A Quote by Frans de Waal

As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.
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.
Empathy is a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing. Instead of offering empathy, we often have a strong urge to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling. Empathy, however, calls upon us to empty our mind and listen to others with our whole being.
Empathy isn’t just listening, it’s asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to. Empathy requires inquiry as much as imagination. Empathy requires knowing you know nothing. Empathy means acknowledging a horizon of context that extends perpetually beyond what you can see.
Empathy is not simply a matter of trying to imagine what others are going through, but having the will to muster enough courage to do something about it. In a way, empathy is predicated upon hope.
...the core values that underpin sustainable development - interdependence, empathy, equity, personal responsibility and intergenerational justice - are the only foundation upon which any viable vision of a better world can possibly be constructed
Empathy is not merely the basic principle of artistic creation. It is also the only path by which one can reach the truth about life and society.
Empathy occurs when we suspend our single-minded focus of attention and instead adopt a double-minded foucus of attention. When our attention lapses into single focus, empathy has been turned off. When we shift our attention to dual focus empathy has been turned on. Empathy is our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to there thought or feelings with an approriate emotion. Empathy makes the other person feel valued, enabling them to feel that their thoughts and feelings have been heard.
Funny bones, to me, are more important than funny lines. If a comedian is just not likable and doing the lines, you could read them yourself. Whereas if someone [you like] shambles out, and they tell you what a bad day they've had, they don't have to say anything. I love them. I want to hug them because they've been through something. And it comes back to empathy, always empathy.
If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is.
I want the audience, when they leave, to think of the characters on the stage in three dimensions. I want them to have empathy. I also want them to think about engaging more with where we are culturally.
Anyone who understands evolution knows that it doesn't necessarily lead from simpler to more complex life-forms. Rather, it leads to life-forms better suited to their environments.
Empathy provides more than just information about relationships. It is an expression of being in relationship. It is not just a means to better healing relationship, but because it recenters relationship as a central organizing feature of psychic life, empathy itself is healing. The experience of being known and accepted deeply by another, being aware of another being aware of you, what Jordan calls "mutual empathy".
Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.
As instruments for knowing the objects, the sense organs are outside, and so they are called outer senses; and the mind is called the inner sense because it is inside. But the distinction between inner and outer is only with reference to the body; in truth, there is neither inner nor outer. The mind's nature is to remain pure like ether.
If you have empathy for both sides, then that's the same as having no empathy at all.
Empathy is a human trait. But lots of humans exercise some traits more energetically than others. By "the usefulness of empathy" I mean the way in which a progressive might claim that empathy is a crucial aspect of any benign political system, and the way a conservative might argue that not only is it not necessary, but it might not even be all that helpful, in that regard.
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