Yann Martel Quotes

Simple inattention kills empathy, let alone compassion. So the first step in compassion is to notice the other's need. It all begins with the simple act of attention.

I am truly passionate and concerned about the lack of empathy that people show towards one another.

I find my own pain and others' difficult to tolerate, so I always want to try to shift things so they'll be better. But in doing that, if I am coming from a place of ego, I often cause harm. So it's a struggle for me to set my ego outside and find a softer and more compassionate way of approaching things.

Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work.

Over the years, however, the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning.

I believe sharing stories and experiences is the best way to teach people to empathize!

To listen with empathy is the most important human skill.

Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.

The idea of faking empathy to take a step forward to understanding - it's a really powerful idea.

We think empathy is innate, but it's not. It's a muscle you're working.

Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.

I think that if we don't learn to inhabit other people's perspectives, then we're never going to understand why people do what they do.

Empathy requires knowing that you know nothing.

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

We can't love our neighbors till we know how crooked their hearts are.

Vanity calculates but poorly on the vanity of others; what a virtue we should distil from frailty, what a world of pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own weakness to be the measure of theirs.

Much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people.

Some people think that without that spark of empathy we would do nothing, but that's just flat-out wrong. You could feel compassion for somebody without the spark of empathy.

No one can deal with the hearts of men unless he has the sympathy which is given by love.

Perhaps people ought to feel with more imagination.

We do not increase compassion by expanding it to cover anything. Instead, we kill a good word by making it mean too much, and nothing.

Reading can almost be viewed as empathy training. Movies have better action scenes, sure. But books are uniquely suited to showing you the inside of another person's head. That is the root of empathy. That's the first step to understanding you're not alone in the world.

We make ourselves large or small, here or there, in our empathies.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

Each of us in our own way can try to spread compassion into people's hearts. Western civilizations these days place great importance on filling the human brain with knowledge, but no one seems to care about filling the human heart with compassion. This is what the real role of religion is.