Great Empathy Quotes & Sayings

The Empath is often said to have such a great degree of empathy that they can literally feel what others feel, and thus intuitively know many of the yearnings, sensitivities, tastes and even thought patterns of the people they're around. — Aletheia Luna

There is something so awe-inspiring in great afflictions that even in the worst times the first emotion of a crowd has generally been to sympathise with the sufferer in a great catastrophe. — Alexandre Dumas

Many of the great humanitarian and environmental campaigns of our time have been to make the unknown real, the invisible visible, to bring the faraway near, so that the suffering of sweatshop workers, torture victims, beaten children, even the destruction of other species and remote places, impinges on the imagination and perhaps prompts you to act. — Rebecca Solnit

Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects - the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the "disembodied" woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat - with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. "One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind. — Oliver Sacks

I'm not interested in whether you've sat with the great; I'm interested in whether you've sat with the broken. — Unknown

My mother, who taught me how to read and write and home-schooled me for the first 12 years of my life, whose presence shaped me as much as her absence did, who imbibed in me the values of empathy and fearlessness and hard work, looks down on me today with great pride. — Sharad Vivek Sagar

Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. Lazarus, — Erika Johansen

When people are broken on the outside, society is taught to never be rude to them. When people are broken on the inside, society is taught to rub happiness in their faces and show them how perfect life should be. When someone has half of an arm, you are not supposed to go up to them and show them how great of an arm wrestler you are. But when someone has a broken mind or a broken soul, you're taught to go up to them and tell them to look for joy in everything. Society has a very long way to go in terms of what it means to heal this world's broken people. — C. JoyBell C.

The 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 Gopnik

Beauty is the first recognition of truth, great or small; Ugliness is the villain counter-posed to eradicate the internalization and eternalization of truth."

"Lonely individuals have the most fulfilling conversations upon the mutual recognition of pathos in one another's eyes."

"Rules are the first weapon of cowards, fascists, and dullards. The cunning and anarchists and steadfast use the rules only as a last resort. After reason, logic, bribery, creativity, pleas for decency, and empathy--rules are all that before one must quietly plan an disproportionate response (like automotive sabotage or murder made to look like an accident. — James W. Hritz

Think of the horse as your partner.and it's all one great dance.
That's not to say it's always going to be easy or you won't have to work through issues.
But when a horse is troubled or uncomfortable in our world, rather than show contempt for him, you must demonstrate empathy and work to convince him that you mean him no harm.
You have some things that you'd like him to do 'with you', as opposed to 'for you'- and the best way to do that is as partners. — Buck Brannaman

Literature has done great work for feminism - writing and reading are a practice of empathy - and great literature will continue to do so. — Julianna Baggott

You know how the story ends. He escaped and went on to become the greatest chief Suntown ever had. He never built a shrine or a temple or even a shack in the name of Tia. In the Great Book, her name is never mentioned again. He never mused about her or even asked where she was buried. Tia was a virgin. She was beautiful. She was poor. And she was a girl. It was her duty to sacrifice her life for his. — Nnedi Okorafor

Like painting, most software is intended for a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. — Paul Graham

[The] persevering steadiness of my mother, her belief in seeing things through, and her great ability to love and learn, listen and change, helped keep me alive through all the years of pain and nightmare that were to come. She could not have known how difficult it would be to deal with madness; had no preparation for what to do with madness
none of us did
but consistent with her ability to love, and her native will, she handled it with empathy and intelligence. It never occurred to her to give up. — Kay Redfield Jamison

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue. — Brian Eno

Be willing to familiarize yourself with this attitude, taking on yourself the burden of protecting all sentient beings from all problems; do it repeatedly and with regular analysis. Your empathy will be so great that it will suffuse your entire being. Without any desire for reward, your aim will be solely the development of others, never disheartened or discouraged in your task. — Dalai Lama XIV

Don't hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell them that you expect great things from them. They will stop the bullying. They will stop, because they will start to love themselves. And people who love themselves don't bully others. — Dan Pearce

Imaginative empathy is one of the great gifts that humans have, and it means that we can live more than one life. We can picture what it would be like from another perspective. — Dan Chaon

I felt great empathy for my friend, as one form of cancer after another emerged to challenge him. I felt sympathy for his suffering that surely clawed at his daily routines, always active and busy, but he rarely verbalized complaints while courageously challenging his archenemy. He met pain and physical decline with 600-calorie workouts; he discarded anxieties somewhere along innumerable running trails; he faced death by running through life at full stride. — Brent Green

A great friend can act like a trash can with a hole in the bottom. To listen to someone else's personal garbage with the same empathy you would spend listening to their joy, and then release that garbage just as quickly as you hear it, without absorbing it, makes you a wonderful friend to that person
and an even better one to yourself. — Doug "Ten" Rose

I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it's disrupting our society. In Great Britain, there is a steady decline in the willingness to be truly generous, and by that I don't mean monetary generosity, but friendship and sympathy for others. — J.K. Rowling

Being an outsider is humbling. It makes you realize the humanity of all outsiders. It opens up a great space of empathy between yourself and everyone else who looks like the are excluded from the group. This is a set of people rich in perspectives and experiences. It is often the outsider who has the most interesting view of what life is and can become. — Omar Saif Ghobash

As he talked, I thought, "Maybe I'm wrong about the guy." Put him with someone like Anna Gunderson, a nice woman who has suffered a great tragedy, and his empathetic side came out.
And then I realized he was faking it. — Kelley Armstrong

As you get older you have more respect and empathy for your parents. Now I have a great relationship with both of them. — Hugh Jackman

Tony Blair has made a good contribution to the cause of peace in Ireland. He has made a great effort to understand it. He has great empathy with the need to resolve the conflict. — Martin McGuinness

Sweetie," Dino said, coming over to put his arm around her shoulder. He tipped her head up and looked into her eyes with great empathy. "You can't fuck a statue. At least not at that angle. You'd at least have to tip it onto its back first, and as a conservator, I can't recommend it. — Rosanna Leo

As you travel through the Middle East what keeps on striking home to me is how similar everyone is, and yet the degree to which we can find differences to fight wars over. It requires a great deal of empathy, I think, between various sides to overcome this history and live in peace. — Barack Obama

Empathy is the key to great stories. — Ami Vitale

One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man. — Charles M. Blow

Literature is a way in which we can learn to live deeper lives
husband with wife, parent with child, brother with sister, fellow member with fellow member. Most good authors are better than we are. They are much better company than our own friends.
What comes from good company? What comes from good company is better manners, greater sensitivity, greater sensibility, greater empathy, great sympathy. Reading good literature makes us more capable of understanding other people, of loving other people, those whom we don't particularly want to love, even our enemies, as well as those closest to us. How can we expect to have full marriages when we are not going into those marriages with full minds and fine sensibilities? We are ignoring the tremendous possibilities of a delicate, well-poised, rich, sensitive life if we ignore the literature of the past. There is no substitute. — Arthur Henry King

Maybe this is kind of cliche, but animals, well, dogs, are what I do for a living. One reason I like spending time with them so much is they seem to think people are really good. They live with us, and obey our rules, most of which make no sense to them. And the main reason they do it is because they like us. When I watch them, sometimes I'm so blow away by how enthusiastic they are about everything we do that I have to go out and buy them something squeaky or chewy. Just because I love proving to them that it's not a mistake to see the world as a great benevolent place. I hope one day to react to something with as much pure ecstasy as I see in Chuck's face every time I throw the ball. Sometimes he looks so happy, it reminds me of the way blind people smile way too big because they can't see themselves. And if none of this links to anything in you, well ... I think you don't know who I am. — Merrill Markoe

[A] great novel will allow you to transcend the social, racial and political limitations imposed by the vicissitudes of life and to find a deep fraternity based on empathy. — Azar Nafisi

To have great pain is to have certainty; to hear that another person has pain is to have doubt. — Elaine Scarry

I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. I like his movies, I like his excess, and I think he has a great capacity for empathy and it comes out more powerfully in this movie than in any of his other films, even the formal 'I'm identifying with the underdog' movies like 'Born on the Fourth of July.' — Greil Marcus

I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye, whether they manifest it themselves or whether it happened by accident - it doesn't matter to me. I think there's a great misunderstanding of what it is to be famous. — Alanis Morissette

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. The roots of cruelty, therefore, are not so much strong as widespread. But the time must come when inhumanity protected by custom and thoughtlessness will succumb before humanity championed by thought. Let us work that this time may come. — Albert Schweitzer

His success in dealing with the strong egos of the men in his cabinet suggests that in the hands of a truly great politician the qualities we generally associate with decency and morality - kindness, sensitivity, compassion, honesty, and empathy - can also be impressive political resources. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Empathy is probably the single most important difference between a good hacker and a great one. — Paul Graham

There is no great reward for being emotionally withdrawn, no pity prize for bottling your frustration. No one is coming to congratulate your chronic self-repression. By opening up, maybe you will inconvenience some people. Maybe you will trigger some conflict. Maybe you will be rejected, criticized, judged. Everything comes with a price and everything has its compensation. Authenticity may require pain, but it also opens the doors to joy, creativity, self-respect, empathy. Self-repression, on the other hand, costs you all the beauty of the world in exchange for a prison of comfort. Is it really worth it? Isn't it time to break free? — Vironika Tugaleva

For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate. — Giles Duley

The root of compassion is not empathy; that is kindness. Kindness is great, but it is not the ultimate compassion. Ultimate compassion relieves the suffering that comes from separateness. The suffering that comes from separateness is relieved only when you are fully present with another person, not when you are separately present. — Ram Dass

I'm helped by a gentle notion from Buddhist psychology, that there are "near enemies" to every great virtue - reactions that come from a place of care in us, and which feel right and good, but which subtly take us down an ineffectual path. Sorrow is a near enemy to compassion and to love. It is borne of sensitivity and feels like empathy. But it can paralyze and turn us back inside with a sense that we can't possibly make a difference. The wise Buddhist anthropologist and teacher Roshi Joan Halifax calls this a "pathological empathy" of our age. In the face of magnitudes of pain in the world that come to us in pictures immediate and raw, many of us care too much and see no evident place for our care to go. But compassion goes about finding the work that can be done. Love can't help but stay present — Krista Tippett

Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels
the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence. — Azar Nafisi

I've come to the conclusion that liking a person we are required to have dealings with is not of paramount importance. But respect is crucial, on both sides, as is tolerance, and a depth of understanding of those influences that sculpt a character. — Jacqueline Winspear

The city that acknowledges and celebrates our common fate, that opens doors to empathy and cooperation, will help us tackle the great challenges of this century. — Charles Montgomery

It takes a great man to make a great listener — Arthur Helps

We are drawn to the Renaissance because of the hope for black uplift and interracial empathy that it embodied and because there is a certain element of romanticism associated with the era's creativity, its seemingly larger than life heroes and heroines, and its most brilliantly lit terrain, Harlem, USA. — Clement Alexander Price

A word of consolation
may sweetly touch the ear.
Now and then a quiet song
will clear the mind of fear.
A simple act of kindness
can ease a load of care.
Stories told in memory
diminish all despair.
A whispered prayer of comfort
draws angel arms around.
Counting blessings, great and small,
helps gratitude abound.
These acts, all sympathetic,
will kindly play their part.
But seldom do they dry the tears
shed mutely in the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I am not interested in your fine calibrations of empathy or your great mission to protect the river of history. I just to live my own life, and I want to spend it having my own private fucked-up little emotions. — Bee Ridgway

Mostly we think of people with great authority as higher up, far away, hard to reach. But spiritual authority comes from compassion and emerges from deep inner solidarity with those who are 'subject' to authority. The one who is fully like us, who deeply understands our joys and pains or hopes and desires, and who is willing and able to walk with us, that is the one to whom we gladly give authority and whose 'subjects' we are willing to be.
It is the compassionate authority that empowers, encourages, calls forth hidden gifts, and enables great things to happen. True spiritual authorities are located in the point of an upside-down triangle, supporting and holding into the light everyone they offer their leadership to. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Suppose 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 Haidt

I am not interested in whether you've stood with the great. I am interested in whether you've sat broken. — Unknown

I had horrible acne when I was a kid. I felt like a complete and utter ne'er do well and someone who didn't fit in and wasn't handsome. So, I understand implicitly, and with a great amount of empathy, a man or human being that feels that way. — Chris Pine

The Lord is well aware of our mortality. He knows our weaknesses. He understands the challenges of our everyday lives. He has great empathy for the temptations of earthly appetites and passions. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

If only this great concern we have for our own sensitive feelings expanded to encompass the feelings of our fellow men. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Religion is the secret of life. It teaches us to love, to serve, to forgive, to endure, and to interact with our brothers and sisters with empathy and compassion. Advaita (non-duality) is a purely subjective experience. But in daily life it may be expressed as love and compassion. This is the great lesson taught by the great saints and sages of India, the exponents of Sanatana Dharma. — Mata Amritanandamayi

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other. — Meryl Streep

It's been you all along, and it'll be you all the way. Learn to play up your strengths, embrace your flaws, and pursue your passions. Be gentle when your mind, body, or soul are tired. Value your time and surround yourself with those who do too. Above all, give your dreams the same respect you grant to others'. This is the starting point of all great brand builders: self-empathy. — Laura Busche

They're good, these stories," Mace continued, his cheeks stained with light color. "They teach the pain of others." "Empathy. Carlin always said it was the great value of fiction, to put us inside the minds of strangers. — Erika Johansen

Look, I'm a cancer survivor, all right? So I have great personal empathy for people who have pre-existing conditions and can't get insurance. — Carly Fiorina

You can't love someone without imaginative sympathy, without beginning to see the world from another point of view. You can't be a good lover, a good artist or a good politician without this capacity (you can get away with it, but that's not what I mean). Show me the tyrants who have been great lovers. — Julian Barnes

My mother did an incredible job - one, of just being a great mom, but two, of instilling a tremendous amount of empathy into me as a young man, as a young person. My mom was kind of this collector of people; throughout my childhood, it didn't matter who you were. She was a high school counselor and then a junior high counselor, and she didn't just counsel students, she counseled other teachers and administrators and coaches. — Morgan Spurlock

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

I've always felt you don't have to be completely detached, emotionally uninvolved to make precise observations. There's nothing wrong with feeling great empathy for your subjects. — Jane Goodall

Justlikethat, the brother dematerialized out of the alley, and Rhage knew better than to think that the pair of them would ever speak of it again. And man, that was so V - the SOB was capable of great kindness and empathy, but always at arm's length, as if he were afraid of getting too entangled in emotion. He was always there for the people he loved, though. Always. "Thank you, my brother," Rhage said to the thin air where the male of worth had stood. "Thank you as ever. — J.R. Ward

I am not interested in whether you have stood with the great; I am interested in whether you have sat with the broken. — Unknown

As we acquire a certain degree of equanimity in self-image, we are that much more likely to feel empathy for those around us. We know what it's like to be a "self" moving through the world of "others." When someone feels particularly isolated or in pain, we don't need a great deal of information in order to come to his or her aid. — Ram Dass

As poets, we don't accept oppression; we are about a freedom of spirit, or whatever you want to call it. I think environmental concerns have to go to the deep place, so we speak from a place of great empathy for the planet - for the disadvantaged people, animals, places, cultures. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

Ah! candid and unadulterated mind! you have learned early to reflect; but take care lest this habit, hitherto so well applied, should totally unfit you for society. It will strew thorns in your path, while other young women of your age seek only flowers. By imagining yourself in the place of others, as you now continually do, you will learn to feel for all the unhappy, or even for those who appear so; whereas it might save a great deal of (for the most part useless) pain, if you could contrive to feel only for yourself. — Charlotte Turner Smith

I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer. — Alex Flinn

My natural mother passed away from cystic fibrosis when I was a toddler, so I feel a great deal of empathy for people who are struggling with disease. — John Lloyd Young

The 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 Obama

I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them. — Padma Lakshmi