quotes, quotations and passages about encouragement

The highest form of knowledge is
empathy, for it requires us to suspend
our egos and live in another's world.

Bill Bullard

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

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

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares. Henri Nouwen Out of Solitude

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Empathy seems to be seen as a weakness. We condition people to withdraw
it to succeed. But really, it needs to be re-seen as a strength again if
there is to be any kind of hope in the world.

Matt Bellamy

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Deciding to listen with open ears and an open heart brings us together.
We need to seek to really understand each other. We need to
demonstrate empathy. If we can make these individual
connections, we can strengthen our communities and nation.

Doug McMillon

Empathy, the most powerful tool of compassion, is an emotional
skill set that allows us to understand what someone is experiencing
and to reflect back that understanding. Empathy has a huge upside.
Researchers Peter Paul Zurek and Herbert Scheithauer explain that
empathy helps interpersonal decision making; facilitates ethical
decision making and moral judgments; enhances short-term subjective
well-being; strengthens relational bonds; allows people to understand
how others see them; and enhances prosocial and altruistic behavior.

Brené Brown
Atlas of the Heart

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

I do not shy away from accepting that I had a troubled past,
but in the journey of coming out of that dark phase, I
understand humans better. I am less judgmental and more compassionate.
I learned empathy and forgiveness, and that gives me confidence as a person.

Amit Sadh

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

I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the
outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know
it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a
solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement
from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of
fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways. . .
It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor
to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks
of a decent human being.

John Connolly
The Book of Lost Things

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

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

Roger Ebert

Empathy is a tool of compassion. We can respond empathically only
if we are willing to be present to someone's pain. If we're
not willing to do that, it's not really empathy.

Brené Brown
Atlas of the Heart

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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

We need to understand the other side to impact the other side. We become
much more effective as humans and leaders when we engage in hearty
conversations with those who are different from us, not necessarily to
change our opinions, but to build the empathy muscle.

Daniel Lubetzky

When we fully understand the brevity of life, its fleeting joys and
unavoidable pains; when we accept the facts that all men and
women are approaching an inevitable doom: the consciousness
of it should make us more kindly and considerate of each other.
This feeling should make men and women use their best efforts
to help their fellow travelers on the road, to make the path brighter
and easier as we journey on. It should bring a closer kinship, a better
understanding, and a deeper sympathy for the wayfarers who must
live a common life and die a common death.

Clarence Darrow
The Essential Words and Writings of Clarence Darrow

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
The Empathy Exams

Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation
that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why
love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of
humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps
the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being.
Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her
struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have
to surrender some of your self.

Jonathan Franzen
Farther Away

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

Empathy is what obsesses me. And watching empathy recede in the world is terrifying.

Nathan Englander

As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how
to imagine what another creature might feel in response
to various events. At the same time, we identify with
the other creature and learn something about ourselves.

Martha C. Nussbaum

Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists;
only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.

Jen Knox
Chaos Magic

You can be a caring person without empathy, but you CANNOT
be empathetic just because you think you care.

Ashley S. Clancy
The Jamange Line

There is absolutely no single aspect of one’s personality that is
more important to develop than empathy, which is not a skill
at which men typically are asked to excel. I believe empathy is
not only the core of art, literature and music, but should also
be at the core of society, from ethics to economics.

Chris Ware