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Empathy Quotes

Browse 3172 quotes about Empathy.

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Empathy Quotes

“A student once asked anthropologist Margaret Mead, “What is the earliest sign of civilization?” The student expected her to say a clay pot, a grinding stone, or maybe a weapon. Margaret Mead thought for a moment, then she said, “A healed femur.” A femur is the longest bone in the body, linking hip to knee. In societies without the benefits of modern medicine, it takes about six weeks of rest for a fractured femur to heal. A healed femur shows that someone cared for the injured person, did their hunting and gathering, stayed with them, and offered physical protection and human companionship until the injury could mend. Mead explained that where the law of the jungle—the survival of the fittest—rules, no healed femurs are found. The first sign of civilization is compassion, seen in a healed femur.”

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Author:Ira Byock
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“Each of us is the main character of our story, but we are also minor characters in countless other narratives. ... Right now, as you read this sentence, someone is watching a sunset on the other side of the world, someone is grieving their first heartbreak... Our joys and sorrows are part of a collective thread of life. Recognising the life beyond ours can bring humility”

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Author:Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"
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“It reminded me that when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other -- but only when we see one another in our full humanity, not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world.”

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Book:Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
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“The person sitting across from you on the bus is the hero of their own story. The cashier at the grocery store has hopes and heartaches you will never know. ... We often treat others as background characters in our personal narrative, forgetting that we are background characters in theirs. When we recognise that everyone carries invisible burdens and joys, we become softer in our judgments and more generous in our assumptions”

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Author:Ajmal, from the book "Borders of the Inner World"
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“Images of suffering are humanizing to all but the hardened fanatic. Watch men die, struggling for dignity, and you cannot deny their humanity. If this is the politics of victimization, then all our impulses of empathy with strangers are the politics of victimization. We learn to care about those who are not like us not when we learn they want the same things we do, but when we learn that they feel pain in the same way we do.”

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Book:At the Strangers' Gate: Arrivals in New York
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“I think all of us need to do a better job of seeing the humanity of people on the other side of the aisle. Because I think what happens in this country right now is: The left says to the right, “What do you know about pain, white straight man? My pain is real, as an L.G.B.T.Q. person.” And the right says to the left, “What do you know about pain, college-educated, cosmopolitan élite? My pain is real, in a post-industrial community ravaged by the opioid crisis.” And I know that, when I am upset, the worst thing that someone can say to me, even if it is said with the best of intentions, is “It’s not as bad as you think.” Any therapist will tell you that the first step to healing is to have your pain seen and validated. And I think all of us have to do a better job of recognizing that people don’t have to be right in our mind for what they’re facing to be wrong. And people don’t have to be right in our minds for us to try to right that wrong. That comes down to sort of a core recognition that every single person is more than just one thing about them. And every single person is more than even beliefs that might personally hurt many other people.”

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Author:Sarah McBride
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“Apart from masochists, if everyone treated others the way they would like to be treated, the world would be an infinitely better place. We should dedicate an international EKT Day to this principle, a day to celebrate empathy, kindness, and the transformative power of treating others as we wish to be treated.”

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Author:Stewart Stafford
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“One of the reasons hard conversations are necessary is that we have to ask other people the obvious questions - How do you see this? - if we're going to have any hope of entering, even a bit, into their point of view. Our differences of perception are rooted deep in the hidden kingdom of the unconscious mind and we're generally not aware how profound those differences are until we ask.”

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Book:How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
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“Free speech is the guardian of individual autonomy, a shield that allows each person to shape their own beliefs and values independent of external coercion. It is through the free exchange of ideas that individuals are exposed to diverse perspectives, broadening their understanding of the world and fostering empathy. In this way, free speech serves not only as a right but as a conduit for the continual enrichment of our collective humanity.”

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Author:James William Steven Parker
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“Freedom is an essential element for the success and progress of humanity, especially freedom from the restricted imprisonment of certain religions. You never can progress by going backward. Some prisoners have no idea that they are in a prison, because they have been swimming in the same rotten pond for thousands of years. They resist any form of freedom because they fear the freshness of the ocean, they fear freedom. They want to make the whole world a prison, where they will feel comfortable.”

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Author:Debasish Mridha
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“The importance of studying reincarnation has nothing to do with status or the need to feel reinforced by some old belief, or even the need to understand previous roles on this planet or others. The importance of this topic has everything to do with the understanding that the cruelties of humanity, of people against people, are often the same cruelties we impose on ourselves as a result of such experiences. Love, empathy and kindness are not considered virtues but are the most important. Try to understand them in any way you can and you will be closer to your spiritual liberation. Begin with yourself and your own relationship with nature.”

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Author:Dan Desmarques
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“You don't have to have shared a placenta with someone to sense their pain. Some would say that empathy is what makes us human. But I think empathy was here, an intuition. The thrumming awareness that we are all connected to the smallest speck, the most distant stars, by the great umbilicus of the solar system, the orbits tossing and tearing us with the force of the tides. When we pay attention to things like parasites and the moon, we are paying attention to the fact that we are citizens of the universe. Most of being human is an effort to forget.”

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Book:Everything I Have Is Yours: A Marriage
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“We need to demand that people help carry the load, who have not historically held even a modicum of their share of the weight, and carry it for those who historically have carried the load for all of us. We need to care, extend effort, cherish those who have not been fully appreciated. Don't you want to be one of the ones to help carry their load? Don't you want someone to help you carry your load?”

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Author:Shellen Lubin
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“Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows? ...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads.... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. . . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain”

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Book:Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom
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“Appreciate youthfulness and empathize with elderly people.”

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Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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“Our stories hold unique inspiration for one another.”

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Book:Think Great: Be Great!
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“Every so often, we see many people feel uncomfortable with facing the truth. The truth seems to be a brittle deer. We should, however, not fear the fragility of truth, for it creates openness to correction, learning, and growth. It fosters empathy, making inquiry, curiosity, and wisdom possible. Truth becomes less about possession and more about pursuit. (Is it a bird? Is it a plane?)”

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Author:Erik Pevernagie
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