Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of maintaining dignity over merely showing compassion.
Christopher Hitchens advocates for the idea that individuals should prioritize dignity for themselves and others rather than relying solely on compassion. He warns against the societal tendency to equate compassion with virtue, suggesting that true respect and self-worth might sometimes be perceived as arrogance or selfishness in a world that often values emotional responses over the inherent dignity of individuals.
In practice
In a motivational seminar about self-respect.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way β because itβs had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But youβve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.
Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.
Conservatism, however, is too often a welcome excuse for lazy minds, loath to adapt themselves to fast changing conditions.
We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny . . . I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.
Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.
Religion must remain an outlet for people who say to themselves, "I am not the kind of person I want to be." It must never sink into an assemblage of the self-satisfied.
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