Compassion Quotes

We can learn the art of fierce compassion - redefining strength, deconstructing isolation and renewing a sense of community, practicing letting go of rigid us-vs.-them thinking - while cultivating power and clarity in response to difficult situations.

~ Sharon Salzberg

Something called 'the Oklahoma Standard' became known throughout the world. It means resilience in the face of adversity. It means a strength and compassion that will not be defeated.

~ Brad Henry

For a lot of people, Superman is and has always been America's hero. He stands for what we believe is the best within us: limitless strength tempered by compassion, that can bear adversity and emerge stronger on the other side. He stands for what we all feel we would like to be able to stand for, when standing is hardest.

~ J. Michael Straczynski

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

~ Robert Kiyosaki

Communism everywhere has paid the price of rigidity and dogmatism. Freedom has the strength of compassion and flexibility. It has, above all, the strength of intellectual honesty.

~ Robert Kennedy

I realized a while back that I have an innate ability to be compassionate, and I saw that the strength of compassion is something that healers have and healers use.'

~ Ricky Williams

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

~ Lao Tzu

My mother is a ball of fire in the world, and I love that about her. But what I have learned from my stepdad is something as important, which is patience and compassion. Because when you are living with someone else, those two qualities go a long way.

~ Justin Timberlake

No, you're not allowed to be bossy when you're married. You have to learn compromise, and compassion and patience.

~ Star Jones

Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world?

~ Peter Abelard

Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values.

~ Ellen Degeneres

Wonder Woman, she's amazing. I love everything that she represents and everything that she stands for. She's all about love and compassion and truth and justice and equality, and she's a whole lot of woman.

~ Gal Gadot

I believe in the spirit of equality and the spirit of this country as one of love and compassion and kindness.

~ Lady Gaga

I happen to agree with many of the liberal emphasis on compassion, justice and equality. I just disagree that it's the government's role to provide everything.

~ Rick Warren

A compassionate mind is very difficult to cultivate because compassion demands a sense of equality between all living beings.

~ Lobsang Tenzin

I joined the Labour party because I believed in equality, in freedom of speech and in tolerance, compassion and understanding for people, irrespective of their background and views. In whatever I decide to do in the future I will hold to those principles.

~ Geoff Hoon

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.

~ Mark Pryor

Children, even infants, are capable of sympathy. But only after adolescence are we capable of compassion.

~ Louise J. Kaplan

If you are fortunate in life, age and knowledge breed compassion.

~ Ronnie Musgrove

Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.

~ André Maurois

We've sweated and torn out our hair trying to reconstruct our chosen lives, to fashion them like literary sculptures, at once monumental and yet human. We've applied all of our intelligence, our empathy, our critical faculties, our compassion - and we think, in our delusion, that it's still 1960, and our work is going to get noticed.

~ Nigel Hamilton

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

~ Desmond Tutu

Accidents happen, whether they're car accidents, friendly fire, drug overdoses. Accidents happen, and they're tragic. It's like a bomb that goes off and pieces of shrapnel rip into the flesh of the family. It's the families that need the compassion, because everywhere they walk, every day, someone reminds them of their loss.

~ James Belushi

Conservatives understand that the power that binds our republic together is fierce independence held high on the shoulders of compassion.

~ Allen West

Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion.

~ Dalai Lama

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

~ Talib Kweli

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

~ Karen Armstrong

For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?

~ Bell Hooks

I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it.

~ Barbara Jordan

Compassion may be defined as the capacity to be attentive to the experience of others, to wish the best for others, and to sense what will truly serve others.

~ Joan Halifax

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion.

~ Meister Eckhart

It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere.

~ Terry Eagleton

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people yourself is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral, self-righteous, bullying laziness.

~ Penn Jillette

The super power that I would choose would be compassion. Because that's what I think it takes to make it through life-an understanding, a give and take. It saves an awful lot of resentment.

~ Craig T. Nelson

If we don't change from a world society that worships money and power to one that worships compassion and generosity, I think we'll be extinct by mid-century. I don't say that as an alarmist or as a pessimist.

~ Patch Adams

If you have the chance to be exposed to a loving, understanding environment where the seed of compassion, loving kindness, can be watered every day, then you become a more loving person.

~ Nhat Hanh

You desire that which exceeds my humble powers, but I trust in the compassion and mercy of the All-powerful God.

~ Saint Stephen

The essence of Hinduism is the same essence of all true religions: Bhakti or pure love for God and genuine compassion for all beings.

~ Radhanath Swami

Compassion enables you to reach to the heavens and look through the heart of God.

~ Debbie Ford

Someone who has experienced trauma also has gifts to offer all of us - in their depth, their knowledge of our universal vulnerability, and their experience of the power of compassion.

~ Sharon Salzberg