#empathy

I think we are living in selfish times. I'm the first one to say that I'm the most selfish. We live in the so-called 'first world,' and we may be first in a lot of things like technology, but we are behind in empathy. ↗

— Javier Bardem

#empathy #first #first world #i #i think

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. ↗

— Kathy Bates

#challenge #character #different #different kind #empathy

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people. ↗

— Lakhdar Brahimi

#around #been #empathy #foreigners #natural

Like many people, most Libertarians feel empathy and sympathy for less fortunate people. But they know you can't have perfection in a world of limited resources. ↗

— Harry Browne

#feel #fortunate #know #less #libertarians

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

#empathy #love #dreams

Look, I'm a cancer survivor, all right? So I have great personal empathy for people who have pre-existing conditions and can't get insurance. ↗

— Carly Fiorina

#conditions #empathy #get #great #i

Women are, in my view, natural peacemakers. As givers and nurturers of life, through their focus on human relationships and their engagement with the demanding work of raising children and protecting family life, they develop a deep sense of empathy that cuts through to underlying human realities. ↗

— Daisaku Ikeda

#cuts #deep #demanding #develop #empathy

Since I was a small girl, I have lived inside this cottage, shelted by its roof and walls. I have known of people suffering—I have not been blind to them in the way that privilege allows, the way my own husband and now my daughter are blind. It is a statement of fact and not a judgement to say Charlie and Ella’s minds aren’t oriented in that direction; in a way, it absolves them, whereas the unlucky have knocked on the door of my consciousness, they have emerged from the forest and knocked many times over the course of my life, and I have only occasionally allowed them entry. I’ve done more than nothing and much less than I could have. I have laid inside, beneath a quilt on a comfortable couch, in a kind of reverie, and when I heard the unlucky outside my cottage, sometimes I passed them coins or scraps of food, and sometimes I ignored them altogether; if I ignored them, they had no choice but to walk back into the woods, and when they grew weak or got lost or were circled by wolves, I pretended I couldn’t hear them calling my name. ↗

— Curtis Sittenfeld

#empathy #ethics #politics #food

...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

#empathy #sadness #art

Children tease each other because you're short or you're tall or you're a redhead or because you're ugly or because you're smart or because you're dumb or all kinds of differences and as parents we have to deal with that and strengthen our children to be comfortable with themselves and also to show empathy and acceptance towards others. ↗

— Heather Wilson

#also #because #children #comfortable #deal