Joshua Oppenheimer Quotes

When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That's one of the great feelings - to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Always the aim for me is making people feel like they are not alone. That's just the greatest feeling.

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

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

When I talk to another Afghan I am his or her equal and that moves me to tears.

It's one thing to talk to a vet about something, but when you're talking to a fellow rookie going through the same struggles you are, you kind of understand it - and you grow together like that.

Just being with a group of girls and experiencing sadness together - it's a pretty powerful thing.

That's my message: I'm not alone, and neither is anyone else.

I can see that everybody has their own challenges that they are dealing with. But what's so beautiful about music is that it brings people together, levels the playing field and opens people up.

Family is just the people you care about. We can bond with people that we have nothing in common with, even if it's just for a moment.

Empathy has the power to bring together people who would otherwise never meet. It has the power to teach us and to reach us in moments of isolation when we think nobody understands.

There is a stage with people we love when we are no longer separate from them, but so close in sympathy that we live through them as directly as through ourselves. ... we push back our hair because theirs is in their eyes.

Rejoice with those who rejoice." I have found that difficult too often. I was much better at weeping with those who weep.

What is of most moment of compassion is not feelings of pity but feelings of togetherness.

No one is alone during tribulations - there's always someone else thinking, rejoicing or suffering in the same way. This thought gives us strength to face the challenge that lies in front of us.

Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.

Laughter means sympathy.

My whole thing has always been as long as everybody else is going through it, I can go through it as well.

When a novelist manages to describe or evoke something you thought or felt, without realizing that other people also found themselves in the same situation and had the same feelings, it creates that same solidarity. Maybe it's better to think of humor not as a tool to express the solidarity, but a kind of by-product. Maybe the realization "I'm not on my own on this one" is always, or often, funny.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

My favorite moments are the moments everyone cries over. I see people in the audience crying, and I go, 'I did that, too. I don't just do the jokes. I also do the cries.' Jokes and cries, jokes and cries. That's all I'm here for, people.

I guess initially I was amazed that somebody would see something within my work that they could really relate to, but the more it's happened, the more people have come forward, I've really realized that we're all kind of going through the same thing at the same time.

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.

Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy.