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.
Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all.
Identity is a prison you can never escape, but the way to redeem your past is not to run from it, but to try to understand it, and use it as a foundation to grow.
The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.
Try not to associate bodily defect with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason
If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.
If I should say anything that is not in conformity with what is held by the Holy Roman Catholic Church, it will be through ignorance and not through malice. This may be taken as certain, and also that, through God's goodness, I am, and shall always be, as I always have been, subject to her.
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