Teju Cole Quotes

I do not think women understand how repelled a man feels when he sees a woman wholly absorbed in what she is thinking, unless it is about her child, or her husband, or her lover. It ... gives one gooseflesh.

I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can't imagine someone else's point of view.

Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear.

I don't like upsetting people.

Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves.

We feel and weigh soon enough what we suffer from others: but how much others suffer from us, of this we take no heed.

It is far easier to write an angry letter than to go and say angry things to another person - because as soon as we look in one another's faces we can see the other point of view.

you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead.

How easy it is to deny the pain of someone else's suffering.

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.

True kindness isn't something we're born with. It's something we have to work at. Not everyone has it. But I think everyone has the potential. Sometimes you just have to look really close before you can tell it's there."-Kyoko

Maybe the biggest problem is that there's no empathy. Nobody puts themselves in the place of others. Everyone thinks they are the only one to suffer. Or that they're the only ones who like ice cream or take their kids on vacation.

What is the empathy deficit? The inability of people to stand in other folks shoes. It's hard to empathize with people who have different values than you

When people come at me they can't win, they think they can, but they can't. I'll just walk away.

It is mercy, not justice or courage or even heroism, that alone can defeat evil.

I literally feel pity for a lot of the stupid idiots that I have to deal with.

... the main principle by which human beings must guide the future course of their development is love.

In a world of cruelty, sympathy is a crime, and in a world of lies, truth is blasphemy.

I'm nice because, when I was growing up, so many people weren't nice to me, and I remember how that felt. And I don't want to make anyone else feel like that. I value nice.

Compassion grows in us when we know how the energy of love is available all around us.

What people really suffer from is immaturity. Among mature people war would not be a problem - it would be impossible.

I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

I feel that compassionate thought is the most precious thing there is. It is something that only we human beings can develop. And if we have a good heart, a warm heart, warm feelings, we will be happy and satisfied ourselves, and our friends will experience a friendly and peaceful atmosphere as well. This can be experienced community to community, country to country, continent to continent.

By developing a sense of concern for others' well-being, then no matter what others' attitudes are, you can keep inner peace.