Explore a selection of profound empathy quotes, capturing the essence of understanding and connecting with others on a deeper level.
In a world that often races forward at breakneck speed, empathy stands as a timeless and essential quality that links us as humans. It’s the bridge that connects hearts and minds, allowing us to forge deeper human connections and offer genuine support.
To nurture this innate human trait that has the power to uplift and heal, we gathered most enchanting empathy quotes. These quotes serve as poignant reminders of this incredible ability we possess, transforming both the giver and the receiver.
In the following compilation of empathy quotes, you’ll find insight from thinkers, leaders, poet, artists, or everyday people. These quotes encapsulate the beauty and significance of putting ourselves in others’ shoes.
So, sit back, relax, and immerse yourself in the profound world of 100 empathy quotes. Allow their wisdom sink in, allow their sentiments resonate, and allow them inspire you to cultivate empathy in your own life. Enjoy.
Compassion empathy quotes
Nurture your mind with positive thoughts: kindness, empathy, compassion, peace, love, joy, humility, generosity, etc. The more you feed your mind with positive thoughts, the more you can attract great things into your life.
Roy T. Bennett
There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.
Mary Anne Radmacher
One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.
Shannon L. Alder
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.
Milan Kundera
Good works is giving to the poor and the helpless, but divine works is showing them their worth to the One who matters.
Criss Jami
Those who are at times described as being a ‘hot mess’ or having ‘too many issues’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world.
Anthon St. Maarten
Looking at various means of developing compassion, I think empathy is an important factor: the ability to appreciate others’ suffering.
Dalai Lama
The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion and empathy.
Dean Koontz
It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.
John Joseph Powell
The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.
Albert Schweitzer
Deep empathy quotes
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
If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.
Brené Brown
Leading with integrity and empathy requires vision and a connection to your deepest self.
Karla McLaren
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
When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.
Susan Sarandon
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
In a world spoiled by the obituary of attention and the dormancy of empathy, people are coming up short of authentic emotion.
Erik Pevernagie
Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.
Marge Piercy
God whispered, “You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become.”
Shannon L. Alder
In positive empathy, your deep tranquility, joy and peace activates the mirror neurons of the others, whereas in negative empathy your mirror neurons are activated by the disturbance of others.
Amit Ray
Inspirational empathy quotes
This capacity for empathy leads to a genuine encounter we have to progress toward this culture of encounter in which heart speaks to heart.
Pope Francis
If you look into someone’s face long enough, eventually you’re going to feel that you’re looking at yourself.
Paul Auster
Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity.
Brené Brown
Empathy has the power to bring together people who would otherwise never meet. It has the power to teach us and to reach us in moments of isolation when we think nobody understands.
Dr. Vivek Murthy
I learn from my own daughter that you don’t have to be awake to cry.
Jodi Picoult
All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.
Tahereh Mafi
When you make the effort to speak someone else’s language, even if it’s just basic phrases here and there, you are saying to them, ‘I understand that you have a culture and identity that exists beyond me. I see you as a human being.’
Trevor Noah
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
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
It’s important that what thoughts you are feeding into your mind because your thoughts create your belief and experiences. You have positive thoughts and you have negative ones too.
Roy T. Bennett
Leadership empathy quotes
Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
Theodore Roosevelt
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
When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway
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.
John Wooden
As a leader, you should always start with where people are before you try to take them where you want them to go.
Jim Rohn
The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for. Leadership is exactly the same thing building empathy for the people that you’re entrusted to help.
David M. Kelley
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson Mandela
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
Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.
Roy T. Bennett
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 quotes short
Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.
Plutarch
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil
You should not judge; you should understand.
Ernest Hemingway
The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.
Keanu Reeves
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.
Marshall B. Rosenberg
True contentment comes with empathy.
Tim Finn
Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.
Napoleon Bonaparte
I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.
Roger Ebert
When we focus on others, our world expands.
Daniel Goleman
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
Washington Irving
Deep powerful empathy quotes
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
Harper Lee
There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view– you have to enter into the pain of the people. You’ve got to feel their need.
John M. Perkins
People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.
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
Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.
Dalai Lama
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
Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
Henry David Thoreau
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
Well–timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
Martin Farquhar Tupper
Quotes about empathy
A universal vision and a joint interest are steppingstones for full–blown empathy, and explicitly through empathy, we seize the pulsating assets of ‘sharing,’ sharing precious values with the others.
Erik Pevernagie
Regret is the insight that comes too late. Too little and too late. Too little empathy and too late awareness.
Erik Pevernagie
When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
Yann Martel
Empaths did not come into this world to be victims, we came to be warriors. Be brave. Stay strong. We need all hands on deck.
Anthon St. Maarten
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
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 Fesler
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
Bertrand Russell
No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.
Brené Brown
I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.
Leo Buscaglia
Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
Scott Adams
Empathy quotes for kids
When a friend speaks to me, whatever he says is interesting.
Jean Renoir
Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Joseph Fort Newton
“We all of us need to be toppled off the throne of self, my dear,” he said. “Perched up there the tears of others are never upon our own cheek.”
Elizabeth Goudge
I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.
Lorraine Hansberry
You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when it will be too late.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy.
Erol Ozan
Each person you meet is an aspect of yourself, clamoring for love.
Eric Micha’el Leventhal
Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in.
Ashly Lorenzana
It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain.
Pat Barker
If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.
Brené Brown
Empathy quotes for work
There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.
Bryant H. McGill
Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.
Daniel Goleman
I never liked the atmosphere of Washington. I early saw that it was impossible to build up a race of which the leaders were spending most of their time, thought and energy in trying to get into office, or in trying to stay there after they were in.
Booker T. Washington
Seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.
Alfred Adler
This place was truly the highest and the lowest of all worlds – the most beautiful senses, the most exquisite emotions… the most malevolent desires, the darkest deeds. Perhaps it was meant to be so. Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached.
Stephenie Meyer
You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
John Steinbeck
People who work on the user interface side need to have empathy as a key characteristic. But if you are writing device drivers you don’t really need to understand humans so well.
Andy Hertzfeld
No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.
Mignon McLaughlin
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
Compassion is a living, breathing, organic emotion that vibrates through you and links you to those around you.
Deepak Chopra
Meaningful empathy quotes
Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.
Homer
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person.
William Fritz
I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him… The land of tears is so mysterious.
Antoine de Saint–Exupéry
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.
James Baldwin
Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.
Anderson Cooper
The only time you look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don’t look in your neighbor’s bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Louis C.K.
It’s not so much the journey that’s important; as is the way that we treat those we encounter and those around us, along the way.
Jeremy Aldana
Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart.
Thich Nhat Hanh
When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.
Criss Jami
Final thoughts
Empathy is a force that unites humanity across cultures, backgrounds, and distances. Through these empathy quotes, you gain the essence of understanding, the power of compassion, and the beauty of kindness for others.
These empathy quotes urge us to transcend our own perspectives and embrace the beauty of human connection. They whisper to us that every act of compassion, no matter how small, has the potential to create waves of positive change.
By internalizing the lessons these quotes impart, we can contribute to a world where understanding flourishes and compassion thrive. So, let these empathy quotes becomes the guiding star that lights our way forward.
Hope that your journey through these empathy quotes has been both enlightening and heartwarming. In the spirit of connection, feel free to share these quotes with others who might also find solace and inspiration in them.
Thank you for embarking on this journey of positivity through a selection of empathy quotes with us. May these quotes serve as a beacon of light, guiding us towards deeper understanding and unwavering compassion.