Empath Quotes

1. "Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn."
Author: Alice Miller

2. "Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss."
Author: Anderson Cooper

3. "I feel empathy for people who are trapped in a prison of self-consciousness in an uncomfortable way. We can be free, but we're so held back. So perhaps that's why I feel a duty to make my work. I feel liberated when I'm doing it, and I want other people to feel liberated through it."
Author: Bat For Lashes

4. "When you are born without the ordinary feelings and emotions shared by most other human beings, life looks different to you. It seems at times like a movie you're walking through, more a spectator than a participant. There is above all a lack of empathy with most of mankind, a sense of detachment. But with detachment comes perspective. The less you care, the more you know, and the more you know the less you care."
Author: Boyd Rice

5. "Be yourself one hundred and one thousand percent. Everybody man, from the sides to the back to the middle to the sides, you might not even know people, but if you rock with Lil B music and respect me from the core, you should know that based means you have someone you can trust, because we all have a common courtesy. It's about having empathy now. What I mean is really caring and paying attention to somebody else's feeling. You gotta have empathy and know we all on this common vibe. It's all peace. It's saying, hey, you know what, you can hit me and I'm not hitting you back. And that takes a very big person to do that."
Author: Brandon McCartney

6. "When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening."
Author: Carl R. Rogers

7. "The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows."
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

8. "It seemed impossible that their first use of that particular blend had evoked such a power empathic connection, and yet this time, Walter was off on his own disconnected trip, unable to even see his friend."
Author: Christa Faust

9. "Misery comes to miser; joy comes to wiser. (A Very Hot Cup of Tea, Empathy)Juvenile invites, youth tries, adult applies, and the old man dies. (A Straw Man, Empathy)In everyone, there lives a superhero. (The Medicine Man, Empathy)Faith is the strongest word in any dictionary. (The Wisdom Beard, Empathy)I've entered into your feelings; it's your turn now. (Empathy)"
Author: D.R. Mirror

10. "Thus evolved some members of the Core—not altruists, but desperate survivalists who realized that the only way ultimately to win their never-ending zero-sum game was to stop the game. And to stop the game they needed to evolve into a species capable of empathy."
Author: Dan Simmons

11. "Even if I didn't have any empathy, she did, and that meant I could use it against her. Where logic failed, guilt might save the day."
Author: Dan Wells

12. "People act badly, it is easy to just call them negative or derogatory names. But once you look at their scans and realize they might have a damaged or toxic scan, it gives you more understanding and empathy."
Author: Daniel G. Amen

13. "Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems."
Author: David Eagleman

14. "The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing - building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to help."
Author: David M. Kelley

15. "Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up."
Author: Deb Caletti

16. "I really love helping students and helping them empathize with people who lived a really long time ago. That's one of the highlights of working in fiction."
Author: Deborah Harkness

17. "Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver."
Author: Diane Ackerman

18. "Hatred has no place in your heart. Empathy does."
Author: Evan Grinde

19. "Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse's perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement. With verbal encouragement, we are trying to communicate, "I know. I care. I am with you. How can I help?" We are trying to show that we believe in him and in his abilities. We are giving credit and praise."
Author: Gary Chapman

20. "Empathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart."
Author: Gary Chapman

21. "Patience and empathy are anger's mortal enemies."
Author: Gary Rudz

22. "You're like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities' desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone."— Kate Daniels"
Author: Ilona Andrews

23. "I think we are living in selfish times. I'm the first one to say that I'm the most selfish. We live in the so-called 'first world,' and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy."
Author: Javier Bardem

24. "I've been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy."
Author: John Connolly

25. "Human existence is temporary and all the knowledge of the universe we acquire will in time be forgotten because there will be no humans left to benefit from any of the stuff we learned.And yet, this doesn't invalidate scientific exploration to me. We seek to understand the universe because it makes our lives better and more rich. Similarly, we tell stories (and think about why and how to tell stories) because it makes human existence richer. Made-up stories matter. They bring us pleasure and solace and nurture empathy by letting us see the world through others' eyes. They also help us to feel unalone, to understand that our grief and joy is shared not just by those around us but by all those who came before us and all those still yet to come."
Author: John Green

26. "I'm cursed with empathy. I'm also by nature way too opinionated."
Author: John Shirley

27. "Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are."
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

28. "I lay my head on his chest and listen to his heart beating, solid and sure.....he reads me so well. He's known about my emotional empathy since we were children. Nothing disturbs him...Few can lie to me... I don't know the truth, only that there is a lie. It takes a scrupulously honest man to love me. That's my Sean. We learned to trust each other completely before we were old enough to have learned suspicion."
Author: Karen Marie Moning

29. "The best morals kids get from any book is just the capacity to empathize with other people, to care about the characters and their feelings. So you don't have to write a preachy book to do that. You just have to make it a fun book with characters they care about, and they will become better people as a result."
Author: Louis Sachar

30. "As human beings, what makes us able to empathize with people is a connection that is not necessarily understood mentally."
Author: Lupita Nyong'o

31. "It is not learning we need at all. Individuals need learning but the culture needs something else, the pulse of light on the sea, the warm urge of huddling together to keep out the cold. We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep."
Author: Lydia Millet

32. "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."
Author: Matthieu Ricard

33. "But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this."
Author: Melanie Joy

34. "Real faith, however, is required to endure this necessary but painful developmental process. As things unfold, sometimes in full view, let us be merciful with each other. We certainly do not criticize hospital patients amid intensive care for looking pale and preoccupied. Why then those recovering from surgery on their souls? No need for us to stare; those stitches will finally come out. And in this hospital, too, it is important for everyone to remember that the hospital chart is not the patient. Extending our mercy to someone need not wait upon our full understanding of their challenges! Empathy may not be appreciated or reciprocated, but empathy is never wasted."
Author: Neal A. Maxwell

35. "HOW ANGELS SLEEP. Unsoundly. They toss and turn, trying to understand the mystery of the living. They know so little about what it's like to fill a new prescription for glasses and suddenly see the world again, with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude ... Also, they don't dream. For this reason, they have one less thing to talk about. In a backward way, when they wake up they feel as if there is something they are forgetting to tell each other. There is disagreement among the angels as to whether this is a result of something vestigial, or whether it is the result of the empathy they feel for the Living, so powerful it sometimes makes them weep. In general, they fall into these two camps on the subject of dreams. Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division."
Author: Nicole Krauss

36. "I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy."
Author: Nikki Giovanni

37. "Thinking of Macintosh's reaction to Veronica, Grant felt a wave of empathy. "Poor kid's going to be mooning like a puppy for a month. Did you have to smile at him?""Really,Grant.He can't be more than fifteen.""Old enough to break out in a sweat," he commented."Hormones," she murmured as she found Fairfield's sparse selection of wine. "They just need time to balance."Grant's gaze drifted down and focused as she bent over. "It should only take thirty or forty years," he muttered."
Author: Nora Roberts

38. "The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me."
Author: Oprah Winfrey

39. "Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive."
Author: Parker J. Palmer

40. "That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement and identity and empathy, stopping short of being autobiographical - in my case, anyway - but also quite detached."
Author: Pat Barker

41. "I worry that if whatever pops into your head at any instant immediately goes online, you lose the crucial time for your thoughts to simmer and evolve and build up nuance, depth and empathy."
Author: Paul Harding

42. "Compassion, empathy, and humility can only arise out of recognizing that our common desires are differently expressed."
Author: Robert A. Burton

43. "When you have kids, for me, it really changed me. I was always empathetic to other children, but now I'm so much more sensitive to children that aren't my own."
Author: Sam Trammell

44. "Because I was a dancer when I was a kid, I have so much empathy for these young girls who are so drawn to something lovely in music and in movement, and yet they encounter a world full of judgment and criticism of 11-year-old artists and bodies."
Author: Sharon Lawrence

45. "The circle of indifference has the self at its centre. The circle of compassion has others at the centre. The former leads to apathy; the latter to empathy."
Author: Shubha Vilas

46. "There's a lot of pointing. A festival of pointing and at very close range to other people's eyes, given the width of the space. Also detracting from the exhibit's potential tranquility is the display cabinet of pinned specimens along one wall. I found this disturbing from the start. You don't see a whole lot of stuffed polar bears in the polar bear exhibit at the zoo, for instance. And butterflies have phenomenal vision so it's not like they can't see the mass crucifixion in their midst. I was offended on behalf of the butterflies and thus pleased with my offense. Let the empathizing begin! This volunteering thing was working already. I am a good person, hear me give!"
Author: Sloane Crosley

47. "Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control."
Author: Steven Pinker

48. "What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection," Dr. Bloom said. "He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It's an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception's a tool that's pointed on both ends."
Author: Thomas Harris

49. "Empathy is what separates human beings from teenage boys."
Author: Victor LaValle

50. "I feel like songwriting is an experiment in empathy."
Author: Zooey Deschanel

Empath Quotes Pictures