150 Empathy Quotes On Showing Compassion And Understanding
Looking for inspirational quotes about empathizing with others? We have rounded up the best collection of empathy quotes, sayings, captions, status, (with images and pictures) to inspire you to show compassion and kindness to others.
Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s emotion and their situations. When we empathize with others, we are in a better position to understand what they are going through.
In this world where everyone is going through some pain, people often judge others and fail to understand their points of view.
But being empathetic gives you the power to sense others’ emotions instead of being critical of them.
It is easy to sympathize with people who are going through a rough phase in life, but when we experience the same turmoil, then we actually understand the pain.
Also See: Compassion Quotes
Having a kind and caring heart you try to see things from others’ points of view.
This can give us a new perspective on things and help us be more empathetic. So if everyone was empathetic how might things change in the world for the good?
Also See: Be Nice Quotes
Showing empathy to kids, friends, family, and loved ones will always strengthen your bond. And giving a listening ear to someone’s problems, helping people, and being kind and sensitive to others’ pain can help someone in their weak moments.
If you like these meaningful empath quotes, then also check our posts on kindness quotes and selfless quotes to inspire you to be kind and generous to people.
Best Empathy Quotes
- “There’s a power in empathy.” – Tarana Burke
- “Empathy is the medicine the world needs.” – Judith Orloff
- “We have to teach empathy as we do literacy.” – Bill Drayton
- “Empathy is more powerful than sympathy.” – Angie Thomas
empathy quotes
- “The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy.” – Mehmet Oz
- “Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug.” – Lawrence J
- “Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.” – Leslie Jamison
- “We need empathy, we need the eyes that still can weep.” – Lydia Millet
- “Emotional empathy is what motivates us to help others.” – Brian Goldman
- “Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole.” – Brené Brown
empathy quote
- “I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” – Roger Ebert
- “Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” – Mohsin Hamid
- “Empathy is a special way of coming to know another and yourself.” – Carl R. Rogers
- “The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” – Meryl Streep
- “An empathic person is a good listener, patient, understanding, and kind.” – Laura Raskin
quotes on empathy
- “Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing.” – Marshall B. Rosenberg
- “Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction ‘Love the neighbor as thyself.’” – George Mcgovern
- “Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.” – Eric Zorn
quotes about empathy
- “The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart.” – Rasheed Ogunlaru
- “I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” – Walt Whitman
- “Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people.” – C. Joy Bell
- “Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.” – Daniel Goleman
- “I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it’s disrupting our society.” – J.K Rowling
- “The struggle of my life created empathy – I could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It’s the impetus for creating change.” – Max Carver
- “Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another.” – Alfred Adler
- “Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience.” – Jacob A. Belzen
- “Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.” – Anderson Cooper
- “Empathetic presence involves listening to someone’s pain with what I call the five A’s: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.” – David Richo
- “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
Psychology quotes about empathy
- “Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone.” – Brene Brown
- “Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.” – Barbara Kingsolver
- “The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another’s pain as one’s own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.” – John Connolly
- “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
- “Empathy is one of humankind’s prized possessions. Acts of consideration and kindness are inevitable when a person can mentally step into someone else’s shoes. Even if it’s just for a moment.” – Izey Victoria Odiase
- “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 ego and live in another’s world.” – Bill Bullard
- “The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person.” – Carl Rogers
- “Empathy is when a person accurately communicates that they see another’s intentions and emotional state. It means watching our child’s frustration and focusing on how life feels in that little child’s body, while putting our own anger and agenda into the background.” – Andrea Nair
- “Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling) – a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there?” – Leslie Jamison
‘To Kill A Mockingbird Empathy Quotes
- “Empathy is understanding the sorrow or loss of another person. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and imagine how you would feel.” – Byron Pulsifer
- “Each day is not to be wasted but to be valued and used to make situations more bearable for others, to show sympathy or empathy for others, to contribute to someone else’s skills or to help change a behavior.” – Byron Pulsifer
- “First of all, if you learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. 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.” – Atticus Finch
Compassionate Empathy Quotes
Being an empath means giving moral and emotional support to others who need it. A lot of people deal with depression and mental health issues due to a lack of empathy from their family and friends.
Some words of empathy like, “I understand you”, “I can feel your pain”, “I know what you are feeling”, etc. can help a person know that they are not alone and they have someone who can understand their emotions and feelings.
A lot of people are not able to express their fears and pain. Being empathetic and listening to them can put them in a better mental state.
- “If we can’t see eye to eye lets try heart to heart.” – Unknown
- “I am an empath I can hear what you are not saying.” – Unknown
empath quotes
- “See the light in each other. Be the light for each other.”
- “Let’s put “kind” back into “humankind”.” – John Mark Green
- “Empathy is the gateway; compassion is the way.” – Scott Perry
quotes about compassion and empathy
- “Extend sympathy, empathy and compassion to others.” – Vishnu
- “If you want more kindness in the world, put some there.” – Zero Dean
- “Empathy requires known that you know nothing at all.” – Leslie Jamison
- “Compassion is about giving all the love that you’ve got.” – Cheryl Strayed
- “Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.” – Jesse Jackson
- “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.” – John Steinbeck
empathetic quotes
- “There is no greater intelligence than kindness and empathy.” – Bryant H. McGill
- “I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway
- “True compassion comes from free will by drawing empathy from within.” – Shane Barbi
- “Empathy is the love fire of sweet remembrance and shared understanding.” – John Eaton
- “When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.” – Euripides
- “Empathy is important, openness, honesty, and an understanding for others.” – Niko Kovac
- “Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” – Albert Einstein
- “Kindness can manifest as compassion, as generosity, as paying attention.” – Sharon Salzberg
- “It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain.” – Pat Barker
empathetic love quotes
- “I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.” – Maya Angelou
Empathy quotes images
- “Like many things in life, your compassion is a skill that can be exercised.” – Simeon Lindstrom
- “Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Theodore Roosevelt
- “Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
- “Empaths did not come into this world to be victims we came to be warriors.” – Anthon St. Maarten
- “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know when it will be too late.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher
- “Empathy works so well because it does not require a solution. It requires only understanding.” – John Medina
- “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” – Albert Schweitzer
- “The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy.” – Dean Koontz
- “One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Real empathy is sometimes not insisting that it will be okay, but acknowledging that it is not.” – Sheryl Sandberg
- “If it is not tempered by compassion and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.” – Karen Armstrong
- “Compassion is not just sympathy. It is empathy. Genuine compassion is first able to feel their pain.” – Mary Southerland
- “Empathy may be the single most important quality that must be nurtured to give peace a fighting chance.” – Arundhati Ray
- “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 start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.” – Susan Sarandon
- “If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.” – Karen Armstrong
- “What you don’t realize is that the world does not need more perfection. It needs more compassion and empathy.” – Tessa Dare
- “Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.” – Annie Lennox
- “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them.” – Criss Jami
- “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
- “Practicing kindness increases our ability to be empathetic. It helps keep our hearts open. And that, truly, is the best way to live.” – Kristi Bowman
- “If you find yourself saying ‘But I’m just being honest’, chances are you’ve just been unkind. Honesty doesn’t heal. Empathy does.” – Dan Waldschmidt
- “Experiencing terrible pain opens our hearts and minds to express compassion for other people and communion with ourselves.” – Kilroy J. Oldster
- “No matter who we are, no matter how successful, no matter what our situation, compassion is something we all need to receive and give.” – Catherine Pulsifer
- “Proactive responding is the ability to listen to the other person’s feelings and empathize without taking responsibility for those feelings.” – Clive Harman
- “A child is not born with affection, adoration, and kindheartedness. A person accrues empathy and sympathy from experiencing our own pain.” – Kilroy J. Oldster
- “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
- “Empathy is the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions.”
- “Have compassion and empathy in your heart. Many people are suffering deep emotional anguish beneath the surface of their lives, and smile even as they hurt inside.” – Jim Palmer
- “To embrace suffering culminates in greater empathy, the capacity to feel what it is like for the other to suffer, which is the ground for unsentimental compassion and love.” – Stephen Batchelor
- “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
- “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
- “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
- “Empathy depends not only on one’s ability to identify someone else’s emotions but also on one’s capacity to put oneself in the other person’s place and to experience an appropriate emotional response.” – Charles G. Morris
- “Whether it is rational or empirical, your approach to life must always be empathetic. Emotional intelligence is acquired when knowledge and empathy are combined and applied to situations regularly in everyday life.” – Stewart Stafford
- “Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicate in an objectively explicit manner.”
- “I believe in empathy. I believe in the kind of empathy that is created through imagination and through intimate, personal relationships. I am a writer and a teacher, so much of my time is spent interpreting stories and connecting to other individuals. It is the urge to know more about ourselves and others that creates empathy. Through imagination and our desire for rapport, we transcend our limitations, freshen our eyes, and are able to look at ourselves and the world through a new and alternative lens.” – Azar Nafisi
Famous Quotes About Empathizing With Others
Being patient and understanding with people and listening to them helps people to open their hearts to you. They feel supported and loved.
Renowned psychologists Daniel Goleman and Paul Ekman have identified three components of empathy: Cognitive, Emotional, and Compassionate.
So showing compassion and connecting with someone on a deep emotional level is imperative for better understanding their feelings.
These encouraging quotes on empathy and empathetic quotes will inspire you to be kind, loving, and caring.
- “We rise by lifting others.” – Robert Ingersoll
- “Empathy is the most revolutionary emotion.” – Gloria Steinem
- “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” – Plato
Empathy quotes for Loss
- “Patience and empathy are angers mortal enemies.” – Gary Rudz
- “People need people who show that they care.” – Richelle E. Goodrich
- “Those who underestimate others are those who lack empathy.” – Araya
- “Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.” – Nora Roberts
- “The little things you do can be very significant to others.” – Wayne Gerard Trotman
- “Wearing another’s skin is the most effective way to learn sympathy.” – A G Howard
- “Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding the third.” – Marge Piercy
- “I’ve been fascinated by the idea that evil is the absence of empathy.” – John Connolly
- “Empathy is my good friend, but she doesn’t allow me to be angry.” – Yong Kang Chan
- “Have compassion for all beings, rich and poor alike; each has their suffering.” – Buddha
- “If we can get man to the moon, we can get man to walk in each other’s shoes.” – Mary Gordon
- “A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.” – Daniel Goleman
- “Sometimes it takes only one act of kindness and caring to change a person’s life.” – Jackie Chan
- “There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” – John Holmes
- “One does not remember one’s own pain. It is the suffering of others that undoes us.” – Anna Funder
- “Yet, taught by time, my heart has learned to glow for other’s good, and melt at other’s woe.” – Homer
- “Empathy is the capacity to think and feel oneself into the inner life of another person.” – Heinz Kohut
Empathy quotes for work
- “There is no force in the world better able to alter anything from its course than love.” – Gregory Boyle
- “It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.” – Gustave Flaubert
- “…treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can’t until you do understand.” – Kim Harrison
- “Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.” – Malorie Blackman
- “Exposure promotes understanding, understanding promotes empathy, and empathy promotes compromise.” – F. Allen Davis
- “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” – Brené Brown
- “Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.” – Jonathan Haidt
- “Every day you need to take some actions – actions to improve your life and actions to improve someone else’s life.” – Amit Ray
- “If you do not practice empathy and forgiveness for your actions, it will be impossible to practice empathy with others.” – Laura Raskin
- “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind.” – Baruch Spinoza
- “One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.” – Charles M. Blow
- “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
- “Empathy, sympathy, love, and justice create a place only in such character, where humanity fragrances and tongue stays sober.” – Ehsan Sehgal
- “Listening has the ability of the wizard’s alchemy. It has the power to melt the armor and to produce beauty in the midst of hatred.” – Brian Muldoon
- “Looking at various means of developing compassion, I think empathy is an important factor: the ability to appreciate others’ suffering.” – Dalai Lama
- “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
- “Good fiction creates empathy. A novel takes you somewhere and asks you to look through the eyes of another person, to live another life.” – Barbara Kingsolver
- “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
- “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
- “The most important thing is that we need to be understood. We need someone to be able to listen to us and to understand us. Then we will suffer less.” – Nhat Hanh
- “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 Fessle
- “The seeds of care and empathy are built into every human being and a variety of soils and fertilizers will allow those same seeds to grow and flourish.” – Gudjon Bergmann
- “One friend, one person who is truly understanding, who takes the trouble to listen to us as we consider a problem, can change our whole outlook on the world.” – E. H. Mayoli
- “Empathy is putting yourself in another’s shoes to find out what exactly that person is feeling or going through at the given time. It basically refers to being at a common wavelength with someone.” – Deepa Kodikal
- “Learning to give empathy to myself and others as often as I can each day has rendered astounding benefits….empathy leads to compassion and compassion to forgiveness and connection.” – Judith Hanson Lasater
- “Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person. In a word empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.” – Richard Eyre
- “Empathy is forgetting oneself in the joys and sorrows of another, so much so that you actually feel that the joy or sorrow experienced by another is your own joy and sorrow. Empathy involves complete identification with another.” – Dada Vaswani
- “Nothing is more important than empathy for another human being’s suffering. Nothing. Not career, not wealth, not intelligence, certainly not status. We have to feel for one another if we’re going to survive with dignity.” – Audrey Hepburn
Showing empathy will help you identify situations where you can show empathy in professional and personal settings. Be it a loss of a dear ones, or a kid failing his/her tests, being there with someone who is sick, or heart-broken are some examples of situations where we can be more understanding of other’s emotional pain.
Sympathy Vs Empathy
Often both the terms empathy and sympathy are used interchangeably. But there is a significant difference between the two.
Sympathy involves understanding a situation or feeling from your own perspective. And Empathy involves putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and understanding WHY they may have these particular feelings.
So instead of pointing fingers at people for their acts, and criticizing them we should all first try to see things from their point of view and understand their position before judging them.
Conclusion
If you like these inspirational empathy sayings and quotes, then also check our collection of generosity quotes and helping others quotes to inspire you to be kind and positive in all situations.
Feel free to share with friends and family on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter, Pinterest, and more to spread some wise words of wisdom and share your feelings in words.
If we have missed some quotes, share them with us in the comment section below and we shall be happy to add them to the list.
Related Posts
About The Author
Ananya Bhatt
I am Ananya, a professional speaker and I love motivating people and inspiring them to pursue their dreams. Sharing quotes, proverbs, and sayings of great authors to touch people's lives to make it better.
