Political Empathy Quotes

Liberals love to strike generous, humanitarian poses with other people's lives.

Americans don't mind rich politicians. History is full of them. What they do mind are people who ask for their vote but don't connect with them.

Republicans rarely criticize Obama for lack of empathy - in part because liberals have traditionally been seen as standing up for the weak and the vulnerable. Conservatives can be just as empathetic. But they believe that, in most cases, it's not government's role to be the primary dispenser of empathy.

It's important not to demonize [Donald's] Trump voters.

It's easy to kick somebody when they're down. George W. Bush has dealt with more difficult issues than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. And I've told my colleagues it's time that we go stand up for the president.

Unlike the Congress or the BJP leaders, who are away from people, I am not. I mix with people, and I know how they feel. That gives me an edge over the Congress and the BJP.

Everyone on the Left has a favorite story that allows them to kind of excuse Reagan, explain away Reagan, say he was dumb, but unless we reckon with that kind of emotional intelligence and his ability to kind of speak to the aspirations of the American people, the less liberals are going to be able to understand the soul of his appeal.

My warning is: Be careful Angela Merkel. If you don't see the suffering that has been imposed on the rest of the European people, then Germany will make itself hated.

It's important for presidents to emotionally connect, with the country in times of crisis, but also with people in Washington. If you can't emotionally connect - and [Barack] Obama is not the greatest, but he can at least do it - then people won't be with you when the times are hard.

We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.

Politicians are supposed to be empathetic. And, yes, I am, actually.

When Bill Clinton tells people he feels their pain, they forget that he caused it.

Politicians seem desperate to appeal to their respective versions of the so called 'middle class,' unable to empathise with the precariat and eager to dream up fresh and tougher sanctions against society's wounded.

President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.

Bobby Kennedy is so concerned with poverty because he didn't have any as a kid.

[Nixon] reduced the meaning of his life to nothing but power. In the film, we gave this sad figure consciousness of what he was. We weren't right to do that - I don't think he did have that consciousness. But we did it for movie reasons - to create empathy.

Mr Trump is a different type of leader not burdened by rigid ideology. He does not think like a politician, nor does he talk or sanctimoniously moralise like one, making him an easy target for demonisation. However, he is an empathetic person who recognises the pain of America's middle class.

Being politicians, they all got to sharing their personal stories. Obama talked about his mother's battle with cancer. Harry Reid talked about a kid with a cleft palate. And John McCain told how he once carried a brain dead woman through an entire campaign.

All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity.

After his reelection defeat [for Governor of Massachusetts] Dukakis had an empathy transplant. He emerged a more humane man, a person more amenable to the give-and-take of politics.