127 Beautiful Empathy Quotes To Inspire Kindness & Sympathy

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If you are looking for an incredible selection of empathy quotes you’re in the right place.

Showing empathy is one of the strongest human traits we can have.

Empathy is the ability to sense, share and understand the feelings of other people.

Being empathetic allows you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.

This collection of quotes about empathy will inspire you to be more kind and sympathetic.

Share these empathy quotes with your friends and loved ones.

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Right, let’s jump into this list of empathy quotes.

Top 10 Empathy Quotes

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

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.
Mahatma Gandhi

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

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.
Daniel Goleman

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

Every compassionate act makes large the world.
Mary Anne Radmacher

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.
Susan Sarandon

All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.
Samantha Power

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void.
Karen Armstrong

There is no force in the world better able to alter anything from its course than love.
Gregory Boyle

More Empathy Quotes

It’s the hardest thing in the world to go on being aware of someone else’s pain. Pat Barker

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.
Albert Einstein

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

Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care. Theodore Roosevelt

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. Jesse Jackson

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 a special way of coming to know another and ourself. Carl R. Rogers

Walk with me for a while, my friend, you in my shoes, I in yours, and then let us talk. Richelle E. Goodrich

History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own. Julius Lester

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

Empathy and compassion will make our world better. Anonymous

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

People complain not because something sucks. People complain because they’re looking for empathy and to feel connected with those around them. Unfortunately, complaining is maybe the least useful way to connect with other human beings. Mark Manson

Empathy is like giving someone a psychological hug.
Lawrence J

Empathy means both understanding others on their own terms and bringing them within the orbit of one’s own experience. Jacob A. Belzen

Empathy is seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. Alfred Adler

See the light in each other. Be the light for each other. Anonymous

Stay connected to feel empathy, compassion, and understanding for yourself and others.
Vanessa Tucker

Seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, and feeling with the heart of another. Alfred Adler

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. Mohsin Hamid

It’s very difficult to design something for someone if you have no empathy. Stewart Butterfield

Empathy, sympathy, love, and justice create a place only in such character, where humanity fragrances and tongue stays sober.
Ehsan Sehgal

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

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain. Daniel Goleman

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

Feeling too much is a hell of a lot better than feeling nothing.
Nora Roberts

If you want more kindness in the world, put some there. Zero Dean

The highest form of knowledge is empathy. Bill Bullard

If you look into someone’s face long enough, eventually you’re going to feel that you’re looking at yourself. Paul Auster

Empathy is the starting point for creating a community and taking action. It’s the impetus for creating change.
Max Carver

True empathy requires that you step outside your own emotions to view things entirely from the perspective of the other person. Anonymous

Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act. Eric Zorn

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

Empathy is the gateway; compassion is the way.
Scott Perry

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

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 good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You actually understand them. Criss Jami

Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.
Leslie Jamison

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. Mother Teresa

Treat people like people. Beware of pity and patronization because in them, you can’t see when you’re unashamedly looking down on someone. Criss Jami

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

Judge tenderly, if you must. There is usually a side you have not heard, a story you know nothing about, and a battle waged that you do not have to fight.
Traci Lea Larussa

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

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

Empathy is about standing in someone else’s shoes, feeling with his or her heart, seeing with his or her eyes. Not only is empathy hard to outsource and automate, but it makes the world a better place. Daniel H. Pink

It is true that I am endowed with an absurd sensitiveness, what scratches others tears me to pieces.
Gustave Flaubert

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

An exchange of empathy provides an entry point for a lot of people to see what healing feels like. Tarana Burke

A child is not born with affection, adoration, and kindheartedness. A person accrues empathy and sympathy from experiencing our own pain. Kilroy J. Oldster

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway

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

Experiencing terrible pain opens our hearts and minds to express compassion for other people and communion with ourselves. Kilroy J. Oldster

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

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
John Steinbeck

The idea of faking empathy to take a step forward to understanding is really a powerful idea. Jonathan Groff

We have to teach empathy as we do literacy. Bill Drayton

If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive. Brené Brown

The little things you do can be very significant to others.
Wayne Gerard Trotman

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. Plato

I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it. Maya Angelou

The functions of intellect are insufficient without courage, love, friendship, compassion, and empathy. Dean Koontz

The greater good is achieved by not only telling people what they need to know, but also filling them with a sense of empathy and love.
Abigail Disney

Empathy is important, openness, honesty, and an understanding for others. Niko Kovac

The opposite of anger is not calmness, its empathy. Mehmet Oz

The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. Hannah Arendt

If you’re enjoying these quotes, you’ll love our collection of grace quotes that will change your life.
Unknown

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss. Anderson Cooper

Famous Empathy Quotes

Wearing another’s skin is the most effective way to learn sympathy. A G Howard

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.
Frans de Waal

One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone. Shannon L. Alder

What you don’t realize is that the world does not need more perfection. It needs more compassion and empathy. Tessa Dare

Every day you need to take some actions actions to improve your life and actions to improve someone else’s life. Amit Ray

It is the weak that expresses aggressiveness to show strength. But real strength, it’s in the gentle.
Nurudeen Ushawu

One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. Charles M. Blow

The struggle of my life created empathy. I could relate to pain, abandonment, having people not love me. Oprah Winfrey

The more you learn about someone, how could you not want to protect them and their rights? The more you learn about a culture or a certain identity, it’s hard to not feel empathy. Yara Shahidi

Empathy is a skill like any other human skill. If you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.
Professor Simon Baron Cohen

If you have never suffered through it, then you don’t understand it. There are no exceptions. Richelle E. Goodrich

The only way to change someone’s mind is to connect with them from the heart. Rasheed Ogunlaru

Empathetic presence involves listening to someone’s pain with what I call the five A’s: attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing.— David Richo

The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a makenice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step.
Patricia Sun

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

No one heals themselves by wounding another. Anonymous

Empathy is about two people, two people meeting, getting to know each other, and tuning in to what the other person is thinking and feeling. Simon BaronCohen

There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy and a grace in forgiveness.
Anonymous

Empathy is connection; it’s a ladder out of the shame hole Brené Brown

Empathy is the ability to step outside of your own bubble and into the bubbles of other people. C. Joybell

I believe that stories are incredibly important, possibly in ways we don’t understand, in allowing us to make sense of our lives, in allowing us to escape our lives, in giving us empathy and in creating the world that we live in. Neil Gaiman

People need people who show that they care.
Richelle E. Goodrich

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

Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not desire for the rest of humankind. Baruch Spinoza

Love is that enviable state that knows no envy or vanity, only empathy and a longing to be greater than oneself. Anonymous

Think about it. We all have our bits of madness. Don’t be too harsh about the madness of others.
Osamu Tezuka

I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization. Roger Ebert

I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him… The land of tears is so mysterious. Antoine de SaintExupéry

Compassion, empathy, and love are the real pillars we need to build within ourselves to become human. Loknath

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

Inspiring Empathy Quotes

The greatest cruelty is our casual blindness to the despair of others. Anonymous

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.
Matthieu Ricard

If we can get man to the moon, we can get man to walk in each other’s shoes. Mary Gordon

One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough. Charlie Brooker

In my view, the best of humanity is in our exercise of empathy and compassion. It’s when we challenge ourselves to walk in the shoes of someone whose pain or plight might seem so different than yours that it’s almost incomprehensible. Sarah McBride

The outward expression of empathy is courtesy.
Stewart Butterfield

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

Stories teach us empathy. They reveal to us ourselves in the skins of others. Justin Simien

Empathy is essential to peace. Anonymous

When a good man is hurt all who would be called good must suffer with him.
Euripides

We must understand before we judge. Anonymous

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person’s perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It’s all through our own individual prisms. Sterling K. Brown

Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you’re not alone. Brene Brown

Treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can’t until you do understand.
Kim Harrison

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

Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Marshall B. Rosenberg

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

Wherever there is a human being there is an opportunity for kindness.
Seneca

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

To Sum Up

Hopefully you have enjoyed this big list of empathy quotes.

There are lots to motivate and inspire you every day.

I’d love to know which empathy quotes are your favourites.

Drop them in the comments below.