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Empathy Quotes

I wish I had the talent to paint the way I feel about you, for my words always feel inadequate. I im...

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What is love?It's not empathy, nor kindness.Empathy takes two, the one who hurts and the one who emp...

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You know how the story ends. He escaped and went on to become the greatest chief Suntown ever had. H...

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The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not...

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How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to unders...

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In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in th...

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There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, tr...

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If you look into someone's face long enough, eventually you're going to feel that you're looking at ...

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And if, as all philosophers on the subject have noted, art is a human activity that relies on the se...

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Something was wrong, and while Mr. Bones could scarcely imagine what that thing was, Henry's sadness...

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It might feel, at least to some of us, that our opinions about issues such as abortion and the death...

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Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow...

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Mankind needs more empathy.

Picture of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree cou...

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Picture of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Empathy, he once had decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart fro...

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Picture of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

An android,” he said, “doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications w...

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Picture of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. DickDo Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Is it foolish to care for non-existent folk?Then, leave me to my foolishness.

Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an...

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R. A. SalvatoreThe Silent Blade

But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears....

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I thought it would teach them a thing or two about empathy, and friendship, and loyalty. As it turns...

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By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not dimini...

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I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rub...

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Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also tha...

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Rudyard KiplingSelected Stories

The Oscar-nominated documentary The Act of Killing tells the story of the gangster leaders who carri...

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Alone, [Chamcha] all at once remembered that he and Pamela had once disagreed, as they disagreed on ...

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Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to ...

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I couldn’t even tell if I had any sadness of my own, because I was so full of Abuelita’s sadness.

Very few people have ever experienced the feeling of being completely understood. When they experien...

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When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy repl...

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His face had been twisted into an expression of every agony he had imagined for his friend.

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Stephen CraneThe Red Badge of Courage

I hate the assumption that you can't write about something because you haven't experienced it, and n...

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So many people of liberal persuasion value their own progressive opinions more than they value the p...

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This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds - the most beautiful senses, the most ...

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Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be...

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Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination t...

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There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul ...

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The past week, Mother had denied her a pass to the market for some minor, forgettable reason, and sh...

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When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

I think I'm an actor because I have very strong imagination and empathy. I never studied acting, but...

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call it empathy. That means putting yourself in the place of the other person and seeing their point...

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Picture of Terry Pratchett
Terry PratchettThe Shepherd's Crown

Fellow-feeling. . .is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Ne...

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No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care

Sniff looked at them and noticed that they were much smaller than he was, so he felt kinder and said...

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Picture of Tove Jansson
Tove JanssonFinn Family Moomintroll

Nelson Mandela once said, 'If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head....

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Picture of Trevor Noah
Trevor NoahBorn a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood

The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgm...

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If I had an ear 2 confide inI would cry among my treasured friendsBut who do u know that stops that ...

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The imagination is truly the enemy of bigotry and dogma.

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, a...

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Ursula K. Le GuinThe Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

I could meet dreadful people and end up seeing the world through their eyes, seeing their frailties,...

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The moderns, carrying little baggage of the kind that Shelly called "merely cultural," not even livi...

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I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

...The happy Warrior... is he... who, doomed to go in company with pain, and fear, and bloodshed, mi...

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I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: “Things will be bet...

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Wynton MarsalisMoving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life

If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel t...

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When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for...

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When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear a...

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I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye, whether they manifest it themselves ...

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Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it...

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There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emot...

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seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of a...

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Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to...

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This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money a...

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To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding.To erase the possib...

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And another local journalist wrote an op-ed wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far. Won...

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Every day, bring some flowers to your life. Every day bring some blessings in someone’s life.

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Amit RayWalking the Path of Compassion

There are two types of empathy: the positive empathy and the negative empathy. When we are fully car...

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Amit RayYoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style

Some people have a thick skin and you don't. Your heart is really open and that is going to cause pa...

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Picture of Anne Lamott
Anne LamottStitches: A Handbook on Meaning

In social life we hardly stop to consider how much of that daring spirit which gives mastery comes f...

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How is it possible that suffering that is neither my own nor of my concern should immediately affect...

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What woman here is so enamored of her own oppression that she cannot see her heelprint upon another ...

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Audre LordeThe Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism

Those who judge must take all aspects of an individual's personality into account. It is only throug...

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Azar NafisiReading Lolita in Tehran

Other people's sorrows and joys have a way of reminding us of our own; we partly empathize with them...

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Azar NafisiReading Lolita in Tehran

It is not accidental that the most unsympathetic characters in Austen's novels are those who are inc...

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The crisis besetting America is not just an economic or political crisis; something deeper is wreaki...

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Azar NafisiThe Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by ...

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Azar NafisiThe Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage...

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I believe a stronger sense of empathy would tilt the balance of our current politics in favor of tho...

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Barack ObamaThe Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Like any value, empathy must be acted upon.

Picture of Barack Obama
Barack ObamaThe Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war...

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There's something in everyone only they know.

All that we can't say is all we need to hear.

What I Have Lived ForThree passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the lo...

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At the exact time that our society embraces shaming, blaming, judgment, and rejection, it also holds...

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If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't surv...

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Brené BrownDaring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the...

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Brené BrownDaring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live

No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They...

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Brené BrownThe Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness b...

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Hearing has consequences. When I truly hear a person and the meanings that are important to him at t...

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How convenient it is to declare that everything is totally ugly within the habit of the époque, rath...

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Picture of Charles Baudelaire
Charles BaudelaireSelected Writings on Art and Literature

Remember how strong we are in our happiness and how weak he is in his misery!

One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to fe...

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Should I, too, prefer the title of 'non-Jewish Jew'? For some time, I would have identified myself s...

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Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one n...

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Clarence DarrowAttorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom

When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and unavoidable pains; when we accep...

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Clarence DarrowThe Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow

Dream!Forge yourself and riseOut of your mind and into others.Men, be women.Fish, be flies.Girls, ta...

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Her father dropped her off in front of the place where she was to live and left the engine running. ...

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I don't blame you one iota for feeling as you do. If I were you I would undoubtedly feel just as you...

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Dale CarnegieHow to Win Friends and Influence People