50+ Quotes About Understanding Others To Improve Your Empathy

To understand others means to be sensitive about what they feel and how they see things.

In other words, understanding means that you put yourself in their shoes and try to feel what they must be feeling. Once you understand the sufferings of others, you will naturally feel sympathetic towards them.

Understanding others is a crucial life skill - it not only makes the world a better place but also makes one's life fulfilling and purposeful. Quite often you may feel like nobody understands you or what you're going through. In such times, understanding yourself and being kind to yourself is the best you can do. After all, indifference and empathy are merely two sides of the same coin.

If you like what you read, check out keep going quotes and new chapter quotes as well!

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These patience and understanding quotes are all about the importance of understanding others.

1. “Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.”

- Emma Goldman.

2. “We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.”

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

3. “When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.”

- Ernest Hemingway.

4. "Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love."

- John Steinbeck.

5. "To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to."

- Kahlil Gibran.

6. "There's nothing more intimate in life than being understood and understanding someone else."

- Brad Meltzer.

7. "You don't need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding."

- Guy Finley.

8. "All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason."

- Immanuel Kant.

9. “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.”

- C. Wright Mills.

10. "We are all so desperate to be understood, we forget to be understanding."

- Beau Taplin.

11. “The improvement of understanding is for two ends: first, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.”

- John Locke.

12. “If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.”

- John Steinbeck.

13. “If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.”

- Lyndon B. Johnson.

14. "What the mind doesn't understand, it worships or fears."

- Alice Walker.

15. "Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."

- Albert Einstein.

16. "Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing."

- Rollo May.

17. "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."

- Marie Curie.

18. “Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious."

- Phillips Brooks.

19. “Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

- Dale Carnegie.

20. “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.”

- Lao Tzu.

21. “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.”

- John Quincy Adams.

22. “Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”

- Lemony Snicket.

23. “With love and patience, nothing is impossible.”

- Daisaku Ikeda.

24. “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”

- Albert Einstein.

(Understanding quotes help in nurturing healthy relationships.)

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Relationships demand understanding. So, here are some insightful understanding quotes to help you become more understanding in your relationships with others.

25. "I’ve come to understand that listening is one of the most important things we can do for one another… if we care, we can listen."

- Fred Rogers.

26. "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood."

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca.

27. "Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek."

- Dalai Lama.

28. “Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear; all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.”

-  Roy T. Bennett.

29. "When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries."

- Paulo Coelho.

30. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one…just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

31. "Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the wrong."

- Lloyd Shearer.

32. “If you wish to please people, you must begin by understanding them.”

- Charles Reade.

33. “If you want understanding try giving some.”

- Malcolm S. Forbes.

34. “Be the one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart, one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.”

- Marvin J. Ashton.

35. “…treat people with understanding when you can, and fake it when you can't until you do understand.”

- Kim Harrison.

These quotes on indifference and apathy will be quite relatable if you've ever felt that nobody understands you.

36. “Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”

-  Madeleine L'Engle.

37. "Lack of sensitivity is perhaps basically an unawareness of ourselves."

- Eric Hoffer.

38. "The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."

- George Bernard Shaw.

39. “The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of indifference.”

- Edmund Burke.

40. “They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”

- Anton Chekhov.

41. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

- Upton Sinclair.

42. "Neither love nor terror makes one blind: indifference makes one blind."

- James Baldwin.

43. “A man’s vanity is more fragile than you might think. It’s easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”

- Lisa Kleypas.

44. "Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced."

- Jake Thoene.

45. “If you can't understand it without an explanation, you can't understand it with an explanation.”

- Haruki Murakami.

46. "Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy."

- J.K. Rowling.

47. “Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings.”

- Helen Keller.

48. "Once a system has degenerated to the point that apathy is the only thing holding it in place it, it is in its twilight phase. Then one day the music stops."

- John Berling Hardy.

49. “A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.”

- Bertrand Russell.

Understanding yourself is the first step towards self-love and these understanding quotes reiterate that.

50. "Finding your passion isn't just about careers and money. It's about finding your authentic self. The one you've buried beneath other people's needs."

- Kristin Hannah.

51. "Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance."

- Brené Brown.

52. "I learned to be with myself rather than avoiding myself with limiting habits; I started to be aware of my feelings more, rather than numb them."

- Judith Wright.

53. “Life is your teacher. How can you learn to understand your truth, if you deny your reality?”

- Lorraine Nilon.

54. “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”

- Benjamin Franklin.

55. “Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”

- Henry David Thoreau.

56. "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

- Carl Jung.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for understanding quotes then why not take a look at quotes about empathy, or quotes on compassion.