T. D. Jakes Quotes

Why would anybody connect to someone who has everything going for them? It's the person who has faults that people want to connect to. So people identify with certain insecurities on stage and just by me talking about my diabetes people come up to me after the show and tell me "Gabe, my blood sugar is out of control and I feel you". That's the first thing they say, they say "I feel you!".

Well, I was a big fan of the book and therein a huge fan of the girl Precious. And so I felt like I knew this girl. I felt like I'd grown up alongside her. I felt like she was in my family. She was my friend and she was like people I didn't want to be friends with.

People could empathize with other people who had gone through the same experience as they had.

When you relate to a disease, you're afraid. When you relate to a person, there is compassion. You see someone that is like you, that could be like you. You can see yourself in that same situation.

The wounded recognized the wounded.

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.

I show them the funny part, the silly part, the laughing part, the crazy part and then the really deep, deep part where I'm talking from my heart to these people. Because I've been through everything they've been through.

I have never met a person in whom I did not see myself reflected.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

People are people, and they want to know about their own experiences.

I can't write about your pain; I only know my own.

I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone.

I feel that if I'm going through something, I'm sure someone else is, too. I try to be as honest with myself and others as I can be.

It is easier to speak to those who have had similar experiences than to those who are as yet ignorant.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

I think, really, that the only way a person can open their heart to someone who is so much another is really by knowing them... whether that's in a classroom, or a soccer team, or a food pantry, or any of those things. I mean, we're kind of more alike than we are different.

It's difficult to have any animosity towards someone if you recognize that on so many levels they're exactly the same as you.

I feel that if I'm going through something, I'm sure someone else is, too.

While eschewing emotion - and its companion, vulnerability - Obama should be careful not to sacrifice empathy, the 'I feel your pain' connection that sustained Clinton. This connection is the shorthand people use to measure their leaders' intentions. If people believe you're on their side, they will trust your decisions.

I think I've learnt that there is no character so strange that you haven't shared their experience in some small way.

I don't want to be above my audience; I want to be one with my audience.

Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.

The audience likes a speaker with the same weakness and the same virtues that they themselves have.

It's easy when you have suffered to feel the link with what others have gone through.

There's this stress that is relieved when you realize somebody understands, and that's only going to happen if you feel the person who's writing the book or the people in the TV show aren't holding back.