What dooms our best efforts to cultivate empathy and compassion is always, of course, other people.

Imagining someone else's pain with too much surety can be as damaging as failing to imagine it.

We weep for the blood of a bird, but not for the blood of a fish. Blessed are those who have voice.

Education leads to enlightenment. Enlightenment opens the way to empathy. Empathy foreshadows reform.

Compassion only plagues those with hearts, much like a field of thorns only troubles those who bleed.

Empathy is a breaking down of the false constructs of division between the observer and the observed.

Empathy isn't just listening, it's asking the questions whose answers need to be listened to.

Sometimes when you're surrounded by dirt, CJ, you're a better witness for what's beautiful.

...treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can'tuntil you do understand.

Real action without the passion is difficult, but the real passion without the compassion is impossible.

If it is not tempered by compassion, and empathy, reason can lead men and women into a moral void. (95)

By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

Sooner or later in life, we will all take our own turn being in the position we once had someone else in.

I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.

You need to forgive people you don't understand; if not, try to understand people you want to forgive.