The next stage in the development of a desirable form of sensitiveness is sympathy. There is a purely physical sympathy: a very young child will cry because a brother or sister is crying. This, I suppose, affords the basis for the further developments.
The two enlargements that are needed are: first, to feel sympathy even when the sufferer is not an object of special affection; secondly, to feel it when the suffering is merely known to be occurring, not sensibly present. The second of these enlargements depends mainly upon intelligence. It may only go so far as sympathy with suffering which is portrayed vividly and touchingly, as in a good novel; it may, on the other hand, go so far as to enable a man to be moved emotionally by statistics. This capacity for abstract sympathy is as rare as it is important.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) English mathematician and philosopher

Education and the Good Life, Part 1, ch. 2 “The Aims of Education” (1926)
    (Source)

This (in the penultimate sentence) appears to be the origin of phrases such as:

• "The of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics."
• "he mark of a civilized man is the ability to look at a column of numbers, and weep."

Sometimes attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Oscar Wilde.

For more discussion, see: Quote Origin: It Is the Mark of a Truly Intelligent Person To Be Moved By Statistics – Quote Investigator®.