Do not presume, well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed, to criticize the poor
Interpretation
Avoid making judgments about the poor if you live comfortably yourself.
This quote by Herman Melville underscores the importance of empathy and understanding towards those who are less fortunate. It highlights the tendency of those in comfortable situations to critique or judge the lifestyle and choices of the poor, without recognizing the advantages and privileges their own circumstances afford them.
In practice
This quote can be used in a social justice speech to emphasize the need for understanding and kindness towards the poor.
A good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper person, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be backward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in that way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about him, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.
The Marquesan girls dance all over; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes seem to dance in their heads.
Dream tonight of peacock tails, Diamond fields and spouter whales. Ills are many, blessing few, But dreams tonight will shelter you.
Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did the Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother Jove? Surely all this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.
If some books are deemed most baneful and their sale forbid, how then with deadlier facts, not dreams of doting men? Those whom books will hurt will not be proof against events. Events, not books should be forbid.
You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.
This stereotype that Black and brown boys and girls are dangerous or threatening has normalized systems of trauma: the cradle to prison pipeline, foster care, youth detention, and being tried and sentenced as adults. We treat trauma with more trauma.
The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.
I'm driven by the gaps, the things that are missing, the areas where marginalized people exist - and where the least resources are available for them.
My dad was focused on trying to get a guaranteed annual income for all people in 1968, shortly before he was killed. He did not get to realize that dream.
If you don't have a lens that's been trained to look at how various forms of discrimination come together, you're unlikely to develop a set of policies that will be as inclusive as they need to be.
Racism has its boot squarely wedged on the neck of black communities, and we don't want to be told that hard work and responsibility are the answer.
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