Empathy Quotes

"Empathy is choosing to see ourselves in another despite our differences. It's recognizing that the same humanity - the same desire for meaning, fulfillment and security - exists in each of us, even if it's expressed uniquely."

- Vivek Murthy

"Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while."

- Malorie Blackman

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

- Diane Ackerman

"Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy."

- Zadie Smith

"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

"True contentment comes with empathy."

- Tim Finn

"I don't know whether your heart ever necessarily changes, but time changes the way that you perceive the world. And you just hope it gives you more empathy and all those other things."

- Mark Knopfler

"I think any time anybody sees the bad guy show emotion and you're not hitting the audience over the head, there's always a tinge of empathy for that individual."

- Paul Wesley

"Virtual reality is the 'ultimate empathy machine.' These experiences are more than documentaries. They're opportunities to walk a mile in someone else's shoes."

- Chris Milk

"Empathy is a necessary step for truth and reconciliation."

- Simon Baron-Cohen

"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

"What separates humans from other animals is our empathy. With the possible exception of bonobos, we are the most empathetic animal on the planet."

- Andy Dunn

"As far as my mindset changing, I see myself having more empathy in my older age."

- Bill Burr

"I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don't understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in."

- Neil Gaiman

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

- Bruce Rauner

"Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgement, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of 'You're not alone.'"

- Brené Brown

"Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another."

- Alfred Adler

"The heart is like a garden. It can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?"

- Jack Kornfield

"Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them."

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

"Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart."

- Sue Monk Kidd

""Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.""

- Daniel Goleman

"Friends are those rare people who ask how we are, and then wait to hear the answer."

- Ed Cunningham

"The warmth and satisfaction of positive contact with the adult is often just as good as a psychostimulant in supplying the child’s prefrontal cortex with dopamine. Greater security means less anxiety and more focused attention. The unseen factor that remains constant in all situations is the child’s unconscious yearning for attachment, dating back to the first years of life."

- Gabor Maté

"Positive culture comes from being mindful, and respecting your coworkers, and being empathetic."

- Biz Stone

"Society teaches us that having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that's baloney, because grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown."

- Michael Scott

"Society teaches us that having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that’s baloney, because grief isn’t wrong. There’s such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown."

- Michael Scott

"It’s no longer about interrupting, pitching, and closing. But it is about listening, diagnosing and prescribing."

- Mark Roberge

"Sellers who listen to buyers carefully and then give them the missing ingredients – those are the ones who stand out."

- Deb Calvert

"HUMANIZE the sales process or perish."

- Steli Efti

"ADHD minds often have great empathy and passion for others. These qualities can create deep, meaningful relationships."