Something as important and central and encompassing as empathy can't be all bad. I think empathy plays a role in intimate relationships, where you might want your partner not just to care about you or understand you but to feel what you feel.

For the most part, people use "empathy" to mean everything good. For instance, many medical schools have courses in empathy. But if you look at what they mean, they just want medical students to be nicer to their patients, to listen to them, to respect them, to understand them. What's not to like? If they were really teaching empathy, then I'd say there is a world of problems there.

I think Americans are always going to care more about Americans than about Mexicans.

I think empathy can serve as a moral spark, motivating us to do good things. But anything can be a moral spark.

Every president, Democratic or Republican, simply works on the supposition that it's better to keep jobs in America than let them go to Mexico.

I draw a lot from Buddhism, which focuses on compassion and kindness, loving kindness, as they call it, but rejects empathy because it's a poor moral guide. And I think there's a lot of evidence suggesting that they're right.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.