Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
Interpretation
True sympathy involves deep personal engagement, unlike superficial pity.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes the difference between mere pity and genuine sympathy. He argues that while pity is often an impersonal act, such as sending a check, true sympathy requires one to invest emotionally and spiritually, demonstrating a deeper personal connection and commitment to others' suffering and needs.
In practice
In a speech about community support, one might say: 'As Martin Luther King, Jr. wisely noted, true sympathy requires deep personal connection.'
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
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