86 Empathy Quotes For Inspiration

In a world where connection and understanding are more important than ever, empathy serves as a vital bridge between individuals. Whether you're seeking to deepen your relationships, enhance your emotional intelligence, or simply find inspiration in the power of human compassion, empathy quotes can offer profound insights. This curated collection of the top 86 empathy quotes is designed to uplift and motivate you to see the world through the eyes of others. Through the wisdom of poets, thinkers, and leaders, these quotes will help you foster a greater sense of kindness and understanding in your everyday life.

1. “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

2. “To perceive is to suffer.” - Aristotle

3. “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.” - George Washington Carver

4. “None of us can choose where we shall love...” - Susan Kay

5. “LOVE of others is the appreciation of one's self. MAY your egotism be so gigantic that you comprise mankind in your self-sympathy.” - Mina Loy

6. “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

7. “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.” - Frederick Buechner

8. “I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.” - Mahatma Gandhi

9. “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

10. “Some people think only intellect counts: knowing how to solve problems, knowing how to get by, knowing how to identify an advantage and seize it. But the functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.” - Dean Koontz

11. “Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” - Joseph Fort Newton

12. “This is where the will to grapple with our hard and pressing environmental problems begins: in relationship to something other that you love beyond any utility, beyond any logic.” - Susan Freinkel

13. “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

14. “There's something in everyone only they know.” - Ben Harper

15. “No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” - Theodore Roosevelt

16. “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

17. “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” - Walt Whitman

18. “It's the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else's pain.” - Pat Barker

19. “The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

20. “All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?” - Milan Kundera

21. “It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

22. “When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.” - Abraham Lincoln

23. “Humans have long since possessed the tools for crafting a better world. Where love, compassion, altruism and justice have failed, genetic manipulation will not succeed.” - Gina Maranto

24. “Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” - Daniel Goleman

25. “Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.” - J.K. Rowling

26. “Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems.” - David M. Eagleman

27. “What do you want with these special Jewish pains? I feel as close to the wretched victims of the rubber plantations in Putamayo and the blacks of Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play ball… I have no special corner in my heart for the ghetto: I am at home in the entire world, where there are clouds and birds and human tears.” - Rosa Luxemburg

28. “Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy.” - Erol Ozan

29. “There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.” - Patrick Rothfuss

30. “Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort--a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance.” - Melanie Joy

31. “But why must the system go to such lengths to block our empathy? Why all the psychological acrobatics? The answer is simple: because we care about animals, and we don't want them to suffer. And because we eat them. Our values and behaviors are incongruent, and this incongruence causes us a certain degree of moral discomfort. In order to alleviate this discomfort, we have three choices: we can change our values to match our behaviors, we can change our behaviors to match our values, or we can change our perception of our behaviors so that they appear to match our values. It is around this third option that our schema of meat is shaped. As long as we neither value unnecessary animal suffering nor stop eating animals, our schema will distort our perceptions of animals and the meat we eat, so that we feel comfortable enough to consume them. And the system that constructs our schema of meat equips us with the means by which to do this.” - Melanie Joy

32. “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

33. “When my sister was released from the mental hospital, she came to live with me in the tilting and crumbling one-bedroom house I'd bought with the small amount of money I inherited when our parents died. She arrived one afternoon unannounced in a taxi. She must have known instinctively that I'd take her in. I don't know how or why they released her. Probably due to overcrowding, and they had her scratch her name on a form then pushed her out the door. Or maybe she just slipped away when no one was looking (who'd notice in a place like that?)--she never did tell me and I didn't ask her. I was so happy to have her with me again that the last thing I wanted to do was break the spell by letting reality intrude. Ever since they'd dragged her away weeping with laughter and reaching out for me with our parents' blood still coating her hands with shiny red gloves, I'd felt amputated, like they'd pulled her kicking and screaming and insane out of my guts.” - Michael Gira

34. “Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view.” - Shel Silverstein

35. “If literature does one thing, it makes you more empathetic by making you live other lives and feel the pain of others. Ideologues don't feel the pain of others because they haven't imaginatively got under their skins.” - Yann Martel

36. “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

37. “I think people believe empathy to be compassion, that compassion is an inner sense (a sense of the soul). But empathy is a sense, while compassion isn't a sense. Empathy is an affinity, a communion, a comprehension. They say that empathy is compassion, but I think that the two are independent of each other. You see, through empathy you will feel what another is feeling, including all those plans for manipulation and persuasion. You will feel everything, not just the parts that make you take compassion for the person, but also all the red flags! You see, empathy is a sense that works with the other senses such as foresight and intuition. So, we can feel compassion but we have to move with empathy.” - C. JoyBell C.

38. “Holden went to his bungalow and began to understand that he was not alone in the world, and also that he was afraid for the sake of another, -- which is the most soul-satisfying fear known to man.” - Rudyard Kipling

39. “We are out sisters' keepers.” - Eileen Granfors

40. “When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.” - Yann Martel

41. “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

42. “The difference between a moral person and a person of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, made out of weakness and tries to make amends with their life when they find the opportunity to say they are sorry is lost.” - Shannon Alder

43. “Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.” - Catherynne M. Valente

44. “You’re like a god from a Greek myth, Saiman. You have no empathy. You have no concept of the world beyond your ego. Wanting something gives you an automatic right to obtain it by whatever means necessary with no regard to the damage it may do. I would be careful if I were you. Friends and objects of deities’ desires dropped like flies. In the end the gods always ended up miserable and alone."— Kate Daniels” - Ilona Andrews

45. “When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.” - Nicholas D. Kristof

46. “Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves quite unexpectedly in a new expansive location in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.” - Gregory Boyle

47. “...to make art is to realize another's sadness within, realize the hidden sadness in other people's lives, to feel sad with and for a stranger.” - Marianne Wiggins

48. “By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, Throw me out! But instead of throwing her out, he seized her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain.Anyone who has failed to benefit from the Devil’s gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas’s fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina’s letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.” - Milan Kundera

49. “She sang, as requested. There was much about love in the ballad: faithful love that refused to abandon its object; love that disaster could not shake; love that, in calamity, waxed fonder, in poverty clung closer. The words were set to a fine old air -- in themselves they were simple and sweet: perhaps, when read, they wanted force; when well sung, they wanted nothing. Shirley sang them well: she breathed into the feeling, softness, she poured round the passion, force: her voice was fine that evening; its expression dramatic: she impressed all, and charmed one.On leaving the instrument, she went to the fire, and sat down on a seat -- semi-stool, semi-cushion: the ladies were round her -- none of them spoke. The Misses Sympson and the Misses Nunnely looked upon her, as quiet poultry might look on an egret, an ibis, or any other strange fowl. What made her sing so? They never sang so. Was it proper to sing with such expression, with such originality -- so unlike a school girl? Decidedly not: it was strange, it was unusual. What was strange must be wrong; what was unusual must be improper. Shirley was judged.” - Charlotte Brontë

50. “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” - Tahereh Mafi

51. “(In part, quoting Robert Keegan from Harvard):'When we take the risk of really witnessing another human being, when we validate their human experience, we risk becoming recruited to their welfare.' I allow my empathy to be engaged, and once it is - because my feelings help teach me what my values are - I'm on the path for which there is no return. I am inexorably an advocate when I allow my empathy to be engaged.” - Ashley Judd

52. “An imaginary circle of empathy is drawn by each person. It circumscribes the person at some distance, and corresponds to those things in the world that deserve empathy. I like the term "empathy" because it has spiritual overtones. A term like "sympathy" or "allegiance" might be more precise, but I want the chosen term to be slightly mystical, to suggest that we might not be able to fully understand what goes on between us and others, that we should leave open the possibility that the relationship can't be represented in a digital database. If someone falls within your circle of empathy, you wouldn't want to see him or her killed. Something that is clearly outside the circle is fair game. For instance, most people would place all other people within the circle, but most of us are willing to see bacteria killed when we brush our teeth, and certainly don't worry when we see an inanimate rock tossed aside to keep a trail clear. The tricky part is that some entities reside close to the edge of the circle. The deepest controversies often involve whether something or someone should lie just inside or just outside the circle. For instance, the idea of slavery depends on the placement of the slave outside the circle, to make some people nonhuman. Widening the circle to include all people and end slavery has been one of the epic strands of the human story - and it isn't quite over yet.A great many other controversies fit well in the model. The fight over abortion asks whether a fetus or embryo should be in the circle or not, and the animal rights debate asks the same about animals.When you change the contents of your circle, you change your conception of yourself. The center of the circle shifts as its perimeter is changed. The liberal impulse is to expand the circle, while conservatives tend to want to restrain or even contract the circle. Empathy Inflation and Metaphysical AmbiguityAre there any legitimate reasons not to expand the circle as much as possible?There are. To expand the circle indefinitely can lead to oppression, because the rights of potential entities (as perceived by only some people) can conflict with the rights of indisputably real people. An obvious example of this is found in the abortion debate. If outlawing abortions did not involve commandeering control of the bodies of other people (pregnant women, in this case), then there wouldn't be much controversy. We would find an easy accommodation.Empathy inflation can also lead to the lesser, but still substantial, evils of incompetence, trivialization, dishonesty, and narcissism. You cannot live, for example, without killing bacteria. Wouldn't you be projecting your own fantasies on single-cell organisms that would be indifferent to them at best? Doesn't it really become about you instead of the cause at that point?” - Jaron Lanier

53. “The news can be poison to your soul, don't let it kill your joy, be compassionate but not consumed. Be empathetic not enraged.” - Rob Liano

54. “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

55. “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.” - Charles M. Blow

56. “There are two types of empathy: the positive empathy and the negative empathy. When we are fully carried away by the unaware activities of the mirror neurons, we are under the trap of negative empathy. The negative empathy generates attachments. Out of these attachments suffering follows. Negative empathy is a kind of reaction to a situation, whereas positive empathy is internal response of peace love and tranquility.... 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

57. “Positivity can be a negative," I tell her, "if it's used to diminish events that should be cause for concern. Saying 'bad things happen to good people' or "God doesn't give anyone more than they can handle', for instance, isn't necessarily helpful to the person to whom something bad happened--it is much more beneficial to those who wish to be dismissive- who don't really care to think about the why or how or who. And if we cease to see the real human part in events--if instead, we relegate human experiences to some sort of mystical concept like karma, destiny or everything happens for a reason, and consider more realistic views to be negative--then we diminish compassion and empathy, as well as the possibility of positive change.” - Jane Devin

58. “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

59. “One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.” - Vernor Vinge

60. “Arrogance is someone claiming to have come to Christ, but they won't spend more than five minutes listening to your journey because they are more concerned about their own well being, rather than being a true disciple of Christ. Blessed is the person that takes the time to heal and hear another person so they can move on.” - Shannon L. Alder

61. “Now, with regard to the people who have done things we call "terrorism," I'm confident they have been expressing their pain in many different ways for thirty years or more. Instead of our empathically receiving it when they expressed it in much gentler ways -- they were trying to tell us how hurt they felt that some of their most sacred needs were not being respected by the way we were trying to meet our economic and military needs -- they got progressively more agitated. Finally, they got so agitated that it took horrible form.” - Marshall B. Rosenberg

62. “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.” - Brené Brown

63. “He'd always known that shit rolled downhill, but he never knew tears did the same thing.” - Amy Lane

64. “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

65. “Most of us care about one another. Human beings have considerably more in common with one another than they do differences. One’s religion, political persuasion, family, financial and social status, or vocation does not hamper the common thread of personal decency running through most of humankind.” - Jon Huntsman

66. “Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you do criticize him, you'll be a mile away and have his shoes.” - Steve Martin

67. “Yo no soy tan fuerte. A mi me importa que me entiendan. Hay personas a quienes quiero comprender y quiero que me comprendan. Hasta cierto punto, pienso que es inevitable que el resto de la gnete no lo haga. Ya me he hecho a la idea. Así que no me ocurre lo mismo que a Nagasawa, a quien no le importa que no le entiendan.” - Haruki Murakami

68. “When people say they are happy for you it may mean they are sad for themselves.” - Josephine Humphreys

69. “Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?” - Harper Lee

70. “The faculty to think objectively is reason; the emotional attitude behind reason is that of humility. To be objective, to use one's reason, is possible only if one has achieved an attitude of humility, if one has emerged from the dreams of omniscience and omnipotence which one has as a child. Love, being dependent on the relative absence of narcissism, requires the developement of humility, objectivity and reason. I must try to see the difference between my picture of a person and his behavior, as it is narcissistically distorted, and the person's reality as it exists regardless of my interests, needs and fears.” - Erich Fromm

71. “She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.” - Dean Koontz

72. “Neither did she realise yet that grief is a kind of glue, too, that the essence of humanity is this empathy, and that we fall together in that moment of tenderest perception when we see and feel each other's wounds and know another's sorrow like a brother of our own.” - Niall Williams

73. “But love, honest love, requires empathy. It is a sharing—of joy, of pain, of laughter, and of tears. Honest love makes one’s soul a reflection of the partner’s moods. And as a room seems larger when it is lined with mirrors, so do the joys become amplified. And as the individual items within the mirrored room seem less acute, so does pain diminish and fade, stretched thin by the sharing. That is the beauty of love, whether in passion or friendship. A sharing that multiplies the joys and thins the pains.” - R.A. Salvatore

74. “• People deserve a break. The stressed and unorganized person who doesn’t have the same priorities as you may be dealing with an autistic child, abusive spouse, fading parents, or cancer. Don’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes. Give them a break instead.” - Guy Kawasaki

75. “Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.” - Piero Gheddo

76. “If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you’d think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour.” - George Eliot

77. “We live close together and we live far apart. We all go through the same things-it's all just a different kind of the same thing.” - Susan Glaspell

78. “Some people are far more cognizant than others but sensitivity has its own cross to bear and ample insight, in many cases, can bring on disquietude.” - Donna Lynn Hope

79. “one does not remember one’s own pain. It is the suffering of others that undoes us” - Anna Funder

80. “What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.” - Tim Kreider

81. “Maybe your empathy's just a comforting lie, you ever think of that? Maybe you think you know how the other person feels but you're only feeling yourself, maybe you're even worse than me. Or maybe we're all just guessing.” - Peter Watts

82. “seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” - Alfred Adler

83. “There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.” - Bryant McGill

84. “The women ranged in age, but they were all old enough to know that in the currency of friendship, empathy is more valuable than accuracy.” - Erica Bauermeister

85. “I could really use someone else's smile today.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

86. “If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don’t have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state.” - David Graeber