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Empathy Quotes

Browse 3172 quotes about Empathy.

Empathy Quotes

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.”

People Ifs Thinking World Pain Faces Alive Taught Empathy Connected Wounds World History Unprecedented Dickens

Author:James A. Baldwin

“The good enough mother, owing to her deep empathy with her infant, reflects in her face his feelings; this is why he sees himselfin her face as if in a mirror and finds himself as he sees himself in her. The not good enough mother fails to reflect the infant's feelings in her face because she is too preoccupied with her own concerns, such as her worries over whether she is doing right by her child, her anxiety that she might fail him.”

Ifs Children Enough Feelings Might Faces Mother Worry Failing Anxiety Empathy Concern Mirrors Good Enough Infant Not Good Enough Owing Doing Right

Author:Bruno Bettelheim

“Dialogue is a space where we may see the assumptions which lay beneath the surface of our thoughts, assumptions which drive us, assumptions around which we build organizations, create economies, form nations and religions. These assumptions become habitual, mental habits that drive us, confuse us and prevent our responding intelligently to the challenges we face every day.”

“The Treatise of the Three Impostors is a book that enjoyed centuries of notorious nonexistence until (as Voltaire would say) it became necessary to invent it. Georges Minois writes with empathy, erudition, and a novelist's sense of buildup and timing, weaving in the parallel story of Europe's courageous freethinkers. In the face of today's social and even legal pressures against criticizing religion, it is good to see an honorable French tradition asserting itself.”

“If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.”

Ifs Wells Eye Faces Artist Imagination Behinds Empathy Neighbor

Author:Frederick Buechner

“He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took and wrung without a word - holding them in his for a minute or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told of more sympathy than could be put into words.”

Looks Two Hands Eye Faces Father Minutes Empathy His Eyes

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)

“Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities.”

“Look what scares you in the face and try to understand it. Empathy is revolutionary.”

Trying Looks Faces Empathy Revolutionary Scare

Author:Jane Fonda

“I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.”

Ifs Mind Heart Faces Waiting Fashion Expression Empathy Arise Sentiments

Book:The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories

Source: The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories

“What I learned is, we have to listen to each other, even when we don't agree, even when we think we hate each other. We have to listen to each others narratives. Not interrupt defensively, or with hostility, but really try to open our hearts and listen with empathy. I learned so much from that meeting. It was a very difficult thing to do and it was one of the best things that I ever did in my life. Look what scares you in the face, and try to understand it. Empathy, I have learned, is revolutionary.”

Thinking Trying Looks Heart Faces Hate Difficult Empathy Agree Meetings Narrative Best Things Revolutionary Things To Do Scare I Have Learned Hostility Difficult Things

Author:Jane Fonda

“When man faces man the one attempts to put the other to sleep and the other continuously wants to maintain his uprightness. But this is, to speak in the Goethean sense, the archetypal phenomenon of social science. This sleeping-into we may call the social principle, the social impulse of the new era: we have to live over into the other; we have to dissolve with our soul into the other.”

Men Want May Soul Faces Speak Social Sleep Principles Empathy Eras Impulse Phenomenon Social Science New Era Uprightness

Author:Rudolf Steiner

“I think empathy is a guy who punches you in the face at a bus station, and you're somehow able to look at that him and know enough about what situation he was in to know that he had to do that and not to hit back. That's empathy, and nothing ever happens in writing that has that kind of moral heroism about it.”

Thinking Knows Writing Looks Kind Enough Happens Able Faces Guy Situation Moral Empathy Stations Bus Heroism

Author:John Jeremiah Sullivan

“People with lower incomes tend to give a greater percentage of their incomes to help others and show greater empathy and compassion - perhaps because they know they might face the same circumstances.”

People Knows Giving Helping Shows Might Faces Compassion Greater Circumstances Empathy Helping Others Income Percentages Compassion And Empathy

Author:Kavita Ramdas

“Further, bearing up under our own burdens can help us develop a reservoir of empathy for the problems others face.”

Helping Problem Faces Empathy Burden Reservoirs

Author:L. Whitney Clayton

“Empathy for the plight of the Goddess may be essential in seeing how to face our own plight on Earth.”

May Earth Faces Seeing Essentials Empathy Goddess Plight

Book:Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief

Source: Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief