"When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you"
About this Quote
“The whole world opens up” is a deliberately expansive promise, but it’s also specific. Empathy is an antidote to a culture that monetizes outrage and flattens people into types. Imagination counters the algorithmic drift toward sameness, where taste and identity get narrowed into predictable lanes. Together, they function like a passport: you don’t just tolerate difference, you can travel inside it. That’s why the metaphor works. Openness implies doors, thresholds, rooms you didn’t know existed.
There’s also a subtle political edge. Sarandon has long been associated with activism; read this way, the quote argues that the route to a larger civic life isn’t more information, it’s more perception. Develop the capacity to picture other outcomes and other lives, and suddenly the world isn’t a fixed story you react to - it’s a landscape you can move through, interpret, and possibly change.
Quote Details
| Topic | Self-Improvement |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Sarandon, Susan. (2026, January 16). When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-start-to-develop-your-powers-of-empathy-121098/
Chicago Style
Sarandon, Susan. "When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-start-to-develop-your-powers-of-empathy-121098/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-you-start-to-develop-your-powers-of-empathy-121098/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.










