A Quote by Elie Wiesel
I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.
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I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
Personal humiliation was painful. Humiliation of one's family was much worse. Humiliation of one's social status was agony to bear. But humiliation of one's nation was the most excruciating of human miseries.
For in all the world there are no people so piteous and forlorn as those who are forced to eat the bitter bread of dependency in their old age, and find how steep are the stairs of another man's house. Wherever they go they know themselves unwelcome. Wherever they are, they feel themselves a burden. There is no humiliation of the spirit they are not forced to endure. Their hearts are scarred all over with the stabs from cruel and callous speeches.
There is no limit to suffering human beings have been willing to inflict on others, no matter how innocent, no matter how young, and no matter how old. This fact must lead all reasonable human beings, that is, all human beings who take evidence seriously, to draw only one possible conclusion: Human nature is not basically good.
Almost all human beings have the capacity for empathy. Everyone has the potential to be at least troubled, or feel genuine anguish, about the suffering of other human beings.
No matter what part of the world we come from, we are all basically the same human beings. We all seek happiness and try to avoid suffering. We have the same basic human needs and concerns. All of us human beings want freedom and the right to determine our own destiny as individuals and as peoples. That is human nature.
Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness.
We're all human beings. Experience is experience, let's just be honest. Let's not try and dissect suffering into a race, or whatever you want to call it. We're all human beings, one way or another. All races have gone through times that are challenging; that's part of being a human.
This is historically what happens whenever revolutionaries begin to take the oppression and suffering of their fellow beings seriously, whether human or nonhuman. It's regrettable that certain scientists are willing to put their families at risk by choosing to do wasteful animal experiments in this day and age.
We never know how much one loves till we know how much he is willing to endure and suffer for us; and it is the suffering element that measures love. The characters that are great must, of necessity, be characters that shall be willing, patient and strong to endure for others. To hold our nature in the willing service of another is the divine idea of manhood, of the human character.
The Zen philosophy posits that 'human beings suffer' and 'the cause of suffering is desire.' The way to put an end to suffering is to stop wanting everything, all the time.
When the preponderance of human beings choose to act with justice and generosity and kindness, then learning and love and decency prevail. When the preponderance of human beings choose power, greed, and indifference to suffering, the world is filled with war, poverty, and cruelty.
All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy.
The fact that human beings do not put up forever with misery, humiliation, degradation, actual physical deprivation but act is a fact which every human being should know about. We are a species that makes changes.
A Jew must be sensitive to the pain of all human beings. A Jew cannot remain indifferent to human suffering... The mission of the Jewish people has never been to make the world more Jewish, but to make it more human.
In all three cases, and for most human beings, the problem of suffering poses no difficult problem at all: one has a world picture in which suffering has its place, a world picture that takes suffering into account.
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