Topic
capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within the latter's frame of reference
Empathy is generally described as the ability to perceive another person's perspective, to understand, feel, and possibly share and respond to their experience. However, there are other definitions of empathy that include but are not limited to social, cognitive, and emotional processes primarily concerned with understanding others. Empathy is often considered to be a broad term, and can be divided into more specific concepts and categories, such as cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, somatic empathy, and spiritual empathy.
“If one cannot feel one’s way into people without, in actuality, representing the self as the arbitrator and judge of the other’s actions and possibilities, perhaps it is time to question what one wants from empathy. ... A more useful way to think about feelings requires attention to what it is that structures the ways in which feelings are imagined and read.”
“We need to renegotiate our contract with nature. Ecology is a unifying force that can diminish intolerance and expand our empathy towards others — both human and animal.”
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants: a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
“I pray, right now, that we're moving into a kinder time when prejudice is overcome by understanding; when narrow-mindedness, and narrow-minded bigotry is overwhelmed by open-hearted empathy; when the pain of judgmentalism is replaced by the purity of love.”
“Our job as actors is empathy. Our job is to imagine what someone else's life is like. And if you can't do that in real life, if you can't do that as a human being, then good luck as an actor.... I just think it's an important thing to engage in the world. And it's just too easy not to in our society.”
“We have no desire for revenge. We harbor no hatred towards you. We, like you, are people who want to build a home, to plant a tree, to love, live side by side with you in dignity, in empathy, as human beings, as free men. We are today giving peace a chance and again saying to you in a clear voice: Enough.”
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
Not who you're looking for? Others named empathy: open source instant messaging and VoIP client · 2021 song · album by Mandalay · 2021 EP by D.O.
