A Quote by Marshall B. Rosenberg

Empathy lies in our ability to be present without opinion.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Quote Topics

Ability Empathy Lies Opinion Our Present Without

Quote Author

Marshall B. Rosenberg
Psychologist
October 6, 1934 - February 7, 2015

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.

Simon Baron-Cohen

The question that we, as a society, have to ask is, are our collective rights worth a small relative advantage in our ability to spy on other countries and foreign citizens? I have my opinion about that, but we all collectively have to come to our opinion about it.

Edward Snowden

One of his greatest talents was empathy; no sadist can aspire to perfection without that diagnostic ability.

Vernor Vinge

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish the spiritual needs of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There were lots of lies along the way in life. Lies without arms, lies that were ill, lies that did harm, lies that could kill. Lies on foot, or behind the wheel, black-tie lies, and lies that could steal.

Etgar Keret

the solution to racism lies in our ability to see its ubiquity but not to concede its inevitability. It lies in the collective and institutional power to make change, at least as much as with the individual will to change. It also lies in the absolute moral imperative to break the childish, deadly circularity of centuries of blindness to the shimmering brilliance of our common, ordinary humanity.

Patricia J. Williams

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.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

I'm determined to disagree with people without being disagreeable. That's part of the empathy. Empathy doesn't just extend to cute little kids. You have to have empathy when you're talking to some guy who doesn't like black people.

Barack Obama

Empathy is cloaked in our actions - as in, we might be experiencing empathy but not realize it's empathy.

Leslie Jamison

Lies 1: There is only the present and nothing to remember. Lies 2: Time is a straight line. Lies 3: The difference between the past and the futures is that one has happened while the other has not. Lies 4: We can only be in one place at a time. Lies 5: Any proposition that contains the word 'finite' (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves...) Lies 6: Reality as something which can be agreed upon. Lies 7: Reality is truth.

Jeanette Winterson

In a world without future, each parting of friends is a death. In a world without future, each loneliness is final. In a world without future, each laugh is the last laugh. In a world without future, beyond the present lies nothingness, and people cling to the present as if hanging from a cliff.

Alan Lightman

Some people think that without that spark of empathy we would do nothing, but that's just flat-out wrong. You could feel compassion for somebody without the spark of empathy.

Paul Bloom

People with antisocial personality disorders aren't automatically bad - they simply approach the world with a more ruthless set of lenses. The lack of empathy or very weak empathy and the ability to read other people's weak spots can be a flammable combination when you get in the way of something they want. But they aren't a different species. They're a part of our spectrum.

Eden Robinson

Our ability to offer empathy can allow us to stay vulnerable, defuse potential violence, help us hear the word 'no' without taking it as a rejection, revive lifeless conversation, and even hear the feelings and needs expressed through silence.

Marshall B. Rosenberg

Our ability to turn off empathy for specific kinds of humans and then use faulty logic to justify our beliefs is messily sociopathic.

Eden Robinson

Worrying about next, tomorrow cripples our ability to think, act and exercise faith in the present and the present only is ours.