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We often move through the world trapped in the small orbit of our own experiences. We see our own problems as unique, our own pain as isolated, and our own perspective as the only truth.
In this state of separation, it’s easy for us to view people as obstacles, distractions, or mere background noise.
But that is, after all, just an illusion. An illusion that can be broken with the power of empathy.
To practice empathy is to lower our defenses and extending our imagination into the reality of another human being. It is when we realize that the person standing in front of us—whether a friend, a stranger, or even an enemy—is “fighting a battle” just as complex and tender as our own.
It’s not simple to cultivate this open-hearted way of seeing though. But it is not impossible – provided that we remind ourselves to work on it everyday.
Let us start the journey by reflecting on the following empathy quotes, shall we?
Highlights
- The collection below examines the role of empathy in human connection, moving beyond simple sympathy to the Golden Rule, the practice of deep listening, and the philosophy of interbeing.
- These wise words from spiritual leaders, psychologists, and philosophers are meant to serve as a bridge across differences, a remedy for judgment, and a reminder that none of us exists in isolation.
Short Empathy Quotes
The highest form of knowledge is empathy.
Bill Bullard
Facts give us information; empathy, on the other hand, gives us understanding. To truly “know” something is to feel its weight, not just to measure its dimensions.
People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Theodore Roosevelt
Competence commands respect, but compassion commands loyalty. Connection must always precede correction or instruction.
Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.
Mohsin Hamid
Many times, we think of others as “them” – and yet, if we look deeply enough, we will realize that they are just a different version of “us.”
Read more: 55 Self-discovery Quotes – Know Thyself
Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.
Alfred Adler
True understanding is a full-body immersion. You have to temporarily suspend your own senses to truly experience theirs.
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Plato
The smiles we see in public often mask heavy burdens carried in private. Assume there is a struggle you cannot see, and offer kindness as the default response.
Inspiring Empathy Quotes
The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.
Meryl Streep
We are the only species capable of crying at a movie – or feeling the pain of a stranger on the news. This ability to transcend our own skin is one of our greatest superpowers.
Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing – not a career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status.
Audrey Hepburn
When the curtain falls on a life, the accolades and bank accounts fade. All that remains is how well we loved and how deeply we cared.
Beautiful empathy quotes
Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
Dalai Lama XIV
There is no situation so dire, no argument so heated, and no day so busy that kindness cannot be squeezed into it. It is a choice that we can always make.
We rise by lifting others.
Robert Ingersoll
Success is not a zero-sum game. When you help someone else ascend the mountain, you inevitably find yourself standing at a higher peak as well.
Sympathy and Empathy Quotes
Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.
Brené Brown
Sympathy looks down from a distance and says, “I’m sorry for you.” Empathy, on the other hand, climbs down into the hole and says, “I’m here with you.” One separates; the other binds.
Sympathy’s easy. You have sympathy for starving children swatting at flies on the late-night commercials. Sympathy is easy because it comes from a position of power. Empathy is getting down on your knees and looking someone else in the eye and realizing you could be them, and that all that separates you is luck.
Dennis Lehane
It is terrifying to realize that the only difference between a charmed life and a tragic one is, many times, just a roll of the dice. To be empathetic is to acknowledge the fragility we all share.
Read more: 83 Gratitude Quotes – Celebrating the Gifts of Life
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, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
Observation from the outside is just speculation. To really understand another person’s life, you have to hike the path they are walking.
If I let myself really understand another person, I might be changed by that understanding. And we all fear change. So as I say, it is not an easy thing to permit oneself to understand an individual.
Carl Rogers
This is the danger—and the beauty—of empathy. You cannot deeply connect with another human being and remain exactly who you were before.
Psychology quotes about empathy
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.
Walt Whitman
Radical empathy dissolves the barrier between “me” and “you.” It is the act of feeling the wound as if it were carved into your own flesh.
Read more: 80 Self Awareness Quotes – Awakening to the Truth of Who You Are
Lack of Empathy Quotes
The biggest deficit in the world is not oil or gas. It’s the empathy deficit.
Barack Obama
We have enough resources to solve our problems; what we lack is the shared will to care enough about each other to solve them.
Without empathy, humanity fades.
Desmond Tutu
We are defined by our relationships. If we lose the ability to feel for one another, we become nothing more than biological machines competing for space.
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Seneca
Kindness requires strength and restraint. Cruelty is simply the weak person’s clumsy attempt to feel powerful.
Read more: 105 Stoic Quotes for a Virtuous & Abundant Existence
No empathy quotes
In times of crisis, the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers.
T’Challa (Black Panther)
Fear tells us to wall ourselves off to protect what is ours. Wisdom tells us that our safety lies in our connection to the whole.
Read more: 120 Overcoming Sadness Quotes – From Sorrow to Strength
Freedom without compassion is demoniacal. Without compassion, freedom can be self-righteous, inhuman, self-centered, and cruel.
Rollo May
Liberty is dangerous if it isn’t tethered to a moral responsibility toward others. Doing “whatever you want” is tyranny if it ignores the pain and suffering it causes.
Compassion and empathy quotes
Empathy Quotes: The Golden Rule & Beyond
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.
Matthew 7:12
The ultimate litmus test for behavior: If the roles were reversed, would you feel respected? If not, don’t do it.
What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.
Hillel the Elder
This is the baseline of civilization. If you know the sting of pain, humiliation, or exclusion, make it your life’s mission to never inflict it on another.
Compassion is not for the sake of others.
Japanese Proverb
When you are kind, your own blood pressure lowers, your anxiety decreases, and your heart softens. Benevolence heals the giver as much as the receiver.
Today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend.
Miyamoto Musashi
Relationships are fluid. If you treat an opponent with dignity today, you leave the door open for an alliance tomorrow.
If the fish has a heart for the water, the water has a heart for the fish.
Japanese Proverb
We exist in a reciprocal relationship with the world. If you care for your environment and community, they will, in turn, sustain you.
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.
Romans 15:1
Strength isn’t given to us so we can dominate; it is given so that we can carry those who are currently stumbling.
Now the man of perfect virtue, wishing to be established himself, seeks also to establish others; wishing to be enlarged himself, he seeks also to enlarge others.
Confucius
True ambition includes the community. You haven’t truly made it until you’ve brought someone else along with you.
Read more: 111 Integrity Quotes – Nurture Character & Inner Truth
Quotes about Empathy & Interbeing
Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.
Alan Cohen
The world acts as a mirror. If you see hostility everywhere, it’s probably time to check your own heart. If you see beauty, it is because you carry beauty within you.
Read more: 77 Self Reflection Quotes – Looking Inward to Awaken
Ubuntu: ‘I am because we are.’
African Philosophy
None of us exists in a vacuum. We are all connected together. To practice empathy is to wake up to this truth – knowing that “your joy is my joy, and your suffering is my suffering.”
Catchy phrase for empathy
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.
Emily Brontë
Beneath the surface differences of personality and preference, we are all cut from the same spiritual cloth.
A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest herself. The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity. The flower cannot be by herself alone. The flower has to inter-be with the sunshine, the cloud and everything in the cosmos. If we understand being in terms of inter-being, then we are much closer to the truth. Inter-being is not being and it is not non-being. Inter-being means being empty of a separate identity, empty of a separate self.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Just as a flower cannot exist without the sun and rain, you cannot exist without your ancestors, your community, and the earth. The “separate self” is nothing more than just a myth.
The Buddha said: ‘This is because that is. This manifests because that has manifested.’ This is the Buddha’s teaching concerning the creation of the world. It is called the teaching on co-arising. The flame is there because the matches are there. If the matches were not there, the flame would not be there.
Thich Nhat Hanh
We are all entangled in a web of cause and effect. To know a person, you must understand the conditions that created them.
Read more: 155 Quotes About Identity & Self – Mirrors of the Soul
Suffering & Empathy Quotes
Kindness begins with the understanding that we all struggle.
Charles Glassman
Life is difficult for everyone. Once you accept that suffering is the universal constant, kindness becomes the only logical response.
It is our suffering that brings us together.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Joy is wonderful, but shared pain creates a bond that is almost unbreakable. Our scars are the maps to each other’s hearts.
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Hurt people hurt people. When someone lashes out, it is usually the spillover of their own internal drowning. And it is our job to stop the ripples from spreading.
Read more: 90 Resilience Quotes – Finding Fortitude in the Storm
Good empathy statement
Everyone’s blood is red, everyone’s tears are salty.
Buddha
Strip away the labels, the politics, and the borders – and the biology of our grief and life force is exactly the same.
I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa
When you stop resisting the pain of loving, you break through to a place where the love becomes infinite and the pain becomes bearable.
Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. Yet, when we don’t close off, when we let our hearts break, we discover our kinship with all beings.
Pema Chödrön
The walls we build to keep out pain also keep out joy. Breaking down the walls allows the world to touch us—which hurts, but also heals.
Read more: 145 Suffering Quotes – Finding Light in the Darkness
Compassion, Kindness, Connection & Empathy Quotes
Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals.
Pema Chödrön
Pity creates a hierarchy; compassion flattens it. It is acknowledging that “I am you, and you are me,” not “I am here to save you.”
A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.
Amelia Earhart
You never know where the seed of your kindness will land or what forest it might grow into years down the road.
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
Mahatma Gandhi
Rituals are empty if they don’t lead to action. The highest form of worship is, therefore, service to your fellow human.
My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
Dalai Lama XIV
Theology can be complicated; love is simple. If your beliefs don’t make you kinder, they aren’t working.
Empathy quotes by famous people
Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Albert Schweitzer
As long as we exclude anyone—animals, enemies, outcasts—from our care, our peace will be incomplete.
Read more: 45 Inner Peace Quotes for Tranquility & Harmony
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Jack Kornfield
You cannot pour from an empty cup. Being gentle with your own flaws is the prerequisite for being gentle with others.
Read more: 75 Self Love Quotes – The Art of Befriending Yourself
Love & Empathy Quotes
Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Force can suppress an enemy, but only love is capable of converting them. What’s better in the long run?
Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.
C. S. Lewis
A heart that never breaks is one that never works. The only way to keep your heart safe is to make it stone; the only way to make it live is to risk it breaking.
Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity.
Brené Brown
We try to hide our weaknesses, yet it is our shared fragility that allows us to connect. Your armor protects you, but it also isolates you.
Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.
J. K. Rowling
The exterior packaging of culture matters far less than the interior orientation of the heart.
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
John 15:13
The ultimate empathy is the willingness to put someone else’s survival above your own.
Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.
Erich Fromm
Love is a gamble. It requires the faith to jump without knowing if you will be caught.
When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.
Martin Buber
True connection is key to union with the Divine. When we drop the masks, we invite the sacred into the space between us.
Read more: 100 Existential Quotes – Rethink One’s Place in the Universe
When there is love there can be no forgiveness. Forgiveness comes only after you have accumulated rancour; forgiveness is resentment. Where there is no wound there is no need for healing. It is inattention that breeds resentment and hate, and you become aware of them and then forgive. Forgiveness encourages division. When you are conscious that you are forgiving, then you are sinning. When you are conscious that you are tolerant, then you are intolerant. When you are conscious that you are silent, then there is no silence. When you deliberately set about to love, then you are violent. As long as there is an observer who says, “I am” or “I am not”, love cannot be.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Don’t be fooled – this is not a call to “spiritual bypassing”. When you observe a wound without the “me” who owns it, the energy of the wound dissipates because it has no “self” to latch onto. You aren’t bypassing the truth; you are seeing the truth so clearly that the “story” of the wound cannot survive.
Read more: 84 Unconditional Love Quotes for Every Soul
Quotes about Empathy & Judgment
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa
Judgment requires analysis and categorization; love requires presence. You cannot do both at the same moment.
How easy it is to see your brother’s faults; How hard to face your own. You winnow his in the wind like chaff, But yours you hide, Like a cheat covering up an unlucky throw.
Buddha, Dhammapada, Chapter 18 (Impurity)
We judge others by their actions, and yet we judge ourselves by our intentions. Empathy asks us to extend that same grace to others.
Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
J. R. R. Tolkien
We see only a fraction of the picture. Since we lack the power to see all ends, we should be very hesitant to deal out judgment.
We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.
J. K. Rowling
Value isn’t determined by talent, wealth, or utility. It is inherent.
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
Matthew 9:13
Ritualistic purity means nothing if your heart is hard. Mercy is the currency of the spirit.
Quotes about Deep Listening & Understanding
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway
Most of us listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. To listen completely is to empty your mind of your own agenda.
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
True listening is risky – because it might change your mind. But it is also the most powerful tool we have for healing.
When you listen to someone with empathy, you give them psychological air.
Stephen Covey
Being unheard feels like suffocation. When you truly pay attention, you allow the other person to finally breathe.
Read more: 77 Quotes about Listening – From Hearing to Understanding
Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out.
Roy T. Bennett
Far too often, we rush to offer solutions when all that is needed is a witness. People usually know the answer; they just need to be heard to find it.
What must we do in order to understand a person? We must have time; we must practice looking deeply into this person.
Thich Nhat Hanh
You cannot speed-read a human soul. Understanding requires the slow, deliberate investment of time.
Read more: 77 Mindfulness Quotes – Awakening to the Miracles of Life
Empathetic Leadership Quotes: Leading with Heart
Leadership is not about being in charge. It is about taking care of those in your charge.
Simon Sinek
Titles grant authority, but care grants influence. A true leader is a steward of their people’s well-being.
The best way to lead people is to understand them.
Desmond Tutu
You cannot motivate a stranger. To move people, you must know what moves them.
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou
Logic fades, but emotional memory is long-lasting. Leading with the heart leaves a legacy that outlasts words.
Empathy quotes for work
Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery.
Warren Bennis
Empathy creates inclusion. It ensures that no one feels like a cog in a machine, but rather a vital part of the mission.
If you treat people to a vision of themselves, if you apparently overrate them, you make them become what they are capable of becoming.
Viktor Frankl
Empathy sees the potential, not just the current reality. By believing in who they can be, you help them arrive there.
Funny Empathy Quotes
There’s this funny thing about empathy. It’s not actually in limited supply. Just because other people have it worse doesn’t mean you don’t deserve to be understood. To feel comfort.
Cora Carmack
Compassion isn’t a pie; giving a slice to one person doesn’t mean there is less for you. There is enough room for everyone’s pain to be validated.
Who prays for Satan? Who, in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?
Mark Twain
It takes a radical, humorous kind of empathy to consider the perspective of the ultimate villain. And yet, it also reminds us that no one is outside the need for grace.
Final Thoughts
Practicing empathy is not always easy. It requires the courage to be vulnerable, the patience to listen without trying to fix anyone, and the humility to admit that we don’t know the whole story.
There will be days when you feel closed off, judgmental, or too tired to care. That is perfectly normal.
In those moments, just remind yourself of this simple truth: we are not separate.
Every small act of understanding—every time you choose to listen deeply, to withhold judgment, or to offer kindness instead of indifference—you are stitching the world back together.
May you walk through your days with eyes open to our shared humanity, and a heart big enough to hold the world!
Other resources you might be interested in:
- 50 Essential Emotional Intelligence Quotes for Success
- 100 Happy Life Quotes to Illuminate the Day & Warm the Soul
- 101 Positive Thinking Quotes: Kindle Your Inner Light
- 40 Life Coaching Quotes: Wisdom for Levelling Up Your Life
- 63 Feedback Quotes: Turning Input Into Positive Growth
Let’s Tread the Path Together, Shall We?
