The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
Elie WieselRead
I don't think I should accept other people's suffering because I suffered. Just the opposite, because I suffered I don't want others to suffer.
Interpretation
Personal suffering should motivate empathy and a desire to alleviate the suffering of others.
In this quote, Elie Wiesel emphasizes the importance of using one's own experiences of suffering as a catalyst for compassion rather than self-isolation. He suggests that having endured pain himself, he feels a greater responsibility to prevent others from experiencing the same hardships, promoting the idea that personal struggles can foster empathy and a commitment to helping others.
In practice
In a speech advocating mental health support, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of empathy for those who struggle.
The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don't think it's human to become an agent of the angel of death.
Certain things, certain events, seem inexplicable only for a time: up to the moment when the veil is torn aside.
We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.
No one is as capable of gratitude as one who has escaped the kingdom of night.
My loyalty to my people, to our people, and to Israel comes first and prevents me from saying anything critical of Israel outside Israel… As a Jew I see my role as a melitz yosher, a defender of Israel: I defend even her mistakes… I must identify with whatever Israel does – even with her errors.
There are two sets of principles. They are the principles of power and privilege and the principles of truth and justice. If you pursue truth and justice it will always mean a diminution of power and privilege. If you pursue power and privilege, it will always be at the expense of truth and justice
First and last follow each other.
When you once see something as false which you have accepted as true, as natural, as human, then you can never go back to it.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness, but trailing clouds of glory do we come.
Inside me is the same desperate hope I have watching the ravenous dead and thinking, Oh please, oh please, oh please. The craving inside of me is to be clutched at by some dead girl. To put my ear to her chest and hear nothing. Even getting munched on by zombies beats the idea that I'm only flesh and blood, skin and bone. Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.
Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristrocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it.
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