Agnes Gund Quotes

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.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

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.'

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.

Here's the thing: When you become brilliant at listening, people feel that you care about them. When they feel you care about them, they begin to care about you. And when people care about you, your success becomes a part of how they define their success.

I've undoubtedly offended people, but in the end, I've learned the people that will understand are the people I want to connect to, anyway.

I would say I'm humanly engaged.

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.

I believe that if you can discover something of the truth of a person, then you will start to understand, and to understand is to move towards, if not like, then at least an empathy of some kind.

We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.

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 key is allowing your partner to be who they are and not having expectations that really have nothing to do with the person you married.

But I still feel like a normal person... I've walked the streets and I know what it feels like. I speak with humility, and apparently those songs connect with people.

I have always worked from that place, that if you are going to inhabit someone and get under their eyes, you need to have empathy.

To understand somebody else as a human being, I think, is about as close to real forgiveness as one can get.

My mother is not a model. She is not perfect. That awareness is part of learning to love someone. Predicting the actions of someone is an act of love. We persist, even when we get it wrong. That's the beauty of love.

Love was not in it for me at first. I dated guys because of the way they looked. And then I began to learn that it's what's inside that counts. Love to me now is understanding. It's giving.

I love the exploration of someone who has such a different background from you. That exploration runs to compassion and to cracking yourself open and creating more understanding of how weird and amazing life is.

The artistic side of a person is never narcissist; it's always empathic. It's always kind and compassionate.

I approach these people from a standpoint of love. How were they loved? How do they love? What's going on in their heart? There's that that I think about with every role.

In order to have understanding, you need forgiveness, compassion, and empathy.

I think art breaks down otherness.

It's true that misunderstanding and lack of understanding are often themes in my fiction, but I am grateful for the moments when true understanding is achieved, especially between writer and reader. It's miraculous.

I believe the arts are the best way to help people go on a journey of self-discovery toward their own compassion and empathy for humanity and themselves.

How can you build something for someone else if you don't have enough familiarity with them to imagine the world through their eyes?