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.
There are no more ideologies in the authentic sense of false consciousness, only advertisements for the world through its duplication and the provocative lie which does not seek belief but commands silence.
I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.
Everything - a horse, a vine - is created for some duty... For what task, then, were you yourself created?
He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!
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