Empathy Quotes

No human heart is denied empathy. No religion can demolish that by indoctrination. No culture, no nation and nationalism - nothing can touch it because it is empathy.

~ Dayananda Saraswati

You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental, mind-shaping, driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.

~ Geraldine Brooks

Humans aren't as good as we should be in our capacity to empathize with feelings and thoughts of others, be they humans or other animals on Earth. So maybe part of our formal education should be training in empathy. Imagine how different the world would be if, in fact, that were 'reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy.'

~ Neil Degrasse Tyson

The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid - I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is.

~ Tucker Carlson

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

~ Meryl Streep

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

~ Alice Walker

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.

~ Susan Sarandon

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

~ Sterling K. Brown

Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus, empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

~ Matthieu Ricard

What we need in medical schools is not to teach empathy, as much as to preserve it - the process of learning huge volumes of information about disease, of learning a specialized language, can ironically make one lose sight of the patient one came to serve; empathy can be replaced by cynicism.

~ Abraham Verghese

There's a gap somehow between empathy and activism. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of 'soul force' - something that emanates from a deep truth inside of us and empowers us to act. Once you identify your inner genius, you will be able to take action, whether it's writing a check or digging a well.

~ Sue Monk Kidd

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

~ Maya Angelou

Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships.

~ Laura Linney

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

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

Great teaching requires incredible talent and dedication, strong intellectual ability and interpersonal skill, real discipline and empathy.

~ Bruce Rauner

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

~ Edward Norton

Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.

~ Michael Eric Dyson

It's hard to penetrate characters who are very cut off and lack empathy and to do it with sympathy. It's so easy to make a damaged character repugnant.

~ Siri Hustvedt

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources.

~ Harry Browne

You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them.

~ Laura Carmichael

When you show deep empathy toward others, their defensive energy goes down, and positive energy replaces it. That's when you can get more creative in solving problems.

~ Stephen Covey

It's very difficult to design something for someone if you have no empathy.

~ Stewart Butterfield

Empathy is key in the design process, especially when you start expanding outside of your comfort zone to new languages, cultures, and age groups. If you try to assume what those people want, you're likely to get it wrong.

~ Mike Krieger

While eschewing emotion - and its companion, vulnerability - Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the 'I feel your pain' connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders' intentions. If people believe you're on their side, they will trust your decisions.

~ Dee Dee Myers

The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn't enter into it.

~ Jill Lepore

You get your heart stomped by the opposite sex, and you're hurting so badly that you write 'Sometimes When We Touch.' But then what happens when you've been married for 25 years? You can't rely on those emotional male-female roller coasters. You have to start using your imagination and the powers of empathy more.

~ Dan Hill

We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.

~ Barack Obama

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

~ Matthieu Ricard

Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.

~ Ron Carlson

The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.

~ Mehmet Oz

A little anger is a good thing if it isn't on your own behalf, if it's for others deserving of your anger, your empathy.

~ David Simon

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change.

~ Max Carver

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

~ Daniel Dennett

When we used to go to the car-wash where people would wipe the windows, my dad would go out and help them and then tip them as well, so I learned my empathy from my dad, and my mum is very empathetic too, but in a very stern way; she will always check my ego.

~ Charlie Puth