1,354 Quotes About Empathy

Monsters-their strength lies in their lack of empathy.

Ironically, torture requires empathy, too, in the sense that one cannot deliberately inflict pain without realizing what is painful.

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.

So that made me happy but the part that really made me happy was that you wanted me to be happy. That's what Thank you means.

...It also taught me that while cruelty can be fun for a few moments, compassion has a much longer shelf life.

They expected the crowd that had already gathered, golden in the torchlight of dawn. Some were tired. Some were smiling. The latter stunned Isaiah, but not Samuel. These were people after all. There was, therefore, some kind of happiness to be found in someone else being humiliated for once. Failure of memory prevented the empathy that should have been natural. Samuel knew, though, that it was selective memory, the kind that was cultivated here among the forget-me-nots.

Truth is on the side of compassion.

Empathy is not the same as approval. And explaining something is not the same as excusing it. But if you want to change people, if you want to reduce terrible things like domestic violence, first you need to understand that such monsters do not usually come out of nowhere. They are usually created, in a stream of abuse that can go back for generations.

My mother always tells me that anyone who gets enjoyment from other people's misery will eventually get the greatest discomfort from his or her own miseries.