Findings
Over the course of our learning and grantmaking, we've come across extraordinary research, quotes, images, articles, and insights by people and organizations all over the world. This is a collection of inspirational resources that drive our work.
"Books are sometimes windows, offering views of the world that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror."
Windows, Mirrors, and Sliding Glass Doors
Sometimes I walk down the street and I look at all the people I'm passing and I think, damn, all these stories walking right by me.
All these people
Exercises that prompt us to consider the perspective of one member of a group can lead us to not only feel for that person, but also to generalize those feelings toward the group as a whole. In that way, empathy can have a positive influence on attitudes toward stigmatized groups.
Empathy and Attitudes
“One of the greatest dignities of humankind is that each successive generation is invested in the welfare of each new generation.”
Mr. Rogers
"What empathy does is that it forces you, it compels you, to imagine the lives of other people and to see other people just as human as you are. And if you’re able to do that then I think that you’re more likely to want to live at peace with them. You’re less likely to want to fight wars, and you’re more likely to want them to have the social privileges that you have."
Why we need to develop empathy
"Is it possible that we can extend our empathy to the entire human race as an extended family? And to our fellow creatures, and to the biosphere as our common community? If it's possible to imagine that, we might be able to save our species and our planet."
Extending Empathy
"Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself."
Empathy Echoes
"Empathy is the only human superpower - it can shrink distance, cut through social and power hierarchies, transcend differences, and provoke political and social change."
Empathy Superpower
"My heart has learned to glow for others’ good."
The Odyssey
Empathy engine
"A place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there."
A place is a story
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Ghandi on Animal Treatment
Based at UC Berkeley, the Greater Good Science Center provides a bridge between the research community and the general public. It studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being and teaches skills that foster a thriving, resilient, and compassionate society.
Greater Good Science Center
"Empathy as a skill spells success for the collective “we” – conflict resolution, connectedness, civil society and democracy, the betterment of impoverished communities, the end of bullying – and, ultimately, a world in which people simply, powerfully, get along."
Empathy in Action
"Too often, we exist in echo chambers and see each other as monoliths: one-sided stereotypes who can be reduced to a single word or phrase. Instead, we want to go beneath the headlines, to see each other as real people with real struggles, real fears, real hopes, and real dreams."
The People's Supper
"Exposure to unexpected – and sometimes unwelcome – news and information is crucial to democratic processes. Traditional mass media...nudges society together, back towards a middle ground. Personal media is the opposite, a center-fleeing centrifugal force that inexorably pulls us away from the center."
Farewell Information, It’s a Media Age
I think we all have empathy. We may not have enough courage to display it.
Maya Angelou Quote
These Are Your Kids On Books
