Empathize Quotes & Sayings

Affliction equips the suffering to empathize with others in anguish and not only does it strengthen them, it enables them to be consoling comforters in a world full of hurt. — Donna Lynn Hope

I think pain is a very - it's an extremely hard thing to empathize moment to moment. And you often don't remember your own pain, you know, that moment that you broke a limb or you burned yourself or, I think, this is a common thing that women talk about with childbirth, that the memory of the pain is hard to summon up and relive, thankfully. — Hugh Laurie

He didn't have the ability to empathize with her because he could not get past himself. — Henry Cloud

Having empathy for customers and users is a powerful force. When we empathize, we enhance our ability to receive and process information.77 Empathy in design requires deliberate practice. We must design experiments and interaction opportunities to connect with our customers and users in meaningful ways and challenge our assumptions, preconceptions, and prejudices. We need to assume the role of an interested inquirer, trying to understand the challenges they experience. — Jez Humble

Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot — Iain Banks

I feel like you can't really be truthful as an artist and empathize with the human experience, unless you know your truth and you're not living a lie. So I'm learning through it, and it's making me a better person, and it's making me a better artist, I think. — Diane Guerrero

It's hard to get people to empathize with the poor. You can get some people to sympathize with the poor, but to empathize is actually very hard, because most people are not poor. I realized that scarcity gives you a thread. — Sendhil Mullainathan

I'm Dr. David Hanson, and I build robots with character. And by that, I mean that I develop robots that are characters, but also robots that will eventually come to empathize with you. — David Hanson

When we are in constant pain, we cannot empathize with others, nor can we help them. It is only when we allow ourselves to open up to our own nourishment that we are free to feed the rest of the world. And thus, to attend to one's own suffering is the most selfless act. — Vironika Tugaleva

I primarily have had my career in comedy, and that is something that I have never been too concerned about because I know there is really no room for vanity in comedy. Comedy comes from pain and it is a lot easier to empathize with somebody who is out of shape. — Chris Pratt

You see, it's about empathy. It's not about you. It's about empathy. It's not even about caring or being kind. It's about empathy. Do you think that all people who can empathize with other people (and rocks and trees), are desirous of being kind, at all times? Of course not! Empathy often hurts, and is often difficult. But we experience this difficulty, because we are human beings, because human beings are designed to connect with other living and non-living things! — C. JoyBell C.

The brilliant book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes seven key abilities most beneficial for human beings: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many of those who commit violence never learned these skills. If you know a young person who lacks them all, that's an important pre-incident indicator, and he needs help. — Gavin De Becker

The great thing about acting is, because you're constantly playing other characters and exploring yourself because you have to find those other characters in yourself, you sort of broaden as a person over your life because you've been other people. So you can empathize with many different sorts of people. It's great in that way and I hope, therefore, as you get older as an actor, you not only get more interesting because you lived more, but you get a bit wiser as a person. — Jeremy Irons

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul. — Deepak Chopra

The principles of good human-to-computer interface design are simplicity, support, clarity, encouragement, satisfaction, accessibility, versatility, and personalization. While it's essential to heed these, it's also important to empathize with and inspire your audience so they feel you're treating them less like a faceless user and more like a human being. — Sharon Lee

The neighborhoods I grew up in were poor and full of drug users. I don't think you have to look that hard to find those kinds of lives. But I also don't think you have to have experienced it really close to be able to empathize. — Jess Walter

I really wanted to go to architecture school but the demands of playing D-1 Collegiate soccer just take over so I tried to empathize architecture as much as I could. — Steve Purdy

Many of the members of the new upper class are balkanized. Furthermore, their ignorance about other Americans is more problematic than the ignorance of other Americans about them. It is not a problem if truck drivers cannot empathize with the priorities of Yale professors. It is a problem if Yale professors, or producers of network news programs, or CEOs of great corporations, or presidential advisers cannot empathize with the priorities of truck drivers. It is inevitable that people have large areas of ignorance about how others live, but that makes it all the more important that the members of the new upper class be aware of the breadth and depth of their ignorance. — Charles Murray

I like the opportunity to play characters who have these dark sides but make the audience empathize with them. You want them to think there is some kind of sweeter, softer side to it. — Julian McMahon

My sentences got sharper and my stories more efficient, and I gradually learned to imagine the reader more clearly and to empathize with that imagined reader, which is a crucial part of learning to tell stories. — Karen Thompson Walker

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy. — J.K. Rowling

You can never empathize with your parents as a teenager. You just think they're just on another planet. — Heather Langenkamp

If you really want to be able to express what goes on with other people, you have to be able to look at them and empathize with them and not judge who they are and what they do. — Lindsay Wagner

In most cases, the truth is a blade that does not need to be sharpened, and we almost never need to twist the knife. Because as a listener we can empathize with the fear that what we hear might hurt, we can also work to apply gentleness when speaking. I — Ethan Nichtern

My school of thought with going into a character is that you have to understand where they come from, and you have to empathize with them. — Rose McIver

I've found it easier to write, to coalesce my thoughts, since having children. It brings you back to what you experienced yourself as a child, and you empathize with what your parents went through. — Jill Hennessy

In theory, parents are supposed to empathize with one other - find common cause in the fervent desire to preserve and protect the world for the next generation, and connect on some deep, almost mystical level that those poor souls who have not experienced this kind of all-consuming love cannot possibly comprehend. — Adam Mansbach

I don't know if you can empathize, but it hurts when someone you love dumps you."
"You're joking, right?" said Chuck. "How do you think I wound up in the pound? At least grid boy didn't try to have you gassed. I still don't know what I did to those people. Or why you like that grid asshole so much."
"He's not only an asshole," I said, sorry to have to defend him. "At first he was smart and sexy and fun."
"How was he fun?" said Chuck. "Did he play ball? No. Did he bring meaty snacks? No. And he made such a big fucking deal when I drooled on his pants. How much fun was that? — Merrill Markoe

My first job is to entertain, but if, while you're enjoying, you start to question something you never thought about before or empathize with, relate to, love someone you only thought of as 'other' once upon a time - how awesome is that. — Jenji Kohan

Depression is a surfeit of empathy - a killing empathy - that makes depressives great friends to everyone but themselves. Having a self is a rough business, and depressives can empathize with others who have to deal with it, but not with themselves. — Michael Redhill

The love of wisdom is a way of life; that is to say, it's a set of practices that have to do with mustering the courage to think critically about ourselves, society, and the world; mustering the courage to empathize; the courage, I would say, to love; the courage to have compassion with others, especially the widow and the orphan, the fatherless and the motherless, poor and working peoples, gays and lesbians, and so forth - and the courage to hope. — Cornel West

The purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize with other people ... For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. — Roger Ebert

One of the fundamental demonstrations of our natural instinct to Bond with each other is a will to give. Rather than domination, our most basic urge is to reach out to another human being, even at a cost to ourselves. Giving to others-the urge to empathize, to be compassionate, and to help others altruistically-is not the exception to the rule, but our natural state of being. Our impulse to connect with each other has developed an automatic desire to do for others, even at personal cost. Altruism comes naturally to us. It is selfishness that is culturally conditioned and a sign of pathology. — Lynne McTaggart

When you know that somebody lost their loved one as a result of a decision that I made, that's a tough moment. If you're a faithful person you try to empathize with the suffering that that person is going through. — George W. Bush

The challenge is the same whether or not I'm collaborating: to empathize with your reader and to tell a story that will matter to him or her. But the mechanics of going about that challenge change when you're collaborating, because you have someone to help refine your thinking and expand your vision of what might happen. — John Green

The more people you run into, the greater your exposure, the easier it is to understand and empathize with other people. So if you are living in a much smaller ecosystem, it's probably easier to have simpler feelings. — James Scott

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to form of mental agoraphobia and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters, they are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude through our own apathy. — J.K. Rowling

Oh, fuck. Those kinds of tests. I wish I could empathize, but the only disease lesbians get from sex is lockjaw. — Tiffany Reisz

Some of the best actors think they're terrible; that's what keeps you connected to a vulnerability that makes it possible for people to empathize with you. — Jessie Mueller

So there's no guarantee if you like the music you will empathize with the culture and the people who made it. It doesn't necessarily happen. I think it can, but it doesn't necessarily happen. Which is kind of a shame. — David Byrne

Because I'm a filmmaker at heart, I know a villain can't be too humanized and the audience can't empathize with him too much. — Sharlto Copley

We must all try to empathize before we criticize. Ask someone what's wrong before telling them they are wrong. — Simon Sinek

I think with any characterization there's a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity. — Benedict Cumberbatch

Empathize with silence by listening for the feelings and needs behind it. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems. — David Eagleman

The goal of a designer is to listen, observe, understand, sympathize, empathize, synthesize and glean insights that enable him or her to make the invisible visible — Hillman Curtis

The heart must not only feel, but also empathize with humanity for therein the reflective is ItSelf, in concert - Christ Consciousness — AainaA-Ridtz

We rushed to Haiti. We Adopt in Asia. We empathize with Africa. But struggle to humanize our struggles here in the states. — LeCrae

As a parent, I can empathize with how difficult raising children can be. There are challenges, especially within the framework of divorce, when parental guilt can sometimes blur what should be the best decision. — LZ Granderson

If I can't allow you to be a person in your own right, then I can't empathize with you. I'll always take your experience as meaning something about me. Or I'll react to your feelings by thinking of myself, not you. — Henry Cloud

It's hard not to empathize with the mayor's anger, given the injustices he'd suffered, but righteous anger rarely leads to wise policy. — Edward L. Glaeser

I respect and empathize with reporters and editors who must compete in today's environment. And I know full well that when I've been covering campaigns, which I still do, I've made my mistakes and have been far from perfect. — Dan Rather

It's a powerful statement and one that Whitney sings with a grandeur that approaches the sublime. Its universal message crosses all boundaries and instills one with the hope that it's not too late for us to better ourselves, to act kinder. Since it's impossible in the world we live in to empathize with others, we can always empathize with ourselves. It's an important message, crucial really, and it's beautifully stated in this album. — Bret Easton Ellis

Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren't all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I'd light a match. — Ingrid Newkirk

Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced. — Dan Chaon

The idea that we're "wired for story" is more than a catchy phrase. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that hearing a story - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end - causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the uniquely human abilities to connect, empathize, and make meaning. Story is literally in our DNA. — Brene Brown

In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice. — Vironika Tugaleva

I can empathize with women who feel that [sexism]. I personally haven't experienced it, and I'm grateful for that. I feel very appreciated on the show I'm on, but I do empathize. My concern is less the entertainment industry specifically, and more the general problem that women don't get paid as much as men in any industry. — Danielle Panabaker

When I read a book, I try my best, not always successfully, to let the wall crumble just a bit, the barricade that separates me from the book. I try to be involved.
I am Raskalnikov. I am K. I am Humbert and Lolita.
I am you.
If you read these pages and think I'm the way I am because I lived through a civil war, you can't feel my pain. If you believe you're not like me because one woman, and only one, Hannah, chose to be my friend, then you're unable to empathize. — Rabih Alameddine

Seven key abilities human beings need to effectively manage life: the ability to motivate ourselves, to persist against frustration, to delay gratification, to regulate moods, to hope, to empathize, and to control impulse. Many — Gavin De Becker

It's harder to empathize with those who appear to possess more power, status, or resources. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Empathize, rather than put your "but" in the face of an angry person. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

For me the prophetic has to do with mustering the courage to love, to empathize, to exercise compassion, and to be committed to justice. — Cornel West

But one of the cruelties of teenagehood is that you'll never know what your parents were really like at your age, and they'll never accurately remember - not enough to empathize, anyway . . . maybe just enough for pity. — Una LaMarche

The best stories proceed from a mysterious truth-seeking impulse that narrative has when revised extensively; they are complex and baffling and ambiguous; they tend to make us slower to act, rather than quicker. They make us more humble, cause us to empathize with people we don't know, because they help us imagine these people, and when we imagine them - if the storytelling is good enough - we imagine them as being, essentially, like us. If the story is poor, or has an agenda, if it comes out of a paucity of imagination or is rushed, we imagine those other people as essentially unlike us: unknowable, inscrutable, incontrovertible. — George Saunders

I just love actors, and I've always loved actors. I empathize with their job. Everyone thinks it's easy, and it ain't. To be that vulnerable and brave on camera is tough. The more they reveal themselves, the more we love them, but there's a lot of truth in what they're showing. — Paul Haggis

I don't believe we need to sympathize with opposing views; I do believe we need to develop the capacity to acknowledge and empathize with conflicting opinions that are as passionately defended as our own. — Chris Rhyss Edwards

There are many who subscribe to the convention that service is a business cost, but our data demonstrates that superior service is an investment that can help drive business growth. Investing in quality talent, and ensuring they have the skills, training and tools that enable them to empathize and actively listen to customers are central to providing consistently excellent service experiences. — Jim Bush

We all are born with a certain package. We are who we are: where we were born, who we were born as, how we were raised. We're kind of stuck inside that person, and the purpose of civilization and growth is to be able to reach out and empathize a little bit with other people. And for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us. — Roger Ebert

I empathize with those who yearn for a simpler world, for some bygone golden age of domestic and international tranquility. But for the mass of humanity it is an age that never was. — Shirley Hufstedler

Boys who grow up seeing themselves everywhere as powerful and central just by virtue of being boys, often white, are critically impaired in many ways. It's a rude shock to many when things don't turn out the way they were told they should. It seems reasonable to suggest media misrepresentations like these contribute, in boys, to a heightened inability to empathize with others, a greater propensity to peg ambition to intrinsic qualities instead of effort and a failure to understand why rules apply or why accountability is a thing. It should mean something to parents that the teenagers with the highest likelihood of sexually assaulting a peer and feel no responsibility for their actions are young white boys from higher-income families. The real boy crisis we should be talking about is entitlement and outdated notions of masculinity, both of which are persistently responsible for leaving boys confused and unprepared for contemporary adulthood. — Soraya Chemaly

With any character, you want the audience to at least empathize. — Tobias Segal

Some people believe that mirror neurons are also central to our ability to empathize with others and may even account for the emergence of gestural communication and spoken language. What we do know is that certain neurons increase their firing rate when we perform object-oriented actions with our hands (grasping, manipulating) and communicative or ingestive actions with our mouths. These neurons also fire, albeit less rapidly, whenever we witness the same actions performed by other people. Research — Sam Harris

I really love helping students and helping them empathize with people who lived a really long time ago. That's one of the highlights of working in fiction. — Deborah Harkness

We need empathy to give empathy. When we sense ourselves being defensive or unable to empathize, we need to (a) stop, breathe, give ourselves empathy, (b) scream nonviolently, or (c) take time out. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

The writer's special talent is to empathize with people and imagine their lives. We know them as we write them. — Kay Kenyon

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared. — J.K. Rowling

MirkerLurker: I thought the characters were the reason anyone read Monstrous Sea.

rainmaker: You mean like, shipping?

MirkerLurker: No, not shipping - shipping's great, and I do it all the time, but I mean... the characters themselves. The struggles they have to go through, and when you really love them, how much they affect you. When the characters are good, they make you care about everything else. That's why I draw them. It probably sounds dumb, but they're like real people to me. And this will probably sound worse, but sometimes I like them better than real people. I can empathize with characters. Real people are harder. — Francesca Zappia

If the other persons behavior is not in harmony with my own needs, the more I empathize with them and their needs, the more likely I am to get me own needs met. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I don't have to sympathize or empathize with a human being in order to be able to portray them. I mean, some of the greatest roles that actors have been able to play haven't been the most endearing on screen. — Dustin Lance Black

I love when there's an obstacle to overcome, even for the audience to actually empathize with that character. I find that interesting, and then, how to work around that and make them relatable. That's something that you have to dig into the moments and into the performances and see how to play those situations that make them relatable. — Craig Gillespie

We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize. — Spike Jonze

You - who are smarter than cruise ships - can empathize, but also, however, you cannot.

from "Cruise Ship Disaster Empathy — Forest Lewis

It may be most difficult to empathize with those we are closest to. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I can empathize with President [George Bush]. I know what it feels like having a young guy waiting around for you to keel over. — Johnny Carson

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning. — Jason Bateman

The best way I can get understanding from another person is to give this person the understanding, too. If I want them to hear my needs and feelings, I first need to empathize. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

As an actor, what you dream of is being able to portray people that people empathize with and understand and really feel for. — Daniel Sharman

My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will. — Adam Haslett

Some people have problems and you need to learn to empathize, not judge. — Katja Millay

Years ago, it was pretty hard to get people to empathize even a little bit with scaly, cold-blooded critters; now, thanks a lot to good PR from television, it is easier to get the message of reptile conservation and tolerance across. We have a lot to be thankful to reptiles for, not the least of which is their control of rodents. — Romulus Whitaker

It's interesting sometimes when an audience can empathize with a villain. — Jack Gleeson

Neuroeconomist Paul Zak has found that hearing a story - a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end - causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the uniquely human abilities to connect, empathize, and make meaning. — Brene Brown

We are adjusters. We empathize, we change rhythm and above all we listen to our fellow actors-if they're good actors. — Ben Kingsley

Rather than turning away from the staggering scale and depth of misery caused by war, we must strive to develop our capacity to empathize and feel the sufferings of others. — Daisaku Ikeda

Weakness drives us to set goals, to try harder, to put forth more effort, to dream and wish and hope, to reach out further and down deeper, to pray earnestly, to cry mightily, to understand and empathize with valid sincerity. In truth, weakness is a catalyst for greater strength. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There are kinds of human problems which really do seem, as our tidy expressions would have it, to "come to a head" and "demand to be dealt with." But there are also problems, often just as serious, which come to nothing that we can recognize or openly deal with. Some long-lived, insidious problems simply slip us off to one side of ourselves. Some gently rob us of just enough energy or faith so that days which once took place on a horizontal plane become an endless series of uphill slogs. And some - like high water working year after year at the roots of a riverside tree - quietly undercut our trust or our hope, our sense of place, or of humor, our ability to empathize, or to feel enthused, and we don't sense impending danger, we don't feel the damage at all, till one day, to our amazement, we find ourselves crashing to the ground. — David James Duncan

We need to see people other than ourselves in order to empathize. If we don't live around others we do ourselves and our society damage because our ability to relate becomes impaired. It's easy to demonize, or simply dismiss, people you don't know or see...It's nearly impossible to commiserate with the unseen and unknown. — Charles M. Blow

I certainly fall in love with artists. I think that's probably the aspiration of an artist, to make a listener empathize so deeply that they do fall in love with you. — K.d. Lang

A novel is not an allegory ... It is the sensual experience of another world. If you don't enter that world, hold your breath with the characters and become involved in their destiny, you won't be able to empathize, and empathy is at the heart of the novel. This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. — Azar Nafisi