Empathy Quotes

"Everything I experience hits me deep, raw, and intense. As an empath, I feel the energy of myself and others. As I age, this ability only grows deeper and stranger."

- Sylvester Mcnutt

"Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place."

- Daniel H. Pink

"Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself"

- Mohsin Hamid

"The struggle of my life created empathy – I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me."

- Oprah Winfrey

"She had a very inconvenient heart. It always insisted on feeling things ever so deeply."

- John Mark Green

"I’m very sensitive in real life. I cannot not cry if someone around me is crying. I will start to cry if someone is crying, even if it’s not appropriate. I have that thing in me, a weakness or sensitivity."

- Jessica Chastain

"I’m a romantic, and we romantics are more sensitive to the way people feel. We love more, and we hurt more. When we’re hurt, we hurt for a long time."

- Freddy Fender

"His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind."

- Anne Bronte

"Sensitive people feel their emotions strongly, whether it be joy or grief. While it can be tough, it’s important to honour their emotional depth. We need to banish the idea that it’s not OK to show our feelings and create a world that prioritises empathy and support for all."

- Jenn Granneman

"A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'"

- Daniel Goleman

"Do you know the feeling, when your heart is so hurt, that you could feel the blood dripping?"

- Lady Gaga

"Just because one person’s problem is less traumatic than another’s doesn’t mean they’re required to hurt less."

- J. A. Redmerski

"Only by trying on other people’s clothes do we find what size we are."

- John Lennon

"Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins."

- Former President Barack Obama

"We all deserve to have our stories told. And we all have much to gain by walking in other people's shoes."

- Kerry Washington

"Emotions are contagious. We've all known it experientially. You know after you have a really fun coffee with a friend, you feel good. When you have a rude clerk in a store, you walk away feeling bad."

- Daniel Goleman

"Empathy is not a betrayal of one's cause."

- Megan Phelps-Roper

"That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies."

- Alison Lurie

"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

"If you aren't humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or the desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you."

- Anand Mahindra

"If your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can't have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far."

- Daniel Goleman

"All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy."

- Samantha Power

"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

"Happy Birthday to the most wonderful daughter! Your empathy and inclusivity are your superpowers. May this year be filled with happiness and new adventures."

"Friends listen with their hearts."

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you forget the words."

"Friends pick us up when we fall, and if they can’t, they lie down and listen with us."

"A great friend is someone who makes your problems their problems, just so you don’t have to go through them alone."

"Oculos tuos claudere potes quod videre non vis, sed cor claudere non potes quod sentire non vis. (You can close your eyes to what you don’t want to see but you can’t close your heart to what you don’t want to feel.)"

"The prettiest eyes have cried the most."