Simon Baron-Cohen Quotes

Empathy begins with understanding life from another person's perspective. Nobody has an objective experience of reality. It's all through our own individual prisms.

It's hard to put yourself in someone else's head.

It's finding those nonsensical pieces of conversation that we all do all the time. We do all the time. When we're talking on the telephone, there are arguments with people who agree when they both think that they disagree.

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person - not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way - I don't think that's exploitive.

Walk a mile in my shoes is good advice. Our children will learn to respect others if they are used to imagining themselves in another's place.

Women are always eagerly on the lookout for any emotion.

I don't think you have to have experienced things to understand them.

What we perceive things to be when they come out of our mouth is not what the listener perceives it to be. They think it differently. They're not your blood. They're not your mind. You get in an argument.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

I've noticed over my 22 years of living that, yes, women can be difficult, and I call myself a ladies' man, thinking I have them figured out. But as men, we will never understand women.

I'm not a person that socializes very well.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

… people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

It's kind of funny that I've been branded as the empathy lady when, really, what I'm doing is questioning and interrogating empathy.

I think when you're empathetic, you're putting yourself in somebody else's shoes, right? It's not about you.

I learned the most important thing is to put yourself in the shoes of the players.

Ninety-five percent of the time, I put myself in somebody else's position - that's how I live.

I will never actually be able to know what it's like to go through life in someone else's body.

If acting has any meaning, it is so that we can have greater empathy for other people.

I'm quiet, so people might think I'm a mute.

Sympathy relies on a common experience. If you're clumsy, you might have sympathy for others who tend to bump into things. Empathy, on the other hand, is the ability to understand another person's feelings even if you've never experienced them yourself.

I think empathy is undervalued in a lot of these comedy writers' rooms.

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

Empathy is a skill like any other human skill - and if you get a chance to practice, you can get better at it.