Empathetic Society Quotes

We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it, then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.

It is possible to imagine a society flushed with such a sense of power that it could afford to let its offenders go unpunished.

I know this will sound naïve, but I often wonder what America would be like if our national ethos was simply to minimize suffering. Period. To try, every day, to convert our wonderful wealth and national energy into the cessation of suffering wherever we find it. Imagine if that was our national mindset. Well, we can-we must-dream.

When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.

I pray for a more friendly, more caring, and more understanding human family on this planet. To all who dislike suffering, who cherish lasting happiness, this is my heartfelt appeal.

Our culture has gotten too mean and too rough.

Peace cultures thrive on and are nourished by visions of how things might be, in a world where sharing and caring are part of the accepted lifeways for everyone.

The culture in which we live stresses looking out for number one. Without adopting such a self-centered value system, we can demand the best of ourselves while we are extending our hands to help others.

I want to live in a world where people care about others, and try not to hurt others with words or actions.

I feel we all have the obligation, myself. I want to live in a more humane, civilized society, and I feel like the only way we're going to achieve that is if we all take it upon ourselves. I just wish we could be a more caring society. I feel like we're social Darwinists who believe that everyone has to make it on their own. But the reality is that we all don't start out on the same footing.

My wish list is pretty short. I wish that we had empathy. As a society, we are so wrapped up in our own artificial creations that we have become disconnected from one another and the wonder of our natural world. I truly believe that empathy is the key to solving the majority of our environmental and social problems.

We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

We have to have a revolution so that all young people grasp empathy and practice it. This is the most fundamental revolution that we have to get through.

The need is not really for more brains, the need is now for a gentler, a more tolerant people than those who won for us against the ice, the tiger and the bear. The hand that hefted the ax, out of some old blind allegiance to the past fondles the machine gun as lovingly. It is a habit man will have to break to survive, but the roots go very deep.

Images are so prevalent that we get most of our information from them. We receive multiple layers of meaning within a very short compact picture, and that is what the right brain does best. Indeed, as our culture becomes more image-based, we're balancing our hemispheres. Through this new re-wiring, we're becoming a much gentler and kinder society.