Benedict Samuel Quotes

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

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

The man who can put himself in the place of other men, who can understand the workings of their minds, need never worry about what the future has in store for him.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

You have to walk in the other guy's moccasins. You have to think what they think. If you want to bring somebody onto your side, you have to figure out what motivates them. What do they need?

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.

Literature seems to offer lessons in human nature that help us decode the world around us and be better friends.

I think the therapeutic part of acting is allowing myself to step into another human being's shoes. It allows me the ability to release judgment, if I had any judgment to begin with. It's an opportunity to understand rather than to stand outside and point fingers.

How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?

It's always easier to dismiss other people than to go through the awkward and time consuming process of understanding them.

People are starting to understand the other side's perspective and that's where empathy can sort of begin - once you quit judging other people but just understand where they're coming from.

The more people see that they are being understood, they become more motivated to understand your point of view.

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else's shoes for a while.

I think one of my better gifts as a writer is empathy.

I love, I love human beings, studying them.

I wanted to live the inner life of every man I saw, look at the world through his eyes.

I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.

To love a person is to know and love the person. But we can pick up an enormous amount about another human being just by exchanging a couple of sentences. It's not yet knowledge; it's an intuition that motivates you to want to find out more.

I'm curious about other people. That's the essence of my acting. I'm interested in what it would be like to be you.

No one wants to know how clever you are. They don't want an insight into your mind, thrilling as it might be. They want an insight into their own.

You have a little bit of feeling for everyone you play.

I always feel that life can teach you how to act. I'm always looking at life through other people's eyes. By feeling empathy. And I do feel that I am constantly learning.

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

I'm curious about people, and I'm curious about getting to the root of where they might be coming from.

The wiser you get, the more experience you have, and the more you see people for who they are as human beings, as opposed to figures you have to fight against.