Human Suffering Quotes

• We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.

  Jose Marti

  People, Evil, Political

  "Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos" edited by Carlos Ripoll, 1994.

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• An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness.

  Clara Barton

  Selfish, Evil, Suffering

  Clara Barton (1899). “The Red Cross in peace and war”

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• Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Suffering, Concern

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.171, Schocken

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• A great part of human suffering has its root in the nature of man, and not in that of his institutions.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Roots, Suffering

  James Russell Lowell (1897). “Literary and political addresses”

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• Righteous is the one who was able to demonstrate compassion in face of human suffering.

  Aleksander Kwasniewski

  Compassion, Suffering, Able

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• If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Suffering, Meaning Of Life, Mans Search For Meaning

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.73, Beacon Press

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• We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.

  Shigeru Yoshida

  War, Japan, Feelings

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• Hezbollah's contempt for human suffering is total, as it showed once again this morning when its rockets murdered two Israeli Arab children in Nazareth.

  Tom Lantos

  Morning, Children, Two

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• What matters in literature in the end is surely the idiosyncratic, the individual, the flavor or the color of a particular human suffering.

  Harold Bloom

  What Matters, Color, Hygiene

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• The new technologies that we see coming will have major benefits that will greatly alleviate human suffering.

  Ralph Merkle

  Technology, Suffering, Benefits

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• And Christ, through His own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of His Spirit of truth, His consoling spirit.

  Pope John Paul II

  Catholic, Suffering, Spirit

  Pope John Paul II (2007). “Pope John Paul II: A Reader”

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• The most wonderful study of mankind is man. Relieving human suffering and diffusing universal knowledge is humanitarian.

  Daniel D. Palmer

  Men, Humanity, Suffering

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• Whatever the capacity for human suffering, the church has a greater capacity for healing and wholeness.

  Bill Hybels

  Healing, Suffering, Church

  Twitter post from Oct 27, 2010

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• The more I think about the human suffering in our world and my desire to offer a healing response, the more I realize how crucial it is not to allow myself to become paralyzed by feelings of helplessness and guilt. More important than ever is to be very faithful to my vocation to do well the few things I am called to do and hold on to the joy and peace they bring me. I must resist the temptation to let the forces of darkness pull me into despair and make me one more of their many victims.

  Henri Nouwen

  Healing, Thinking, Our World

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• As the medieval mind blamed God for human suffering, so the modern mind blames 'the system' for the industrial blight and plague of technology.

  Jennifer Stone

  Technology, Mind, Suffering

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• Holiness is religious principle put into motion. It is the love of God sent forth into circulation, on the feet, and with the hands of love to men. It is faith gone to work. It is charity coined into actions, and devotion breathing benedictions on human suffering, while it goes up in intercession to the Father of all piety.

  Frederic Dan Huntington

  Religious, Father, Men

  Frederic Dan Huntington (1862). “Sermons for the People”, p.99

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• Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred. For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.

  Paramahansa Yogananda

  Spiritual, Lying, Lakes

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• War, poverty, corruption, hunger, misery, human suffering will not change in a monetary system. That is, there will be very little significant change. It’s going to take the redesign of our culture and values.

  Jacque Fresco

  War, Significant Change, Suffering

  "Zeitgeist: Addendum". Documentary, History, War, www.imdb.com. 2008.

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• The universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden…Passions, greed, hatred, and lies; social institutions, justice, love, glory, heroism, and religion: these are its monstrous flowers and its hideous instruments of eternal human suffering.

  Octave Mirbeau

  Lying, Flower, Passion

  Octave Mirbeau (2016). “Torture Garden”, p.149, Library of Alexandria

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• What is the greatest deficiency among human Chrsitians? They have an inadequate view of human suffering.

  Helmut Thielicke

  Views, Suffering, Deficiency

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• We already have the material means to eradicate deep poverty and thereby eradicate hunger. We have the material means to begin the tremendous clean up of the environmental messes we’ve created. We have, I believe, the psychological, emotional and spiritual means to create a world without war. We have the material means to create a world in which unnecessary human suffering has been drastically diminished. My vision for the future is that we do those things. And I think we will.

  Marianne Williamson

  Spiritual, War, Believe

  "Marianne Williamson on Consciousness, Women and Politics". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 9, 2012.

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• By working to alleviate the suffering of animals you are working at the cause level of human suffering.

  Sharon Gannon

  Animal, Suffering, Levels

  "Sharon Gannon on Veganism". jivamuktiyoga.com. November 16, 2016.

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• Poor minorities live in a new age of Jim Crow, one in which the ravages of segregation, racism, poverty and dashed hopes are amplified by the forces of privatization, financialization, militarization and criminalization, fashioning a new architecture of punishment, massive human suffering and authoritarianism.

  Henry Giroux

  Punishment, Racism, Crow

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• All the advantages that man has gained from his ever-deepening understanding of the natural world that surrounds him, his technological, chemical and medical progress, all of which should seem to alleviate human suffering... tends instead to favor humanity's destruction.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Men, Humanity, Understanding

  "Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins". Book by Konrad Lorenz, 1973.

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• The stark and tragic images of human suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina have reminded us yet again that civil rights and equal rights are still the great unfinished business of America. The suffering has been disproportionately borne by the weak, the poor, the elderly and infirm, and largely African-Americans, who were forced by poverty, illness, unequal opportunity to stay behind and bear the brunt of the storm's winds and floods. I believe that kind of disparate impact is morally wrong in this, the richest country in the world.

  Edward Kennedy

  Country, Believe, Opportunity

  "Second Day of Hearings on the Nomination of Judge Roberts", www.nytimes.com. September 13, 2005.

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