Popular quotes about Empathy! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
My wish list is pretty short. I wish that we had empathy. As a society, we are so wrapped up in our own artificial creations that we have become disconnected from one another and the wonder of our natural world. I truly believe that empathy is the key to solving the majority of our environmental and social problems.
Adrian GrenierI don't think conservativism is about a deficiency. I think it's about a commitment to an ideology that has to in some ways devalue the usefulness of empathy. I do think empathy can be learned. And enhanced.
Jim ShepardAPD is primarily defined as a lack of empathy,' I said. I'd looked it up too, a few months ago. Empathy is what allows people to interpret emotion, the same way ears interpret sounds; without it you become emotionally deaf. 'It means I don't connect emotionally with other people. I wondered if he was going to pick that one.' 'How do you even know that?' she said. 'You're fifteen years old, for goodness' sake. You should be ... I don't know, chasing girls or playing video games.' 'You're telling a sociopath to chase girls?
Dan WellsI think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.
John ConnollyThe only way we really create change is to enter any situation with the humility to listen and to recognize the world as it is, and then the audacity to dream what it could be, to have the patience to start and let the work teach you, to be willing to lead when you need to lead, and to listen. To have a sense of generosity and empathy, but not over-empathy, because accountability is so critical to building solutions that work.
Jacqueline NovogratzEmpathy 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.
Matthieu RicardI think the opposite version of me is the one we don't see, which is there are tens of thousands of outrageously successful businesses of very quiet, very calculated, calm executors who are confident. You can't be successful without being confident. They believe in themselves. They have their own version of assertiveness ... I think confidence matters and I think other things matter, like I would tell you empathy is probably why I'm more successful than confidence. I'm empathic to the customer, to my business partners, to my employees.
Gary VaynerchukStuart Rojstaczer writes with enormous wit, style and empathy, and The Mathematician's Shiva is a big-hearted, rollickingly funny novel that's impossible to put down. A tremendous debut.
Molly AntopolLoss makes me feel vulnerable. 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 StratenTrying to observe the slow shift from self-centeredness to empathy is like trying to watch grass grow.
Neal A. MaxwellSuppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation.
Jonathan HaidtHe'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.
Ralph FiennesStairway to Wisdomโ) David Brooks detailed the needed ingredients to gaining a deep understanding of a social problem, beginning with the data and moving on to first-hand accounts. The highest rung on his stairway, though, went beyond those: โEmpathy opens you up to absorb the good and the bad. Love impels you not just to observe but to seek unionโto think as another thinks and feel as another feels.
David BrooksKate Otto, like so many in her generation, is committed to being a good global citizen and doing her part to make the world a better place. Everyday Ambassador is a refreshing approach which encourages collaborative work with focus, empathy, humility and patience to better affect positive change in communities throughout the world.
Ann VenemanIt is people who go through suffering that have an empathy for the suffering of others.
Mary RobinsonHumility is my table, respect is my garment, empathy is my food and curiosity is my drink. As for love, it has a thousand names and is by my side at every window.
Tariq RamadanIf women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counterbalance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever-escalating speed. Who will safeguard the despised animal faculties of compassion, empathy, innocence and sensuality?
Germaine GreerThings would hurt me in a big way because I didn't seem to have a very thick layer of skin, but this also meant I had extreme empathy for other people. I think perhaps that's what makes my songs hit home for some people, because I've tried to see the world through their eyes and I recognise- even just for a second- that we all ultimately are struggling with the same things.
Missy HigginsLife-Enriching Education: an education that prepares children to learn throughout their lives, relate well to others, and themselves, be creative, flexible, and venturesome, and have empathy not only for their immediate kin but for all of humankind.
Marshall B. RosenbergWell, one of the things we're supposed to be able to do as playwrights is write from a place of empathy, get into another character's shoes and experience things both mundane and tragic. And people don't - like me right now - people aren't necessarily the most eloquent when trying to express their emotions. I guess I feel as a playwright that those people deserve a voice, too, a voice that isn't so articulate that they themselves can no longer identify with it.
Tracy LettsMost women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games.
Richard RohrLearning 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.
Michael GoveWe'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 HighwaterI lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure.....he reads me so well. He's known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing disturbs him...Few can lie to me... I don't know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That's my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion.
Karen Marie MoningNovels attempt to render human experience; that's really all they are. They are meant to convey empathy for the character.
Sue Monk KiddThe brain controls pain. It controls fear. Sleep. Empathy. Hunger. Everything we associate with the heart or the soul or the nervous system is actually controlled by the brain. Everything. What if you could control it?
Dennis LehaneOne 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 OrtbergI think that's almost what it is sometimes if you sum up what acting is. It's just the ultimate expression of empathy.
Emily BluntThe biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.
Barack ObamaWomen bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage, empathy and refinement in relationships and in cultures.
D. Todd ChristoffersonIf we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
Brenรฉ BrownThe good enough mother, owing to her deep empathy with her infant, reflects in her face his feelings; this is why he sees himselfin her face as if in a mirror and finds himself as he sees himself in her. The not good enough mother fails to reflect the infant's feelings in her face because she is too preoccupied with her own concerns, such as her worries over whether she is doing right by her child, her anxiety that she might fail him.
Bruno BettelheimBy โempathy,โ some people mean everything that is good - compassion, kindness, warmth, love, being a mensch, changing the world - and I'm for all of those things. I'm not a monster.
Paul BloomThere 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.
J. William FulbrightEmpathy works so well because it does not require a solution. It requires only understanding.
John MedinaI coach to help boys become men of empathy and integrity who will lead, be responsible, and change the world for good.
Joe EhrmannEmpathy is the main thing, putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and trying not to judge.
Keira KnightleyEmpathy isn't as hard as it sounds because people have a lot of the same feelings. And it helps to understand other people because then you can actually care about them sometimes. And help them. And have a friend.
Kathryn ErskineThe functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.
Dean KoontzThe same was true of the most popular girls. They had no empathy, no compassion for more normal kids.
BrimstoneThere is something human about the way people react to and identify with suffering. There's a lot more empathy in the world than we perhaps realize.
Edwidge DanticatI 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.
Neko CaseThe 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 GopnikI've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.
Frans de WaalInternational educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace-eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education.
J. William Fulbright