Most Powerful Quotes On Empathy – Inspire Quotes and Sayings

Quotes On Empathy

  • “Empathy needs no genius.” —Toba Beta
  • “Empathy is the crucible of intercultural relations.” —Carolyn Calloway-Thomas
  • “Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug.” —Lawrence J
  • “Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” —Gloria Steinem
  • “I feel like songwriting is an experiment in empathy.” —Zooey Deschanel
  • “The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.” —Mehmet Oz
  • “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” —Mohsin Hamid
  • “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” —Roger Ebert
  • “Empathy is the lovefire of sweet remembrance and shared understanding.” —John Eaton
  • “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” —John Steinbeck
  • “We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.” —Lydia Millet
  • “A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.” —Daniel Goleman
  • “Empathy is a virtue, but it should not be a guiding judicial principle.” —Gary Bauer
  • “We need to have empathy. When we lose empathy, we lose our humanity.” —Goldie Hawn
  • “Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction ‘Love the neighbor as thyself.’ —George Mcgovern
  • “Empathy is full presence to what’s alive in the other person at this moment.” —John Cunningham
  • “Are you then unable to recognize unless it has the same sound as yours? —Andre Gide
  • “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” —Maya Angelou
  • “When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.” —Euripides
  • “Pain shared is pain lessened; joy shared is joy increased. Thus do we refute entropy.” —Spider Robinson
  • “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.” —H. Jackson Brown
  • “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” —Walt Whitman
  • “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.” —Homer
  • “Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.” —Eric Zorn
  • “Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.” —Neil Gaiman
  • “Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience.” —Jacob A. Belzen
  • “Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.” —Anderson Cooper
  • “Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience.” —Jacob A. Belzen
  • “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” —Tahereh Mafi
  • “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.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Empathy frequently informs our earliest days with our infants as we try to figure out what they need, how to comfort and satisfy them.” —Katherine Ellison
  • “I wouldn’t expect someone who’s been injured to hear my side until they felt that I had fully understood the depth of their pain.” —Marshall B. Rosenberg
  • “Empathy is the only human superpower – it can shrink distance, cut through social and power hierarchies, transcend differences, and provoke political and social change.” —Elizabeth Thomas
  • “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
  • “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.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffercom
  • “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.” —Harper Lee
  • “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? —Marcus Aurelius
  • “If you share in a heart-felt sorrow, you can lighten the load of a friend. Sometimes facing the burden together can mend two broken hearts in the end.” —Wes Fessler
  • “Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.” —Jack Handey
  • “Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength.” —R.A. Salvatore
  • “When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.” —Abraham Lincoln
  • “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
  • “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” —Henry Ford
  • “Empathy depends not only on one’s ability to identify someone else’s emotions but also on one’s capacity to put oneself in the other person’s place and to experience an appropriate emotional response.” —Charles G. Morris
  • “Empathy is putting yourself in another’s shoes to find out what exactly that person is feeling or going through at the given time. It basically refers to being at a common wavelength with someone.” —Deepa Kodikal
  • “Empathy is a powerful behavior of nurturing. When it is given properly, the receiver can feel that the giver really cares about them, and that what they are going through is not trivial.” —William E. Krill
  • “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.” —Carl Rogers
  • “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 a special way of coming to know another and ourself, a kind of attuning and understanding. When empathy is extended, it satisfies our needs and wish for intimacy, it rescues us from our feelings of aloneness.” —Carl Rogers
  • “Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person’s feelings and of one’s own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.” —Frans De Waal

Famous Quotes About Empathy

  • “I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.” —Mahatma Gandhi
  • “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” —Roger Ebert
  • “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” —John Steinbeck
  • “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” —Meryl Streep
  • “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” —Maya Angelou
  • “When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.” —Euripides
  • “It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.” —Gustave Flaubert
  • “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” —Susan Sarandon
  • “Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.” —Anderson Cooper
  • “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” —Alfred Adler
  • “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” —Oprah Winfrey
  • “Have compassion and empathy in your heart. Many people are suffering deep emotional anguish beneath the surface of their lives, and smile even as they hurt inside.” —Jim Palmer
  • “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
  • “I’m not going to be that hard on you. Please don’t be that hard on yourself. We all go through some challenges, we all go through failure.” —Arnold Schwarzenegger
  • “We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.” —Carl Rogers

Quotes about Empathy and Compassion

  • “Compassion is the basis of morality.” —Arthur Schopenhauer
  • “Empathy and compassion will make our world better.” —Anonymous
  • “Make no judgments where you have no compassion.”― Anne McCaffrey
  • “Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.”― Henry Ward Beecher
  • “Empathy is the gateway; compassion is the way.”― Scott Perry
  • “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping them up.”―Jesse Jackson
  • “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.” ―Plato
  • “When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed.” —Maya Angelou
  • “Having compassion for yourself means that you honor and accept your humanness”―Kristen Neff
  • “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”― Mother Theresa
  • Compassion is based on empathy, and empathy requires focus on others.” —Daniel goleman
  • “When we match compassion with purpose, we being to conquer the world.”― Zachariah Thompson
  • “In separateness lies the world’s great misery, in compassion lies the world’s true strength.”―Buddha
  • “Stay connected to feel empathy, compassion, and understanding for yourself and others.” —Vanessa Tucker
  • “Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others.”―Helen Keller
  • “The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.” —Dean Koontz
  • “We are all different. Don’t judge, understand instead.” —Roy T. Bennett, the Light in the Heart
  • “There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy and a grace in forgiveness.” —Anonymous
  • “Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves.”― Pema Chodron
  • “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” —John Holmes
  • “It is the enemy who can truly teach us to practice the virtues of compassion and tolerance.”―Dalai Lama
  • “Compassion, empathy, and love are the real pillars we need to build within ourselves to become human.” —Loknath
  • “There never was any heart truly great and generous that was not also tender and compassionate. “―Bishop Robert South
  • “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” —Mother Teresa
  • “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” —Dalai Lama
  • “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering. Some suffer too much, others too little.”―Buddha
  • “A truly compassionate attitude toward others does not change even if they behave negatively or hurt you.” —Dalai Lama XIV
  • “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” —Albert Schweitzer
  • “Experiencing terrible pain opens our hearts and minds to express compassion for other people and communion with ourselves.”―Kilroy J. Oldster
  • “What you don’t realize is that the world does not need more perfection. It needs more compassion and empathy.”―Tessa Dare
  • “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” —Tahereh Mafi
  • “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”―Maya Angelou
  • “Love and Compassion are the true religions to me. But to develop this, we do not need to believe in any religion.” —Dalai Lama XIV
  • “Compassion automatically brings happiness and calmness. Then, even if you receive disturbing news, it will be easier to take, as your mind is still.”―Dalai Lama
  • “Our task must be to free ourselves… by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and it’s beauty.” —Albert Einstein
  • “Have compassion and empathy in your heart. Many people are suffering deep emotional anguish beneath the surface of their lives, and smile even as they hurt inside.” —Jim Palmer
  • “Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.” ―Albert Schweitzer
  • “It is a man’s sympathy with all creatures that truly makes him a man. Until he extends his circle of compassion to all living things, man himself will not find peace.”―Albert Schweitzer
  • “It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” —Mahatma Gandhi
  • “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.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
  • “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” —Gautama Buddha

Lack of Empathy Quotes

  • “The greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others.” —Unknown
  • “I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it’s disrupting our society.” —J. K. Rowling
  • “Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.” —Annie Lennox
  • “One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.” —Charles m. Blow
  • “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” —Hannah Arendt
  • “I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” —G. M gilbert
  • “All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.” —Marya Mannes
  • “I think a lot of the mistakes that have been made in the world have been through a lack of empathy. If you can identify with someone else and empathize with someone else, then activism is a short step away.” —Susan Sarandon

Feeling and Empathy Quotes

  • “One of the most valuable things we can do to heal one another is listen to each other’s stories.” —Rebecca Falls
  • “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou
  • “Everything I experience hits me deep, raw, and intense, as an empathy I feel the energy of myself and others. As I age, this ability only grows deeper and stranger.” —Sylvester Mcnutt
  • “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
  • “Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing —not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.” —Audrey Hepburn
  • “Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered.” —Wes Angelozzi
  • “Empathy is a strange and powerful thing. There is not script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’ —Brene Brown
  • “Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.” —Leslie Jamison
  • “Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self-kind of understanding.” —Bill Bullard
  • “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” —Kurt Vonnegut
  • “Highly sensitive beings suffer more but they also love harder, dream wider and experience deeper horizons and bliss. When you’re sensitive, you’re alive in every sense of this word in this wildly beautiful world. Sensitivity is your strength. Keep soaking in the light and spreading it to others.” —Victoria Erickson
  • “This is Empathy: Let me hold the door for you. I may have never walked a mile in your shoes, but I can see that your soles are worn and your strength is torn under the weight of a story I have never lived before. So let me hold the door for you. After all you’ve walked through, it’s the least I can do.” —Morgan Harper Nichols

Inspirational Quotes On Empathy

  • “Empathy is essential to peace.” —Anonymous
  • “We must understand before we judge.” —Anonymous
  • “No one heals themselves by wounding another.” —Anonymous
  • “The highest form of knowledge is empathy.” —Bill Bullard
  • “The outward expression of empathy is courtesy.” —Stewart Butterfield
  • “Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.” —Leslie Jamison
  • “The opposite of anger is not calmness, it’s empathy.” —Mehmet Oz
  • “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” —Mohsin Hamid
  • “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” —Plato
  • “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” —Roger Ebert
  • “See the light in each other. Be the light for each other.” —Anonymous
  • “The greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others.” —Anonymous
  • “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” —Mother Teresa
  • “Wearing another’s skin is the most effective way to learn sympathy.”―A G Howard
  • “The little things you do can be very significant to others.”― Wayne Gerard Trotman
  • “Empathy is a special way of coming to know another and ourself.” —Carl R. Rogers
  • “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” —Meryl Streep
  • “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” —Maya Angelou
  • “It is the weak that expresses aggressiveness to show strength. But real strength, it’s in the gentle.”―Nurudeen Ushawu
  • “Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people.” —C. Joybell
  • “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” —Susan Sarandon
  • “It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.”―Gustave Flaubert
  • “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” —Anonymous
  • “True empathy requires that you step outside your own emotions to view things entirely from the perspective of the other person.” —Anonymous
  • “Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone.” —Brene Brown
  • “Love is that enviable state that knows no envy or vanity, only empathy and a longing to be greater than oneself.” —Anonymous
  • “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.”―Baruch Spinoza
  • “Everyday you need to take some actions – actions to improve your life and actions to improve someone else’s life.”―Amit Ray
  • “One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.” —Charles M. Blow
  • “The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” —Hannah Arendt
  • “A child is not born with affection, adoration, and kindheartedness. A person accrues empathy and sympathy from experiencing our own pain.”―Kilroy J. Oldster
  • “Empathy is a skill like any other human skill. If you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.” —Professor Simon Baron Cohen
  • “Leadership is about empathy. It is about having the ability to relate to and connect with people for the purpose of inspiring and empowering their lives.” —Oprah Winfrey
  • “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.”―Gudjon Bergmann
  • “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.”―Stewart Stafford
  • “We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.” —Carl Rogers
  • “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.” —Leo Buscaglia

Quotes about Empathy in Business

  • “Empathy is a muscle, so it needs to be exercised.” —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
  • “Empathy is the ultimate form of customer insight.” —Don Peppers, founding partner of management consultancy, Peppers and Rogers Group
  • “Empathy is one of our greatest tools of business that is most underused.” —Daniel Lubetzky, billionaire founder and CEO of snack company Kind LLC
  • “People will try to convince you that you should keep your empathy out of your career. Don’t accept this false premise.” —Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
  • “Without empathy it is not possible to get the best from your team, so for this reason it is the key to everything.” —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
  • “Most people think that empathy is something you have only with friends and the family, but in reality, it is also a priority in business.” —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
  • “The quickest way to have empathy for someone else is to be just like them. For companies, the answer is to hire their customers.” —Dev Patnaik, author, Wired to Care
  • “Our core business is connected with the customers’ needs and we will not be able to satisfy them if we don’t have a deep sense of empathy.” —Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
  • “Empathy helps marketers break out of their blind spots, open their eyes to the human side of the consumer and flips the conversation from brand-led to people-led.” —Nick Graham, VP, Insights at PepsiCo
  • “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” —Henry Ford
  • “If we have optimism, but we don’t have empathy – then it doesn’t matter how much we master the secrets of science, we’re not really solving problems; we’re just working on puzzles.” —Bill Gates
  • “The successful agencies of the future will be those that integrate technological excellence with profoundly human qualities: combining efficacy with empathy… I suspect that we’ll need appetite and empathy more than ever.” —Jim Carroll, Ex-Chairman BBH
  • “It’s often not possible or not enough to hire your customers. To continue to grow and prosper, you have to step outside of yourself and walk in someone else’s shoes.” —Dev Patnaik, author, Wired to Care
  • “Empathy. It’s one of the biggest things to which I attribute my success. It’s the reason I believe that I am one of the great salespeople out there.” —Gary Vaynerchuk, entrepreneur and CEO of ad agency, VaynerMedia
  • “Empathy is the antidote for the simplified, abstract information that often carries authority inside organizations. Empathy helps people see the world as it really is, not how it looks on a map.” —Dev Patnaik, author, Wired to Care
  • “Empathy is key in the design process, especially when you start expanding outside of your comfort zone to new languages, cultures, and age groups. If you try to assume what those people want, you’re likely to get it wrong.” —Mike Krieger, founder of Instagram
  • “The notion of empathy and human-centeredness is still not widely practiced in many corporations. Business people rarely navigate their own websites or watch how people use their products in a real-world setting. And if you do a word association with “business person,” the word “empathy” doesn’t come up much.” —David Kelley, founder IDEO
  • “In a world of big data, it’s important to remember that marketing is more than just a series of faceless transactions. There’s a real human heartbeat at the end of all those 1s and 0s, a person we can build a meaningful, lasting relationship with. And that’s where empathy comes into play. In building a deeper understanding of the people who buy our brands, we elevate our marketing beyond the generic and create products, programs and communications with the power to make people feel heard, moved and inspired.” —Nick Graham, VP, Insights at PepsiCo
  • “Today, organisations run the risk of overcompensating for the analogue past and completely focusing on big data analytics and data-driven insights – which indeed is a capability that needs to be built. And we’re investing a lot of time and effort in that. However, if you’re not careful you fall into what I call the empathy gap, which comes from over-focusing on what the data tells you. In most cases data tells a lot about what people do when they do it. It doesn’t tell you much about why they do it.” —Stephan Gans, Chief Insights and Analytics Officer at PepsiCo

Quotes about Empathy and Kindness

  • “If you want more kindness in the world, put some there.”―Zero Dean
  • “Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.”―Seneca
  • “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when it will be too late.”―Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • “Practicing kindness increases our ability to be empathetic. It helps keep our hearts open. And that, truly, is the best way to live.”―Kristi Bowman
  • “We can’t heal the world today but we can begin with a voice of compassion, a heart of love, an act of kindness.” —Mary Davis
  • “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.”―Izey Victoria Odiase

Quotes about Empathy for Kids and Students

  • “Leadership is about empathy.”—Oprah Winfrey
  • “We judge what we don’t understand.” —Unknown
  • “Empathy grows as we learn.” —Alice Miller
  • “There are two side to every issue.” —Ayn Rand
  • “If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” —Turkish Proverb
  • “The opposite of anger is not calmness. It’s empathy.” —Mehmet Oz
  • “There is no greater loan than a sympathetic ear.” —Frank Tyger
  • “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” —Simone Weil
  • “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” —Roger Ebert
  • “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.” —Jesse Jackson
  • “Don’t cast shadows on anyone unless you are providing shade.” —Terri Guillemets
  • “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” —John Steinbeck
  • “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” —Mother Teresa
  • “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” —Dolly Parton
  • “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” —Author Unknown
  • “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” —Albert Einstein
  • “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.” —Theodore Roosevelt
  • “When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.” —Euripides
  • “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” —Maya Angelou
  • We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” —Epictetus
  • “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.” —Homer
  • “Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.” —Arundhati Ray
  • “When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” —Susan Sarandon
  • “Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eye for an instant?” —Henry David Thoreau
  • “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another and feeling with the heart of another.” —Alfred Adler
  • “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy, we can all sense a mysterious connection to each other.” —Meryl Streep
  • “One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world.” —E. H. Mayoli
  • “When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.” —Abraham Lincoln
  • “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” —Henry Ford
  • “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.” —Barack Obama
  • “If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view, until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.” —Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
  • “Have you ever been surfing? Imagine you’re on your surfboard now, waiting for the big one to come. Get ready to get carried with that energy. Now, here it comes. That’s empathy. No words – just being with that energy. When I connect with what’s alive in another person, I have feelings similar to when I’m surfing.” —Marshall Rosenberg

Empathy quotes for kids

  • “If you see someone without a smile, give them one of yours.” —Dolly Parton
  • “Always stop to think whether your fun may be the cause of another’s unhappiness.” —Aesop
  • “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re all in the same boat now.” —Martin luther king jr.
  • “Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people.” —C. Joybell
  • “Everyday you need to take some actions – actions to improve your life and actions to improve someone else’s life.” —Amit Ray
  • “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.” —F. Scott fitzgerald
  • “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? —Marcus Aurelius

Empathy Quotes For Students

  • “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” —Plato
  • “Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.” —Daniel Goleman
  • “Learning to stand in somebody else’s shoes, to see through their eyes, that’s how peace begins.” —Barack Obama
  • “Empathy is a skill like any other human skill. If you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.” —Simon Baron Cohen
  • “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
  • “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.” —Henry Ford
  • “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.” —John Connolly
  • “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.” —Leo Buscaglia

Dalai Lama “Quotes on Empathy”

  • “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” —Dalai Lama
  • “Looking at various means of developing compassion, I think empathy is an important factor: the ability to appreciate others’ suffering.” —Dalai Lama
  • “Modern education is premised strongly on materialistic values. It is vital that when educating our children’s brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts, a key element of which has to be the nurturing of our compassionate nature.” —Dalai Lama
  • “We need to strengthen such inner values as contentment, patience and tolerance, as well as compassion for others. Keeping in mind that it is expressions of affection rather than money and power that attract real friends, compassion is the key to ensuring our own well-being.” —Dalai Lama
  • “I really feel that some people neglect and overlook compassion because they associate it with religion. Of course, everyone is free to choose whether they pay religion any regard, but to neglect compassion is a mistake because it is the source of our own well-being.” —Dalai Lama
  • “We need to take action to develop compassion, to create inner peace within ourselves and to share that inner peace with our family and friends. Peace and warm-heartednes s can then spread through the community just as ripples radiate out across the water when you drop a pebble into a pond.” —Dalai Lama
  • “To the extent that our experience of suffering reminds us of what everyone else also endures, it serves as a powerful inspiration to practice compassion and avoid causing others pain. And to the extent that suffering awakens our empathy and causes us to connect with others, it serves as the basis of compassion and love.” —Dalai Lama
  • Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek. —Dalai Lama
  • Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible. —Dalai Lama

Brené Brown Quotes On Empathy

  • “Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole.” —Brené Brown
  • “Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘You’re not alone.’” —Brené Brown
  • “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.” —Brené Brown
  • “I believe that what we regret most are our failures of courage, whether it’s the courage to be kinder, to show up, to say how we feel, to set boundaries, to be good to ourselves. For that reason, regret can be the birthplace of empathy.” —Brené Brown

Empathy Quotes in “To Kill a Mockingbird”

  • “Mrs. Merriweather’s large brown eyes always filled with tears when she considered the oppressed.” —Harper Lee
  • “If we just let them know we forgive ’em that we’ve forgotten it, then this whole thing will blow over.” —Harper Lee
  • “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.” —Harper Lee
  • “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with.” —Harper Lee
  • “So if spitting in my face and threatening me saved Mayella Ewell one extra beating, that’s something I’ll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebody, and I’d rather it be me than that household of children out there.” —Harper Lee

Quotes and Sayings About Empathy

  • “Empathy brings people closer to each other.” —Empathy heals.
  • “Do not let your tongue move before your thought.” —Chilon
  • “If you could cry, you could understand.” —Necip Fazıl Kısakürek
  • “Be the change you want to see in the world.” —Mahatma Gandhi
  • “He who sees the world with understanding, sees the world with understanding.” —Hegel
  • “Peace is cheap; For peace we only need conscience, empathy and love.” —La Edri
  • “Do not want someone else to endure the torment you cannot stand personally.” —Publilius Cyrus
  • “Treat others as you would like to be treated, but do good first.” —David Hume
  • “A person who sees something that is not suitable for himself cannot be perfect.” —Hz. Ali
  • “Empathy begins primarily in our relationship with ourselves. This is called self-love or self-love.” —Nil Day
  • “Do all your work through understanding; protect your time from waste with knowledge.” —Yusuf Has Hacib
  • “Listen even when they are stupid and ignorant, because everyone in this world has a story.” —Buddha
  • “The feature that makes human beings human is that it has developed the ability of empathy.” —H. Murakami
  • “Do not complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof without cleaning the threshold of your house.” —Confucius
  • “I don’t worry that people don’t understand me. If I don’t understand people, I will be worried.” —Confucius
  • “No matter how much you know, what you can tell is enough for the other person to understand.” —Mawlana
  • “Remember that the three fingers of the hand you put forward to accuse someone are pointing you! —Friedrich Nietzsche
  • “A person is alive if he can feel pain. If he can feel someone else’s pain, it is human.” —Tolstoy
  • “If a person can feel pain, he is alive. If he can feel someone else’s pain, it is human.” —Tolstoy
  • “The greatest person is the one who can put himself in the shoes of the greatest number of people.” —Jane adams
  • “I would be upset that I didn’t have shoes. Until he saw the man without feet on the street.” —Honoré de Balzac
  • “We are all kneaded by weaknesses and mistakes; let’s mutually tolerate each other’s foolishness; pekguzelsozler.com this is the first law of nature.” —Voltaire
  • “Why do birds not understand humans? Because people plant scarecrows on the fields in summer and sprinkle wheat grain on birds in winter.” —Ronner
  • “One of you could not have truly believed unless he wanted what he wanted for himself and wanted it for his religious brother.” —Hz. Mohammed
  • “I like to empathize. I take the place of those who fall in love with me and look after myself; they really made the right choice.” —Vidal
  • “It is not necessary that we have experienced the event encountered while empathizing. Empathy refers to understanding events, not living. Understanding can be improved through education.” —Anonymous
  • “Just as we want our own well-being and our own interests, it will not be bad if we look after the interests of others as well.” —Hz. Mohammed