Empathy Quotes

“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

“Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.”
― Piero Gheddo

“As far as you can, get into the habit of asking yourself in relation to any action taken by another: "What is his point of reference here?" But begin with yourself: examine yourself first.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains.”
― R.A. Salvatore, The Silent Blade

“How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?”
― Orhan Pamuk, Snow

“Accustom yourself not to be disregarding of what someone else has to say: as far as possible enter into the mind of the speaker.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Positivity can be a negative," I tell her, "if it's used to diminish events that should be cause for concern. Saying 'bad things happen to good people' or "God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle', for instance, isn't necessarily helpful to the person to whom something bad happened--it is much more beneficial to those who wish to be dismissive- who don't really care to think about the why or how or who. And if we cease to see the real human part in events--if instead, we relegate human experiences to some sort of mystical concept like karma, destiny or everything happens for a reason, and consider more realistic views to be negative--then we diminish compassion and empathy, as well as the possibility of positive change.”
― Jane Devin, Elephant Girl: A Human Story

“To me, empathy and compassion are among the bravest of emotions ... and faith, the bravest of convictions.”
― Gerard de Marigny, Rise to the Call

“When people say they are happy for you it may mean they are sad for themselves.”
― Josephine Humphreys, The Fireman's Fair

“He said that he was sure you would be amendable to this course of action." April paused, eyes widening, before she said indignantly, "I believe he may have lied to me!”
― Seanan McGuire, Ashes of Honor

“She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.”
― Dean Koontz, Forever Odd

“Indeed, insight is the true hallmark of empathy. The power of true empathy is its ability to give us a fresh understanding of the other person's emotions and thoughts to illuminate an aspect of their experience that would not have been apparent to us had we not stepped into their shoes.”
― Guy Winch

“I'm a citizen of the republic of empathy.”
― Sam Lipsyte

“...the best way to forgive someone is to enter into their sufferings ...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“Neither did she realise yet that grief is a kind of glue, too, that the essence of humanity is this empathy, and that we fall together in that moment of tenderest perception when we see and feel each other's wounds and know another's sorrow like a brother of our own.”
― Niall Williams, As It Is in Heaven

“Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call "terrorism," I'm confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving it when they expressed it in much gentler ways -- they were trying to tell us how hurt they felt that some of their most sacred needs were not being respected by the way we were trying to meet our economic and military needs -- they got progressively more agitated. Finally, they got so agitated that it took horrible form.”
― Marshall B. Rosenberg, Speak Peace in a World of Conflict: What You Say Next Will Change Your World

“Alas! we must suffer ourselves before we can feel for others.”
― Émile Gaboriau, File No. 113

“• People deserve a break. The stressed and unorganized person who doesn’t have the same priorities as you may be dealing with an autistic child, abusive spouse, fading parents, or cancer. Don’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Give them a break instead.”
― Guy Kawasaki, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions

“If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.”
― George Eliot, Adam Bede

“Familiarity is the gateway drug to empathy.”
― iO Tillett Wright

“Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey--even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior.”
― John Vaillant, The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

“Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y quiero que me comprendan. Hasta cierto punto, pienso que es inevitable que el resto de la gnete no lo haga. Ya me he hecho a la idea. Así que no me ocurre lo mismo que a Nagasawa, a quien no le importa que no le entiendan.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.”
― Nicole Krauss, Man Walks into a Room

“Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One’s religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of personal decency running through most of humankind.”
― Jon Huntsman, Essential Lessons on Leadership

“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

“Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name.”
― Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

“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, Wasteland

“To us post-moderns, empathy is a stranger in a strange land".

~R. Alan Woods [2012]”
― R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal