The idea of some people being less than people is poison to any society and needs to be named as such in order to halt its spread before it turns the soul of a society septic.
Richard FlanaganRead
If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the disparity in societal empathy depending on the identity of individuals involved in tragic events.
Richard Flanagan's quote draws attention to the selective nature of national tragedy in Australia, where the loss of local lives is deemed significant while the deaths of refugees are politically categorized. This reflection reveals underlying biases in how society values human life based on nationality and the implications that has for humanitarian responses to crises.
Themes
TragedyPoliticsRefugeesEmpathyHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech on immigration reform, this quote could be used to illustrate the need for compassion towards refugees.
More from Richard Flanagan
All quotes βI never know what I am writing. The moment you know what you're writing, you're writing nothing worth reading.
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My father was a Japanese prisoner of war, a survivor of the Thai-Burma Death Railway, built by a quarter of a million slave labourers in 1943. Between 100,000 and 200,000 died.
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Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what we are afraid to give tongue to.
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I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.
Richard FlanaganRead
After writing a novel, what is there to say? If a novelist could say it in a maxim, they wouldn't need 120,000 words, several years and sundry characters, plots and subplots, and so on. I'd much rather listen always.
Richard FlanaganRead
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