Quotes about Empathy

In court, as the judge considered the sentence of the police officer, the woman spoke boldly: "He took my family away from me, and I still have a lot of love to give, and he needs to know what love and grace feel like—so I think he should have to come to visit my home in the slums, twice a month, and spend time with me, so that I can be a mother to him, so that I can embrace him, and he can know that my forgiveness is real." We

The tears we shed are not just for ourselves but for our world.

The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community [even if their intentions are ever so earnest], but the person who loves those around them will create community.

Over and over, the dying and the lepers would whisper the mystical word namaste in my ear. We really don't have a word like it in English (or even much of a Western conception of it). They explained to me that namaste means "I honor the Holy One who lives in you." I knew I could see God in their eyes. Was it possible that I was becoming a Christian, that in my eyes they could catch a glimpse of the image of my Lover?

As I left Calcutta, it occurred to me that I was returning to a land of lepers, a land of people who had forgotten how to feel, to laugh, to cry, a land haunted by numbness. Could we learn to feel again?

Desmond Tutu, a South African bishop and leader in the movement to end apartheid, said, "I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, 'Now is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.

Jesus never says to the poor, 'Come find the church,' but he says to those of us in the church, 'Go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned,' Jesus in his disguises.

Violence is for those who have lost their imagination. Has

Mother Teresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta." I

When I fed the hungry, they called me a saint. When I asked why people are hungry, they called me a communist." Charity

I truly believe that when the poor meet the rich, riches will have no meaning. And when the rich meet the poor, we will see poverty come to an end.

in one moment, God feels the pain of the victims of unspeakable violence, and God feels the agonizing pain of seeing a beloved child executed at the hands of the state.