Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John SteinbeckRead
The comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote illustrates the emotional progression of those who are comfortable towards those who are less fortunate.
John Steinbeck's quote reveals how people's feelings can shift from empathy to disdain when confronted with hardship faced by others. Initially, the comfort of the well-off breeds pity for the migrant people, but as the comfortable become accustomed to their own lives, their feelings evolve into distaste and ultimately, hatred, illustrating a troubling response to poverty and displacement.
Themes
EmpathyDisplacementSocial JusticePovertyHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social issues, this quote can highlight the dangers of ignoring the struggles of others.
More from John Steinbeck
All quotes βAt one point, as Samuel urges Adam to raise his boys well regardless of the blood that might be in them, Adam tells him, "You can't make a race horse of a pig." Samuel replies, "No, but you can make a very fast pig.
John SteinbeckRead
And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses.
John SteinbeckRead
People do not want advice - they want corroboration.
John SteinbeckRead
It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.
John SteinbeckRead
You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
John SteinbeckRead
Similar quotes
Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.
Albert CamusRead
So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?
Richard DawkinsRead
The man who leaves money to charity in his will is only giving away what no longer belongs to him
VoltaireRead
A man does not have to go and find where his eyes are in order to see. The heart is there, always open to you, if you care to enter it, always supporting your movements, although you may be unaware of it. It is perhaps more correct to say that the Self is the Heart. Really the Self is the centre and is everywhere aware of itself as the Heart or Self-awareness.
Ramana MaharshiRead
I have made a great discovery. I no longer believe in anything. Objects don't exist for me except in so far as a rapport exists between them and myself. When one attains this harmony, one reaches a sort of intellectual non-existence, what I can only describe as a sense of peace, which makes everything possible and right. Life then becomes a perpetual revelation. That is true poetry.
Georges BraqueRead
One of the greatest injustices we do to our young people is to ask them to be conservative. Christianity is not conservative, but revolutionary.
Francis SchaefferRead