Ameen Rihani Quotes

We all struggle with our failure to communicate and our failure to reach beyond fear to love people.

Vulnerability is not a weakness but a faculty for understanding.

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.

We can empathize as deeply as we can empathize.

I traffic in empathy. I try to be vulnerable with people so they can be vulnerable back. I've always been searching for empathy in other people. It's when I feel most not alone.

If fear is the great enemy of intimacy, love is its true friend.

If you can open people's hearts first, then maybe people's minds get opened after that.

Well, I think that if you sincerely try to imagine what life is like for another person - not in a mocking way, not in a satirical way, but in a sincere, compassionate way - I don't think that's exploitive.

I think that no matter how dark a person is, the more you learn about them, the more you understand about their life, the more you can sympathize with them or even root for them.

I think there's an ongoing effort involved in trying to get a bigger perspective, trying to let go of things that limit your capacity to love and be loved or your capacity to hear and to really speak.

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand one who's cold?

Each time we enter imaginatively into the life of another, it's a small step upwards in the elevation of the human race.

I have too much respect for people to try to control them. But they are estranged from love, afraid to reach out and touch one another. We're afraid to appear sentimental or speak in platitudes because people will say, 'What a jerk!' It takes courage in our culture to be a lover.

When compassion wakes up in us, we find ourselves more willing to become vulnerable, to take the risk of entering the pain of others.

Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.

We must put ourselves in the place of those who are to hear us

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.

There's this stress that is relieved when you realize somebody understands, and that's only going to happen if you feel the person who's writing the book or the people in the TV show aren't holding back.

The first word that always came into my head with Henry VI was 'empathy.' He doesn't have a barrier between what other people feel and what he feels.

You want to feel, 'I know that character.'

There's a power in empathy.

I don't always know what I want to hear, but I'm gonna try and pull it out and sing it to you, and if you hear it the way I sing it to you, then a wall is broken.

The more I show what I'm going through, the more I can give answers, the more I can help those on the outside looking in.

If you can understand, you can feel compassion.

I've always felt like I had a personal relationship with fans. I'm not afraid to be emotional or vulnerable or humble.