Compassion quotes
2.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside compassion — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Love is cheering and sharing and compassion, and giving and receiving. Love is an action thing more than a word thing, that brings comfort or joy, or relief to anyone or anything."
"Let us not use bombs and guns to overcome the world. Let us use love and compassion. Peace begins with a smile."
"In the face of suffering, one has no right to turn away, not to see."
"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights."
"Every time I sit down to eat, I cast my lot: for mercy, against misery; for the oppressed, against the oppressor; and for compassion, against cruelty. There is a lot of suffering in the world, but how much suffering can be addressed with literally no time or effort on our part? We can just stop supporting it, by making different choices."
"There never was any heart truly great and generous, that was not also tender and compassionate."
"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future."
"In the moment when we are able to smile, to look at ourselves with compassion, our world begins to change."
"'Thou shalt not kill' does not apply to murder of one's own kind only, but to all living beings and this commandment was inscribed in the human breast long before it was proclaimed from Sinai."
"Self-compassion is key because when we're able to be gentle with ourselves in the midst of shame, we're more likely to reach out, connect, and experience empathy."
"I think we learn the most from imperfect relationships - things like forgiveness and compassion."
"Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance."
"We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror."
"Compassion and pity are not the same: pity is looking down on someone, feeling sorry for them and offering nothing; compassion is seeing their pain and offering them understanding."
"Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals."
"This is my letter to the world That never wrote to me"
"See others as yourself. See families as your family. See towns as your town. See countries as your country. See worlds as your world."
"Women have the capacity to lead us to a more peaceful world with compassion, affection, and kindness."
"Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system- with all these exalted powers- Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."
"The indifference, callousness and contempt that so many people exhibit toward animals is evil first because it results in great suffering in animals, and second because it results in an incalculably great impoverishment of the human spirit."
