Empathy is so much more than a word that sounds nice and makes people feel better. It’s used so generically by politicians, businesses, and the media to the point that it has started losing its real significance. Empathy is more than feeling bad for someone else. It’s actually all about understanding.
Understanding people’s situations without judging them or trying to change somebody into something they are not; understanding that even if someone comes from the other side of the world, has a totally different way of thinking, or disagrees with your favorite movie, this doesn’t mean they’re not worth listening to. They still have emotions and points of view that matter just as much as yours do — and those feelings can connect us in ways we didn’t even know were possible.
In our quest to find the greatest empathy quotes, we collected some kind messages from writers, celebrities, psychologists, and activists that had important words of compassion to share with the world.
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"You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example." - Judy Sheindlin
Well, sure, the groundwork should be done at home, but if all the above were ONLY taught at home, that would be a bleak outlook for anyone with an imperfect family - in short, for everyone! Even good people have their shortcomings, and daycare and school and other people should be a way to fill the gaps, whatever they are!
"Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss." - Anderson Cooper
"Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals." - Neil Gaiman
"I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it." - Maya Angelou
"It's dangerous to think of yourself as a hero and someone else as a villain. It gets in the way of empathy." - Megan Ganz
"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
"Movies that encourage empathy are more effective than those that objectify problems." - Roger Ebert
"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." - Alice Miller
"When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you." - Susan Sarandon
"The struggle of my life created empathy - I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me." - Oprah Winfre
"Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all." - Clint Smith
"A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain." - Daniel Goleman
"All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together." - Gloria Steinem
"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
"Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities." - Daisaku Ikeda
"We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior." - Graydon Carter
"I have a profound empathy for people who are in the public eye, whether they manifest it themselves or whether it happened by accident - it doesn't matter to me. I think there's a great misunderstanding of what it is to be famous." - Alanis Morissette
"As you get older you have more respect and empathy for your parents. Now I have a great relationship with both of them." - Hugh Jackman
"Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying." - Nathan Englander
"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
"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
"Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation." - Temple Grandin
Maybe we could call that theoretical and practical empathy. My stepdaughter (5) has no trouble understanding my or somebody else's feelings when she is made to pay attention and think about the situation, then she'll go and hug or comfort whoever's not feeling well. But getting to that point without a little push is rare.
"Empathy, humanity and support for each other is more important than revenue, than growth." - Eric Yuan
"There is a minimum requirement of morality, of moral compass, of decency, of moral empathy. And if you are incapable of meeting that minimum requirement, you can't even talk to me about policy." - Ana Navarro
"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." - David M. Kelley
"We use a term called 'empowerment through empathy.' And 'Me Too' is so powerful, because somebody had said it to me - right? - and it changed the trajectory of my healing process once I heard that." - Tarana Burke
"Cinematography speaks to everything that women do inherently well: It's multitasking, it's empathy, and it's channeling visuals into human emotion." - Rachel Morrison
"The truth is that we should live with less envy and more cordiality and empathy." - Leonardo Bonucci
"We need to teach our children empathy and care and love and communication and social responsibility in preparation for adulthood." - Maya Soetoro-Ng
"Everybody wants a robot that will do psychotherapy. But If you don't have empathy, you don't have psychotherapy. The robot doesn't know about life." - Sherry Turkle
"Traits like humility, courage, and empathy are easily overlooked - but it's immensely important to find them in your closest relationships." - Laura Linney
"Cinema is my religion. It is a way to make people sensitive, through emotions. To make them feel, experience empathy. People are touched and act ethically when they are emotionally touched." - Bruno Dumont
"Sympathy relies on a common experience. If you're clumsy, you might have sympathy for others who tend to bump into things. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person's feelings even if you've never experienced them yourself." - Joe Gebbia
"I'm a believer in forgiveness. I have worked with people who have been in gangs and now dedicate their lives to helping inner city kids. I've run offender services with teachings of responsibility, empathy and understanding of the victims at their heart. I've seen people change." - Jess Phillips
"Having emotional intelligence allows you to manage your emotions, show empathy, and prevent you from getting distracted. It also helps you solve problems and be a more likable person." - John Rampton
"Insects are living metaphors for me. They are so alien and so remote and so perfect, but also they are emotionless; they don't have any human or mammalian instincts. They'll eat their young at the drop of a hat; they can eat your house! There's no empathy - none." - Guillermo del Toro
"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
"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
"Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while." - Malorie Blackman
"Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It's the impetus for creating change." - Max Carver
"Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion." - Annie Lennox
"I don't mean to criticize anyone in any way that I wouldn't criticize myself. I think people should have fun, and have a good time, and enjoy the luck that we have to be lazy and dwell in consumerism. But I think that it's a balance. And our job as actors is empathy." - Natalie Portman
"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
"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
"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
"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." - Barbara Kingsolver
"What makes us different from other species is our capacity for compassion and empathy with the struggles of other people." - Liam Cunningham
"You can be aware and educated and informed, but you've got to place emphasis on being compassionate, having empathy and understanding." - Stacey Dooley
"One result of moviemaking - and a side effect of moviegoing - is familiarity. If an actor is particularly good, familiarity opens into something deeper: care, concern, identification, empathy. Yet even those concepts can feel inadequate for some actors." - Wesley Morris
"Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life." - Barbara Kingsolver
"I know it might sound weird, but empathy is one of the greatest creators of energy. It's counterintuitive because it's selfless." - Angela Ahrendts
"I think art, especially literature, has the particular power to immerse the viewer or reader into another world. This is especially powerful in literature, when a reader lives the experience of the characters. So if the characters are human and real enough, then readers will feel empathy for them." - Jesmyn Ward
"In order to have understanding, you need forgiveness, compassion, and empathy." - Rooney Mara
"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
"Books by women, people of color, LGBTQ authors, differently abled people, and non-Americans are a great way of broadening horizons and building empathy." - Celeste Ng
"It's very difficult to design something for someone if you have no empathy." - Stewart Butterfield
"Negotiation is empathy. It's almost trite to say that if you can't put yourself in the seat of the other person you're speaking with, you're not going to do well. It's not about being a bully, not about making offers people can't refuse." - Marc Randolph
"I think, at the end of the day, acting and activism are both about empathy. You're trying to get people to see other people as real and human. And to care." - Sara Ramirez
"In order to be a good emergency contact, you need a lot of friend-patience and empathy. Often, this comes from personal experience with anxiety, trauma, and depression." - Mary H.K. Choi
"As far as my mindset changing, I see myself having more empathy in my older age." - Bill Burr
"Human nature is complex. Even if we do have inclinations toward violence, we also have inclination to empathy, to cooperation, to self-control." - Steven Pinker
"An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like." - Tarana Burke
"My own feeling is we need more compassion, we need more empathy, we need more togetherness, in terms of working together." - Cindy McCain
"Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others." - Justin Simien
"Learning a foreign language, and the culture that goes with it, is one of the most useful things we can do to broaden the empathy and imaginative sympathy and cultural outlook of children." - Michael Gove
"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
"Universal basic income is not a solution in search of a problem - it is the obvious solution that has been in front of us for years. It only requires us to have the vision, empathy and courage to adopt it for the American people before it is too late." - Andrew Yang
"We shall listen, not lecture; learn, not threaten. We will enhance our safety by earning the respect of others and showing respect for them. In short, our foreign policy will rest on the traditional American values of restraint and empathy, not on military might." - Theodore C. Sorensen
"Empathy has some unfortunate features - it is parochial, narrow-minded, and innumerate. We're often at our best when we're smart enough not to rely on it." - Paul Bloom
"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
"Artificial intelligence is growing up fast, as are robots whose facial expressions can elicit empathy and make your mirror neurons quiver." - Diane Ackerman
"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
"My theory is that the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy, and that the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems." - Simon Baron-Cohen
"Women are just so much tougher and more patient than men are - their capacity for empathy blows me away. And their capacity to deal with stress for long periods of time is also kind of awe inspiring." - Aaron Lazar
"Documentaries require an enormous amount of grit and empathy - and that is something women are incredibly strong at." - Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
"Posh people blow my mind. Apart from empathy, they're good at everything - true survivalists." - Katherine Ryan
"Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not." - Dayananda Saraswati
"Character robotics could plant the seed for robots that actually have empathy. So, if they achieve human level intelligence or, quite possibly, greater than human levels of intelligence, this could be the seeds of hope for our future." - David Hanson
"It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting." - Christian Bale
"Empathy and social skills are social intelligence, the interpersonal part of emotional intelligence. That's why they look alike." - Daniel Goleman
"I've had people hate me for my appearance. I think it gets me a certain level of empathy with the audience. If I was white and handsome and privileged, I probably couldn't talk about what I talk about because people wouldn't believe that I have empathy or I could be evenhanded and objective. It's strange." - Ralphie May
"When a mother quarrels with a daughter, she has a double dose of unhappiness hers from the conflict, and empathy with her daughter's from the conflict with her. Throughout her life a mother retains this special need to maintain a good relationship with her daughter." - Terri Apter
"Most women prefer circles of sharing to pyramids and hierarchies. They prefer conversation to construction. They will usually choose nurturance and empathy over competition and climbing. They will normally choose connection over simple performance games." - Richard Rohr
"Because I teach and write about depression and bipolar illness, I am often asked what is the most important factor in treating bipolar disorder. My answer is competence. Empathy is important, but competence is essential." - Kay Redfield Jamison
"We need to see kindness and we need to see empathy and compassion. That's something we need to see in leadership as well." - Phil Dunster
"All leaders, male or female, innately possess feminine qualities like empathy, candor and vulnerability - the difference lies in which leaders choose to suppress those qualities, and which choose to leverage them as strengths." - John Gerzema
"Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it." - Simon Baron-Cohen
"Somehow we got used to death, and then we dehumanized it. We account for conflicts in figures. Ebola is 13,500 infected, 5,000 people have died... People are losing their sense of empathy, their sense of wanting to do something." - Joanne Liu
"If you have empathy for both sides, then that's the same as having no empathy at all." - Wendy Long
"Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'" - George McGovern
"Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger." - Barbara Kingsolver
"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
"I really like feeling connected to people and feeling like I have a good, solid sense of empathy." - Aimee Bender
"I tend to side with people who are considered the underdog. I have empathy." - Amanda de Cadenet
"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
"What I am unable to understand with the people who associate themselves with Trump is their willingness to overlook the dishonesty, the indecency, the lack of empathy, to be asked to go out every single day and why." - Daniel Pfeiffer
"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
"Our human face happens to be one of the most powerful channels that we all use to communicate social and emotional states: everything from enjoyment, surprise, empathy, and curiosity." - Rana el Kaliouby
"Disability is articulated as a struggle, an unnecessary burden that one must overcome to the soundtrack of a string crescendo. But disabled lives are multi-faceted - brimming with personality, pride, ambition, love, empathy, and wit." - Sinead Burke
"A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being." - Daniel Dennett
"Positive social emotions like compassion and empathy are generally good for us, and we want to encourage them. But do we know how to most reliably raise children to care about the suffering of other people? I'm not sure we do." - Sam Harris
"My background is in arts education and we know, absolutely for a fact, that there is no better way for kids to learn critical thinking skills, communication skills, things like empathy and tolerance. This is true across every boundary, across cultural boundaries, across socioeconomic, it's a great leveler in terms of unifying our world." - Emma Walton Hamilton
"I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that's the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man." - Michelle Rodriguez
"There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world." - J. William Fulbright
"The Lord is well aware of our mortality. He knows our weaknesses. He understands the challenges of our everyday lives. He has great empathy for the temptations of earthly appetites and passions." - Joseph B. Wirthlin
"When you see yourself as the center of things, it deprives you of a certain level of empathy." - Taylor Goldsmith
"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."
"I think with empathy... It's more looking out at the people. And that includes the Republicans, you know the people that might be opposed to us. Trying to understand why is it that they want what they want. And then how do we find common ground. I mean sometimes there is no common ground to be had if it's only about profit." - Jane O'Meara Sanders
"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
"Only an intervention by women around the world, with their innate knowledge of interdependency, deep listening, empathy and self-sacrifice, could possibly alter our species' desperate course." - Anohni
"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
"My work on what is called 'deep reading' explores the range of linguistic, cognitive, and affective processes that underlie not only the emergence of creative thought when we read but also the development and strengthening of capacities like empathy and critical analysis that we can apply to the rest of our lives." - Maryanne Wolf
"In a high-IQ job pool, soft skills like discipline, drive and empathy mark those who emerge as outstanding." - Daniel Goleman
"Although I'm not particularly troubled myself, I do have a lot of empathy for troubled characters." - Mia Wasikowska
"You have to have sympathy for and an empathy with a character in order to play them." - Laura Carmichael
"Acting requires a great amount of empathy for real lived human experiences." - Cole Sprouse
"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
"Resilience is, of course, necessary for a warrior. But a lack of empathy isn't." - Phil Klay
"The study of history requires investigation, imagination, empathy, and respect. Reverence just doesn't enter into it." - Jill Lepore
"In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It's when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it's almost incomprehensible." - Sarah McBride
