Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.
— Maya Angelou
Unusual Empathy And Understanding quotations
The empathic understanding of the experience of other human beings is as basic an endowment of man as his vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.
Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.
Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.
One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm.
The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.
When you talk, you repeat what you already know; when you listen, you often learn something.
Build bridges of insight through empathy, see the world through the eyes of others, understand the world through their experiences, and feel the world through their emotions.
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.
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.
Friendship is a living thing that lasts only as long as it is nourished with kindness, empathy and understanding.
The right tools for solving disputes within our community are precision instruments such as reason, communication, empathy, curiosity, and understanding. They are also the right tools for building a global civilization of peace and prosperity.
People are starting to understand the other side's perspective and that's where empathy can sort of begin - once you quit judging other people but just understand where they're coming from.
The ability to imagine oneself in another's place and understand the other's feelings, desires, ideas, and actions. The most obvious example, perhaps, is that of the actor or singer who genuinely feels the part he is performing.
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.
True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one's own the suffering and joys of others.
The most important thing is that we need to be understood.
We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us. Then we will suffer less.
I look for a role that hopefully I feel empathy with and that I can understand and love, but also that has that challenge for me to play - a different kind of role, a different type of character, a different time period.
We live in an epidemic of self-hatred.
I see it daily with people coming at me, and they do it to everybody, it's not just me. The hatred is really stemming from them not liking themselves. When you look at it that way, I feel so much empathy and understanding for those people.
In my opinion, being an effective leader requires being an effective listener.
The most productive leaders are usually those who are consistently willing to listen and learn.
Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.
People don't listen to understand. They listen to reply. The collective monologue is everyone talking and no one listening.
Real social progress is always a widening of the circle of concern and protection. It's respect and empathy overtaking blindness and indifference. It's understanding that by the true measure, we are all neighbors and countrymen, call to each one of us to know what is right and kind and just and to go and do likewise.
Writing is an act of empathy. You are occupying and understanding a point of view that might be alien to your own--and work is often the keyhole through which you peer.
People in Third World countries think and laugh and smile, just like us.
We have got to understand that we are them they are us.
If you connect emotionally with the plight of those characters, ou feel what they feel and you walk away with a sense of understanding and empathy, and hopefully, something has been illuminated for you. And I tink that's what happendd for a lot of readers with my novels.
I had horrible acne when I was a kid.
I felt like a complete and utter ne'er do well and someone who didn't fit in and wasn't handsome. So, I understand implicitly, and with a great amount of empathy, a man or human being that feels that way.
Every single human civilization has failed over time, and my belief is that it's due to a lack of rational empathy, of understanding that if you don't have equality in your society, the conflicts you breed (whether internally or externally) will eventually cause its collapse.
I could say analogously that tolerance is the affable appreciation of qualities, views, and actions of other individuals which are foreign to one`s own habits, beliefs, and tastes. Thus being tolerant does not mean being indifferent towards the actions and feelings of others. Understanding and empathy must also be present.
Think in terms of what's good for the other person and success will seek you out.
When you are deeply contemplative, you listen more carefully and understand things which cannot be articulated.
Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue.
If women understand by emancipation the adoption of the masculine role then we are lost indeed. If women can supply no counterbalance to the blindness of male drive the aggressive society will run to its lunatic extremes at ever-escalating speed. Who will safeguard the despised animal faculties of compassion, empathy, innocence and sensuality?
I believe one of the requirements of good leadership is the ability to listen - really listen - to those in your organization. An effective leader is very good at listening, and it's difficult to listen when you are talking.
I emphasize listening. We strive to hear what other people want us to hear, even though they don't always come out and say it directly.
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.