Selected empathy quotes

1. There, but for the grace of God, goes God.

2. A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.

3. The man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life in his own.

4. I used to suffer particularly because the poor animals must endure so much pain and want. The sight of an old, limping horse being dragged along by one man while another man struck him with a stick he was being driven to the Colmar slaughterhouse - haunted me for weeks.

5. Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

6. We cannot possibly let ourselves get frozen into regarding everyone we do not know as an absolute stranger.

7. Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

8. Here again, there is no tabulation; for us it is left to sacrifice literary charm, and even some accuracy, in order to bring out the one great point. The cause of human sectarianism is not lack of sympathy in thought, but in speech; and this it is our not unambitious design to remedy.

9. The really great people are the ones who know how to make the little people feel great.

10. The fact is that child rearing is a long, hard job, the rewards are not always immediately obvious, the work is undervalued, and parents are just as human and almost as vulnerable as their children.

11. Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.

12. Come in, dear wind, and be our guest You too have neither home nor rest.

13. I was in Japan a couple of months ago, I saw a preview for the movie Pearl Harbor. And they showed the Japanese airplanes coming in to bomb Pearl Harbor, and I applauded. Nobody else in the theater applauded.

14. The best that we can do is to be kindly and helpful toward our friends and fellow passengers who are clinging to the same speck of dirt while we are drifting side by side to our common doom.

15. Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

16. The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

17. I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.

18. The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.

19. No radiant pearl which crested Fortune wears, No gem that twinkling hangs from Beauty's ears, Not the bright stars which Night's blue arch adorn, Nor rising suns that gild the vernal morn, Shine with such lustre as the tear that flows Down Virtue's manly cheek for others' woes.

20. Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

21. The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves. The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own.

22. One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

23. It is by a wise economy of nature that those who suffer without change, and whom no one can help, become uninteresting. Yet so it may happen that those who need sympathy the most often attract it the least.

24. Just think, right now as you read this, some guy somewhere is gettin' ready to hang himself.

25. Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

26. I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.

27. Let your heart feel for the afflictions and distress of everyone, and let your hand give in proportion to your purse.

28. [My first children's book] is very subliminal, let's put it that way. It even has a bit of a metaphysical little message in there [about how] we're all somehow connected and we all have a responsibility toward each other. Although you may feel alone in the world, you definitely are not.

29. The separation of families to me is very close to my heart because we lived that as immigrants. I strongly feel that we all connected, and having felt people's love and support first-hand through difficult moments in my life, makes me feel it's our responsibility to help one another. I am privileged to help in some way, and I will always take that opportunity.

30. It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.

31. It's a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I've never had any trouble identifying with the character that I'm playing.

32. If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.

33. Where men of fine feeling are concerned there is seldom misunderstanding.

34. To invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect: but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of someone sitting on the other side of the table.

35. What I have known with respect to myself, has tended much to lessen both my admiration, and my contempt, of others.

36. I have been guilty of watching Westerns without acknowledging that Native Americans have gone through the same madness as African Americans. Isn't it extraordinary that sometimes the most offended have not seen others being offended?

37. LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.

38. If someone stinks, view it as a reason to help them, not a reason to avoid them.

39. To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.

40. I'm sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you.

41. Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

42. 'Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.'

43. 'To keep the Golden Rule we must put ourselves in other people's places, but to do that consists in and depends upon picturing ourselves in their places. '

44. Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.

45. I've always liked Saturn. But I also have some sympathy for Pluto because I heard it's been downgraded from a planet, and I think it should remain a planet. Once you've given something planetary status it's kind of mean to take it away.

46. The secret of language is the secret of sympathy and its full charm is possible only to the gentle.

47. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say - and to feel - 'Yes, that's the way it is, or at least that's the way I feel it. You're not as alone as you thought.'

48. You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed - so you were a good man just the same.

49. I have always felt that humor was a wonderful vehicle to let us become connected with each other and ourselves: I try to portray the similarities and polarities in men and women, so that we can acknowledge and embrace our collective consciousness.

50. Oh who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried.

51. Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear, and the blind can read.

52. 'Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know.'

53. I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream- and by tuning into one another's secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.

54. Ender mentally added him to his private list of people who also qualified as human beings.

55. I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.

56. The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

57. One of the most obvious facts about grown-ups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

58. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.

59. As I know more of mankind, I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man, upon easier terms than I was formerly.

60. Poor little foal of an oppressed race! I love the languid patience of thy face.

61. No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.

62. Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown - if that's the right way to describe what happens - because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

63. A kind heart is a fountain of gladness making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

64. Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?

65. Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance, And drink, and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

66. 'There are things which we feel to be good and true, though in the cold light of reason and calculation many things remain incomprehensible and dark. And though the society in which we live considers such actions thoughtless, or reckless, or I don't know what else, what can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us? And though it may be that we cannot argue against the reasoning sentiment and to act from impulse, one would almost conclude that some people have cauterized certain sensitive nerves within them, especially those which, combined, are called conscience. Well, I pity those people; they travel through life without compass, in my opinion.

67. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

68. He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

69. There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it, and that we ought all of us to feel what a horrible thing it is to cause suffering and death out of mere thoughtlessness. And this conviction has influenced me only more and more strongly with time. I have grown more and more certain that at the bottom of our heart we all think this, and that we fail to acknowledge it because we are afraid of being laughed at by other people as sentimentalists, though partly also because we allow our best feelings to get blunted. But I vowed that I would never let my feelings get blunted, and that I would never be afraid of the reproach of sentimentalism.

70. It's human to make mistakes - and some of us are much more human than others.

71. I wouldn't give his troubles to a monkey on a rock.

72. I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

73. The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves. It is not love of self but hatred of self which is at the root of the troubles that afflict our world.

74. Whenever you feel like criticizing any one... just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

75. We are as forlorn as children lost in the wood. When you stand in front of me an look at me, what do you know of the grief's that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and tell you, what more would you know about me that you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell.

76. The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

77. If there is any one secret of success, ... it lies in the ability in the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

78. It's the trouble with being me. At this point, nobody gives a damn what my problem is. I could literally have a tumor on the side of my head and they'd be like, 'Yeah, big deal. I'd eat a tumor every morning for the kinda money you're pulling down.'

79. I don't know much about morality and that, but there is this: It's always worth while before you do anything to consider whether it's going to hurt another person more than is absolutely necessary.

80. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.

81. Compassion is something I have a lot of, because I've been through a lot of pain in my life. Anybody who has suffered a lot of pain has a lot of compassion.

82. We are so fond of one another, because our ailments are the same.

83. But nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

84. Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people don't care about them. You are not alone.'

85. I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.

86. People will forget what you said People will forget what you did But people will never forget how you made them feel.

87. I'm very good at that. Understanding what other people think.

88. In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them until they don't exist.

89. When you really know somebody you can't hate them Or maybe it's just that you can't really know them until you stop hating them Is that a circular paradox? Dom Cristao says that most truth can only be expressed in circular paradoxes I don't think it has anything to do with truth, it's just cause and effect. We can never sort them out. Science refuses to admit any cause except the first cause - knock down one domino, the one next to it also falls. But when it comes to human beings, the only type of cause that matters is the final cause, the purpose. What a person had in mind. Once you know what people really want, you can't hate them anymore. You can fear them, but you can't hate them, because you can always find the same desires in your own heart.

90. The good want power, but to weep barren tears. The powerful goodness want: worse need for them. The wise want love; and those who love want wisdom; And all best things are thus confused to ill. Many are strong and rich, and would be just, But live among their suffering fellow-men As if none felt: they know not what they do.

91. Then gently scan your brother man, Still gentler sister woman; Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang, To step aside is human.

92. It is highly significant, and indeed almost a rule, that moral courage has its source in identification through one's own sensitivity with the suffering of one's fellow human beings.

93. If you say to someone who has ears to hear: 'What you are doing to me is not just,' you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, 'I have the right...' or 'you have no right to...' They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention. [p.63]

94. The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

95. I am willing to believe that my unobtainable sixty seconds within a sponge or a flatworm might not reveal any mental acuity that I would care to call consciousness. But I am also confident [:] that vultures and sloths, as close evolutionary relatives with the same basic set of organs, lie on our side of any meaningful (and necessarily fuzzy) border-and that we are therefore not mistaken when we look them in the eye and see a glimmer of emotional and conceptual affinity.

96. I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. [citation needed]

97. Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdain - under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.

98. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

99. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumb-screw be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffered from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children - those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own - being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty...

100. ... social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty ...