You don't have to teach people how to be human. You have to teach them how to stop being inhuman.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that humanity is inherent, but negative behaviors must be addressed and corrected.
Eldridge Cleaver's quote suggests that being human is a natural state, while inhumanity and negative behaviors are learned or adopted. Instead of instructing individuals on what it means to be human, we should focus on helping them unlearn harmful behaviors that detract from their inherent humanity.
In practice
During a seminar on compassion in the workplace, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of fostering a supportive environment.
I know that sometimes people fake on each other out of genuine motives to hold onto the object of their tenderest feelings. They see themselves as so inadequate that they feel forced to wear a mask in order to continuously impress the other. I do not want to "hold" you, I want you to "stay" out of your own need for me.
The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
Chemical weapons simply have no place in the 21st century. Progress in this vital area will help generate momentum to meet our goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
We humans do not understand compassion. In each moment of our lives, we betray it. Aye, we know of its worth, yet in knowing we then attach to it a value, we guard the giving of it, believing it must be earned, Tβlan Imass. Compassion is priceless in the truest sense of the wold. It must be given freely. In abundance.
It appears evident, therefore, that those actions only can truly be called virtuous, and deserving of moral approbation, which the agent believed to be right, and to which he was influenced, more or less, by that belief.
My disenchantment? Oh no, my dear, there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spellbound.
The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.
No emotion, merely as an emotion, is a sin, because we cannot directly control the arising of an emotion in our soul.
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