Compassion Quotes

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Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

- Leo Buscaglia

We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

- Thomas Merton

Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.

- Vaclav Havel

[A]ll change, even very large and powerful change, begins when a few people start talking with one another about something they care about.

- Margaret J. Wheatley

Compassion will no longer be seen as a spiritual luxury for a contemplative few; rather it will be viewed as a social necessity for the entire human family.

- Duane Elgin

Spirituality is allowing compassion and love to flourish. When belongness begins, corruption ends.

- Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Compassion will cure more sins than condemnation.

- Henry Ward Beecher

To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.

- Stephen Covey

A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.

- Nelson Mandela

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.

- bell hooks

What comes from the heart, goes to the heart.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Loving-kindness and compassion are the basis for wise, powerful, sometimes gentle, and sometimes fierce actions that can really make a difference -- in our own lives and those of others.

- Sharon Salzberg

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be "happy." I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter and to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.

- Leo C. Rosten

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There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.

- Lorraine Hansberry

Compassion is more important than intellect in calling forth the love that the work of peace needs, and intuition can often be a far more powerful searchlight than cold reason.

- Betty Williams

Love is more than a noun -- it is a verb; it is more than a feeling -- it is caring, sharing, helping, sacrificing.

- William Arthur Ward

If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.

- Maya Angelou

Each of the world religions has its own particular genius, its own special insight into the nature and requirements of compassion, and has something unique to teach us.

- Karen Armstrong

Compassion is not sentiment but is making justice and doing works of mercy. Compassion is not a moral commandment but a flow and overflow of the fullest human and divine energies.

- Matthew Fox

We need to build millions of little moments of caring on an individual level. Indeed, as talk of a politics of meaning becomes more widespread, many people will feel it easier to publicly acknowledge their own spiritual and ethical aspirations and will allow themselves to give more space to their highest vision in their personal interactions with others. A politics of meaning is as much about these millions of small acts as it is about any larger change. The two necessarily go hand in hand.

- Michael Lerner

You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can't teach someone who writes columns to care.

- Ellen Goodman

The act of compassion begins with full attention, just as rapport does. You have to really see the person. If you see the person, then naturally, empathy arises. If you tune into the other person, you feel with them. If empathy arises, and if that person is in dire need, then empathic concern can come. You want to help them, and then that begins a compassionate act. So I'd say that compassion begins with attention.

- Daniel Goleman

The greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.

- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lamat

Sometimes we think that to develop an open heart, to be truly loving and compassionate, means that we need to be passive, to allow others to abuse us, to smile and let anyone do what they want with us. Yet this is not what is meant by compassion. Quite the contrary. Compassion is not at all weak. It is the strength that arises out of seeing the true nature of suffering in the world. Compassion allows us to bear witness to that suffering, whether it is in ourselves or others, without fear; it allows us to name injustice without hesitation, and to act strongly, with all the skill at our disposal. To develop this mind state of compassion ... is to learn to live, as the Buddha put it, with sympathy for all living beings, without exception.

- Sharon Salzberg

Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us.

- Eric Hoffer