Still thinking about empathy, and the lack of it. Empathy is not just fellow-feeling. It’s an art. The lack of empathy is almost synonymous with cruelty and violence. Those without empathy can only see it as sentimentality, rather than as an art of appreciation and participation. Sometimes understanding can ease the greatest of sufferings, sometimes joy is the greater for sharing. Some quotations upon which to ponder…

If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in. ~ Frederick Buechner

I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy. ~ Gustav M. Gilbert, German-speaking American prison psychologist at Spandau prison in Berlin, where Nazi war crimes defendants were held, 1945

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

We live in a culture that discourages empathy. A culture that too often tells us our principle goal in life is to be rich, thin, young, famous, safe, and entertained. ~ Barack Obama

Religion should be a source for reconciliation, for tolerance and for empathy. ~ Charles Kimball

The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. ~ Plato

The worst mockery God can make of a moralist is that He compels him to be a solipsist. ~ Kedar Joshi

There are many respects in which America, if it can bring itself to act with the magnanimity and the empathy appropriate to its size and power, can be an intelligent example to the world. ~ J. William Fulbright

Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.
~ The Dhammapada

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy. ~ Meryl Streep

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions. ~ Gloria Steinem

Empathy feels these thoughts; your hurt is in my heart, your loss is in my prayers, your sorrow is in my soul, and your tears are in my eyes. ~ William Arthur Ward

Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn. ~ Alice Miller

Can we truly expect those who aim to exploit us to be trusted to educate us? ~ Eric Schaub

Tenderness and kindness are not signs of weakness and despair, but manifestations of strength and resolution. ~ Kahlil Gibran

The progressive-liberal values are America’s values, and we need to go back to them. The heart of progressive-liberal values is simple: empathy (caring about and for people) and responsibility (acting responsibly on that empathy). These values translate into a simple principle: Use the common wealth for the common good to better all our lives. In short, promoting the common good is the central role of government. ~ George Lakoff

We empathize – it’s our chief way of learning. And the more complex the pattern of ideational connections – that is, the more fully we understand the scene adding up the facts, metaphors, and rhythms – the more completely we slip, unwittingly, into it, pitying, smiling at, or despising the crate. Thus the idea that the writer’s only material is words is true only in a trivial sense. ~ John Gardner