Leslie Jamison Quotes

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

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.

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.

As soon as you think you know someone else's truth better than they do, you are in deep water.

When I was young I used to listen to other people and to try and understand what they thought and where they were coming from. I listened and didn't speak.

I mean, I try to say the right things and give the right advice. But still, I'm only a person.

I am not learned, but I have as good feelings as any man.

My mother always taught me to think about things from other people's perspectives and think about where they're coming from.

If you aren't humble, whatever empathy you claim is false and probably results from some arrogance or the desire to control. But true empathy is rooted in humility and the understanding that there are many people with as much to contribute in life as you.

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

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

That's what I love doing - understanding another person's perspective that's really different from mine. To me, it's like an emotional puzzle, trying to figure out the humanity of a character who is very different from myself and why they think the way they do.

When you truly empathize with someone, you have to take into account all the things that make that person who they are.

Changing your attitude from self-centerdness to understanding requires desire and commitment to always try to see things from the other persons point of view.

Reading will put you into the minds and hearts of others. It might help you understand why other people do what they do sometimes.

It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.

I try to consider people's perspectives and not just my own.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion. Even if somebody is an enemy you have compassion toward him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others.

I never had to put myself in somebody else's shoes.

In the movie I realized, I had the luxury of getting to see how the other person feels.

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

Personally, I think humility is a prerequisite to being a truly empathic person.

It's good to have to put yourself in someone else's skin. It's all-consuming.

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.

It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.