Bertolt Brecht Quotes

It is an easy thing for one whose foot is on the outside of calamity to give advice and to rebuke the sufferer.

Statistics do not convey emotion. They shock us for a minute or two, and then we click again.

Most people have the ability to turn their empathy engine back on, but there's such a seductive burn to not being empathetic.

I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?

When a friend needs consoling, do not give in to the temptation of telling stories similar to theirs of disaster or bereavement. It is something people often do to show empathy but nothing is more tiresome than other people's problems when you want to focus on your own. Listening is by far the best form of consolation.

One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's.

Pity drowns in numbers.

Give, if thou can, an alms; if not, a sweet and gentle word.

Self-pity dries up our sympathy for others.

Don't judge someone's attitude until you've felt their pain.

I've noticed that about your people, Doctor. You find it easier to understand the death of one than the death of a million. You speak about the objective hardness of the Vulcan heart, yet how little room there seems to be in yours.

All you're supposed to do is every once in a while give the boys a little tea and sympathy.

Worse than idle is compassion if it ends in tears and sighs.

Whenever education and refinement carry us away from the common people, they are growing towards selfishness, which is the monster evil of the world. That is true cultivation which gives us sympathy with every form of human life, and enables us to work most successfully for its advancement. Refinement that carries us away from our fellow people is not God's refinement.

I couldn't stop bawling, watching the towers come down. it was a terrible thing to happen. And a terrible thing to realize that I don't sit though the nigh crying when such horrors happen all the time.

From whence comes it that a cripple in body does not irritate us, and that a crippled mind enrages us? It is because a cripple sees that we go right, and a distorted mind says that it is we who go astray. But for that we should have more pity and less rage.

Sympathy can be addictive and can kill strong men as surely as a diet of nothing but sugar.

We can give our smiles, our encouragement, our sympathy to someone who needs them every day of the year.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don't cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears - you know, it's a horrible thing.

But, as old Swedish legends say, Of all the birds upon that day, The swallow felt the deepest grief, And longed to give her Lord relief, And chirped when any near would come. Hugswala swala swal honom! Meaning, as they who tell it deem, Oh, cool, oh, cool and comfort Him!

Give us grace to listen well.

Americans give you the violence, Europeans give you the sex. I think people have been saying that since the 70s. And I think it's kind of pathetic that Americans are still stuck - on the shock value of violence, when sex is such a natural thing for everybody.

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

If one person starts crying, I'll cry. If one person has no money, I'll give them mine. If I had a bicycle growing up, I always felt incredibly guilty when I see someone sitting at the bus stop.