John Steinbeck Quotes

I wanted to live the inner life of every man I saw, look at the world through his eyes.

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

A helpful thing for me has always been - this is from a great acting teacher Declan Donnellan - is this beautiful way of expressing how and why people do things that other people may not do. It's a simple sentence that says, 'I understand you; you don't understand me.'

I love, I love human beings, studying them.

I taught myself to tune in to another person's wavelength, figure out what they were looking for, and try to project that thing back at them.

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.

Empathy is choosing to see ourselves in another despite our differences. It's recognizing that the same humanity - the same desire for meaning, fulfillment and security - exists in each of us, even if it's expressed uniquely.

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

For me, storytelling is all about how we learn about each other. I'm so curious about people, what makes them tick, why they are who they are, and how we all relate to each other, despite the fact that we may not think that we do.

Compassion is very important, especially right now in America. We all need to strive as human beings to understand each other and ourselves better.

Most people are doing the best they can, given what they know and understand, including you. If they knew more and were aware of more, they would do things differently.

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.

Even before I did stand-up, I've always been the kind of guy - and I talk about it on stage - who says I like people and I always look for the good in people. I say, 'Every person has something good about them, if you can just find it.'

There is so much of good in human nature that men grow to like each other upon better acquaintance, and this points to another way in which we may strive to promote the peace of the world.

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.

I try as best I can to enter the realm of nuances of human behavior.

Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

Change begins with understanding and understanding begins by identifying oneself with another person: in a word, empathy. The arts enable us to put ourselves in the minds, eyes, ears and hearts of other human beings.

I wanted to show life and to see ourselves and our behaviour through an outsider's eye... from the point of view of someone who knows nothing about being a human being... He doesn't have the feelings that the rest of us do.

I like reading novels because it provides insight into human behavior. I am really interested in feelings and think they are what define us as a species. When you really get it right in acting, it's an act of empathy. You feel less distant from others, and that is really exciting.

All writing is presumption, of course, since no one knows what it is like to be another human being.

I understand the common man because I understand me in that regard at least.

I'm only going to be the way I'd want someone to react to me.

You don't ask people about the immigration policies of the U.K. or their country's agricultural policy. Instead, you talk to them about the meal they're eating or their family, and from that you get the sense of another human being, someone we can all relate to.