54 Famous Quotes on Empathy From Your Favourite Books and Icons

Empathy can be defined as the ability to truly understand the feelings of others. It’s the ability to put yourself into someone else’s shoes, be aware of their emotions and their perspectives.

People usually become more empathic after going through hardship and pain. It’s easier to understand what someone else is going through when you’ve already experienced something similar. However, we are truly empathic when we are simply sensitive to how other people are feeling. For example, we don’t necessarily have to lose someone to realize how painful it can be.

Empathy is something that can be taught. Adults can help children develop higher levels of empathy by exposing them to different worldviews and by teaching them to be kind, generous, patient and forgiving. Learning how to care for others is crucial for our personal development and for creating healthy and meaningful relationships.

Being empathic is a key ingredient to make the world around you a better place and to become the best person you can be.

Here are 54 Famous Empathy Quotes from Brené Brown, Dalai Lama and Other Inspirational Icons

Empathy quotes by 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

Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole 

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 by Dalai Lama

Looking at various means of developing compassion, I think empathy is an important factor: the ability to appreciate others’ suffering.

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

If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

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

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.

Dalai Lama

Empathy quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird

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

If we just let them know we forgive ’em, that we’ve forgotten it, then this whole thing’ll blow over.

Harper Lee

Mrs. Merriweather’s large brown eyes always filled with tears when she considered the oppressed.

Harper Lee

Famous quotes about empathy

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.

MAYA ANGELOU

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

MERYL STREEP

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.

JOHN STEINBECK

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.

ANDERSON COOPER

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

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.

MAHATMA GANDHI

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

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

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.

ROGER EBERT

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

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

ALFRED ADLER

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

When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.

EURIPIDES

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

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

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

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

Quotes on empathy for students

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

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

BARACK OBAMA

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.

DANIEL GOLEMAN

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

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

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

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

PLATO

Quotes about lack of empathy

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 greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others.

UNKNOWN

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 believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it’s disrupting our society.

J. K. ROWLING

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

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

Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.

ANNIE LENNOX

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