Empathy Quotations

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter.

Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth.

'Empathy' is the latest code word for liberal activism, for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

Sometimes I'm asked by kids why I condemn marijuana when I haven't tried it. The greatest obstetricians in the world have never been pregnant.

Cancer is a growth hormone for empathy, and empathy makes us useful to each other in ways we were not, could not have been, before.

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.

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

He who wishes to paint Christ's story must live with Christ.

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

Our culture encourages women to nurture men, making it predictable that many experience a seductive empathy for abusive men, as well as the misguided hope that love can obliterate an ugly past.

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.

Imaginative empathy is one of the great gifts that humans have, and it means that we can live more than one life. We can picture what it would be like from another perspective.

A little anger is a good thing if it isn't on your own behalf, if it's for others deserving of your anger, your empathy.

Silence has been destroyed, but also the idea that it's important to learn how another person thinks, to enter the mind of another person. The whole idea of empathy is gone. We are now part of this giant machine where every second we have to take out a device and contribute our thoughts and opinions.

Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus, empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

I have been under considerable pressure to buy at least a laptop computer. I have always turned the suggestions down for the reason that I have never done creative work on a typewriter. There is to me a lack of empathy.

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

My wife has been my greatest earthly inspiration. She excels in eloquence, the poetry of words, empathy and graciousness.

I worry that if whatever pops into your head at any instant immediately goes online, you lose the crucial time for your thoughts to simmer and evolve and build up nuance, depth and empathy.

Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children.

We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.

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?

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.

I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

The human is indissolubly linked with imitation: a human being only becomes human at all by imitating other human beings.

Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.

The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.

Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That's why they look alike.

Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.

There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well.

Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems.

I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.

My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy.

I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

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.

Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that, in most cases, it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.

I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.

My job is to have empathy and curiosity for things that I've never done. Also, I'm a person whom people talk to.

I hope people learn the power of vulnerability through my songs. I think vulnerability can save the world. Empathy helps people connect with each other.

Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do.

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.

The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.

Although I'm not particularly troubled myself, I do have a lot of empathy for troubled characters.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don't know and I don't care.

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world.

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.

I grew up with lots of animals and I related more to them than I did to people. I feel a lot of empathy for them.

He's really sort of the devil. He's completely emotionally detached. He has no empathy. You find that in psychopaths. It's about power with Voldemort. It's an aphrodisiac for him. Power makes him feel alive.

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

Writing really evokes empathy in a way very few things can do.

We all must support the arts, as it is our culture. It makes us better people. It makes us happy; it gives us empathy and shows us how to live. It is so important.

Good politics starts with empathy, proceeds to analysis, then sets out values and establishes the vision, before getting to the nitty-gritty of policy solutions.

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources.

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

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.

Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control.

Literature sucks you into another psyche. So the creation of empathy necessarily influences how you'll behave to other people.

Any disease support community is a place of deep bonds and empathy, and there are thousands if not tens of thousands of them.

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.'

Novels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.

Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.

Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems.

As you get older you have more respect and empathy for your parents. Now I have a great relationship with both of them.

There is zero correlation between IQ and emotional empathy... They're controlled by different parts of the brain.

Behavior is the mirror in which everyone shows their image.

What Mr. Obama wants in a nominee isn't really 'empathy' and 'understanding.' He wants a liberal, activist Supreme Court justice.

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

The thing that enchants me the most is the ability women have to feel other people's pain. The total empathy that women have is extraordinary.

When you hear about what someone else is going through, and you are unable to distance yourself from it or in any way muzzle your empathy and are inspired to actually do something, these are moments to learn from.

While leaders spend considerable time and effort trying to envision markets and pushing out innovation, empathy can often generate simple, yet breakthrough ideas.

Empathy makes you more aware of other people's suffering, but it's not clear it actually motivates you to take moral action or prevents you from taking immoral action.

I am truly passionate and concerned about the lack of empathy that people show towards one another.

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

Witchery is merely a word for what we are all capable of -- heightened nightsight, an empathy shared with the beasts, a utilization of the more obscure abilities of our minds. Nothing that science can't explain away. Wizardry is spells and enchantments. Fairy tales.

But compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love that you've got.

I'm not a fan of justifying bad behavior or justifying why people are the way they are. I think that's a cop out. I don't have a lot of empathy for that.

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.

Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own--and work is often the keyhole through which you peer.

The media, far from being a conspiracy to dull the political sense of the people, could be viewed as a conspiracy to disguise the extent of political indifference.

In this sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found.

A man posing for a painting.

I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own - they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.

Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

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.

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.

Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.