1. “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
2. “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.”
3. “Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone.”
4. “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”
5. “The highest form of knowledge is empathy.”
6. “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.”
7. “It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain.”
8. “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.”
9. “Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.”
10. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
11. “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”
12. “The struggle of my life created empathy – I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.”
13. “Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience.”
14. “I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.”
15. “Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.”
16. “Empathetic presence involves listening to someone’s pain with what I call the five A’s: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.”
17. “Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins. And it’s up to you to make that happen. Empathy is a quality of character that can change the world.”
18. “One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.”
19. “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”
20. “The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart.”
21. “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
22. 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.
23. “The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.”
24. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
25. “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”
26. “Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole”
27. “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.”
28. “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.”
29. “Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.”
30. “Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.”
31. “Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.”
32. “Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug.”
33. “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.”
34. “When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.”
35. “The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person.”
36. “Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.”
37. “There is no small act of kindness.
38. “Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It’s the impetus for creating change.”
39. “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
40. “If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.”
41. “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.”
42. “We have to teach empathy as we do literacy.”
43. “Empathy is a special way of coming to know another and yourself.”
44. “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.”
45. “Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.”
46. “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”
47. “If we can get man to the moon, we can get man to walk in each other’s shoes.”
48. The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.”
49. “We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.”
50. “Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling) – a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?”
51. “Empathy is one of humankind’s prized possessions. Acts of consideration and kindness are inevitable when a person can mentally step into someone else’s shoes. Even if it’s just for a moment.”
52. “Experiencing terrible pain opens our hearts and minds to express compassion for other people and communion with ourselves.”
53. “Wearing another’s skin is the most effective way to learn sympathy.”
54. “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.”
55. “The seeds of care and empathy are built into every human being and a variety of soils and fertilizers will allow those same seeds to grow and flourish.”
56. “The little things you do can be very significant to others.”
57. “What you don’t realize is that the world does not need more perfection. It needs more compassion and empathy.”
58. “If you want more kindness in the world, put some there.”
59. “It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.”
60. “Whether it is rational or empirical, your approach to life must always be empathetic. Emotional intelligence is acquired when knowledge and empathy are combined and applied to situations regularly in everyday life.”
