experience," Maslow explained, "the individual experiences an expansion of self, a sense of unity, and meaningfulness in life. The experience lingers in one's consciousness and gives a sense of purpose, integration, self-determination and empathy.
Steven Kotler
#70. The law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus inflence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination.
Patti Smith
#71. I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that's the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.
Michelle Rodriguez
#73. Your sensitivity is overwhelming," Ethan said. "Someday remind me to explain to you what empathy is.
Blake Crouch
#74. Look, I'm a cancer survivor, all right? So I have great personal empathy for people who have pre-existing conditions and can't get insurance.
Carly Fiorina
#75. A citizen of the world in the fullest sense - one whose vision and culture gave him a deep empathy with fellow human beings of every creed and color.
Kofi Annan
#76. All leaders, male or female, innately possess feminine qualities like empathy, candor and vulnerability - the difference lies in which leaders choose to suppress those qualities, and which choose to leverage them as strengths.
John Gerzema
#77. I had horrible acne when I was a kid. I felt like a complete and utter ne'er do well and someone who didn't fit in and wasn't handsome. So, I understand implicitly, and with a great amount of empathy, a man or human being that feels that way.
Chris Pine
#78. If your moon sign is in Leo, you have a lot of empathy for Leos. You empathize with their approach and their aims and their aura.
Ian Svenonius
#79. One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.
Charles M. Blow
#80. The situation was obviously desperate: Lillian Lynburn was actually arguing for someone to feel more empathy.
Sarah Rees Brennan
#81. I've had my share, less than so many though, but enough to feel empathy. It's tough and I see it so much on Earth, too much suffering. The loss of free will I find unacceptable - what most of us refer to as rights.
Kristin Bauer Van Straten
#82. When I came to the last line of 'Car Crash While Hitchhiking,' I read it as a pitiless statement of indifference: a refusal to warn the family of their impending collision, a refusal to help when miraculously spared, a refusal to act on the empathy hiding behind the story's language.
Anthony Marra
#83. Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay but acknowledging that it is not.
Sheryl Sandberg
#84. I think of empathy as a set of cumulative effects, ideally - that it can be a force shaping your habits, shaping where you put your attention and then - if you're hard on yourself, in good ways - pushing you to translate that attention into action, on whatever scale.
Leslie Jamison
#85. We often have very little empathy for our own thoughts and feelings and frequently try to suppress them by dismissing them as weaknesses.
Mark Williams
#86. In learning to pay respectful attention to one another and plants and animals, we relearn the acts of empathy, and thus humility and compassion - ways of proceeding that grow more and more necessary as the world crowds in.
William Kittredge
#87. I don't have empathy, Sahara. I can't feel for those who are going to die. It would be akin to asking a falcon to take flight when his wings had long been hacked off.
Nalini Singh
#88. Gratitude promotes consciousness, enthusiasm, joy, empathy, and tranquillity, while protecting from anxiety, sadness, loneliness, regret, and envy, with which it is fundamentally incompatible.
Neel Burton
#89. I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play them and play them with some kind of empathy.
Doug Jones
#90. I've thought a lot about the power of empathy. In my work, it's the current that connects me and my actual pulse to a fictional character in a made up story, it allows me to feel, pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain.
Meryl Streep
#91. One of the most painful aspects of suffering is the loneliness of it. Others may offer support or empathy, but no one can walk the road to Moriah in our place.
John Ortberg
#93. I'd rather feel empathy for a character that's fictional, so it doesn't quite tie into personal experience as much.
Henry Cavill
#94. Sure, some news is bigger news than other news. War is bigger news than a girl having mixed feelings about the way some guy fucked her and didn't call. But I don't believe in a finite economy of empathy; I happen to think that paying attention yields as much as it taxes.
Leslie Jamison
#95. Mono no aware, my son, is an empathy with the universe.
Ken Liu
#96. Ultimately, knowing God and reading the Word, it helps with patience with people, understanding, empathy and sympathy that they might not have that I have. If God gave it to me, why not exercise it?
Trai Byers
#98. The most important thing in comedy - apart from empathy, which I think is important even if disguised - is surprise. I like surprising people with the fact that something's even a joke at all.
Ricky Gervais
#99. There's a war between two wolves inside everybody. One is anger, jealousy, greed, resentment, inferiority, lies and ego. The other's good. It's love, peace, beauty, happiness, truth, hope, joy, humility, kindness, and empathy.
"Who wins...?"
"The one you feed".
MK Asante
#100. Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including the arachnida.
Philip K. Dick
