Ingrid Betancourt Quotes

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

I haven't been in the military, but I've known my share of pain. It allows me to sit with someone who's struggling and not be afraid.

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

Anyone who has experienced a certain amount of loss in their life has empathy for those who have experienced loss.

I learn to pity woes so like my own.

You don't want to diminish anybody's pain and suffering.

When you are suffering, you become more understanding about yourself, but also about other people's sufferings too. That's the first step to understand somebody is to understand their sufferings. So then love follows.

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

None knows the weight of another's burden.

I could only try to comfort the women that I came face-to-face with. I was really moved by how much they wanted to talk, how much they needed to be comforted, and how happy they were that we were there.

A prerequisite to empathy is simply paying attention to the person in pain.

It makes you feel good to know that there's other people afflicted like you.

I chose to present myself as one who comes from among the people, and I can be touched by their pain because I have my own.

I like someone who's suffered from both sides.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

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

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.

Only the tortured can understand those who have been tortured.

One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me...

Human beings are members of a whole, In creation of one essence and soul. If one member is afflicted with pain, Other members uneasy will remain. If you have no sympathy for human pain, The name of human you cannot retain.

In a place of pain, there is space for everyone.

People who have suffered know more about compassion.

We are all connected. The pain and suffering of others is yours also, on some level, whether you choose to pay attention or not. The reason we can't achieve total bliss is because you're not here solo.

I don't think I ever sit there and think to kick a wound harder.