It's hard to pull apart empathy from compassion. What is really clear is that we innately care for other people at least to some extent.

Families survive the terrible twos because toddlers aren't strong enough to kill with their hands and aren't capable of using lethal weapons.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans — language, rationality, culture, and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.

Our best hope for the future [...] lies in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love.

A religion such as Judaism or Catholicism might survive even if it comes to reject a literal account of God creating man and animals. But it cannot survive the rejection of an immaterial soul.

I argue that we should be kind, we should be compassionate, and we should definitely be reasonable and rational, but that empathy leads us astray.

The fact that something can be used for good isn't necessarily a knockdown argument for it.

Empathy zooms you in on an individual and, as a result, it's narrow, it's innumerate, it's racist, it's very biased.

The effects of Twitter and Facebook and all those things on people's psychologies is a really interesting question to which nobody knows the answer.

I love teaching. I wouldn't take a job that didn't include it.

What I mean by "empathy" is putting yourself in other people's shoes, feeling what they feel.

Daily mediation is great to build a self confidence, peace of mind, and strong trust in God, the Divine Being.

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.

I scarce ever heard or saw the introductory words, "Without vanity I may say," etc., but some vain thing immediately followed.

Tomorrow is more sure than just about anything else in the entire world.

I've been dealing with politicians all my life. They are all talk, no action.

It is the immigrant hordes who keep this country alive, the waves of them arriving year after year.... Who believes in America more than the people who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?

If I fall, look out for the crash. There won't be anyone left standing.

Don't you think it's sometimes wise not to grow up.

I've always been obsessed with things that are half animal and half human - like mermaids and Minotaurs - because they are trapped in an animal body. And I felt trapped in my own life.

And teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night.