Human Suffering Quotes - Page 3

• There is no degree of human suffering which in and of itself is going to bring about change. Only organisation can change things.

  Susan George

  Suffering, Degrees, Organisation

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• I believe that the destructive nature of society that now threatens the existence of the entire human world has much to do with human intelligence. The way to overcome all human suffering-that also is through human intelligence.

  Dalai Lama

  Believe, Suffering, Overcoming

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• The problem of reconciling human suffering with the existence of a God who loves, is only insoluble so long as we attach a trivial meaning to the word "love."

  C. S. Lewis

  Love Is, Long, Suffering

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.

  Mstislav Rostropovich

  Perfection, Joy, Suffering

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• Women and girls are bearing the brunt of extremists that revel in treating them barbarically. This is inextricably linked to our overall failure to prevent and end conflicts worldwide, which is causing human suffering on an unprecedented level.

  Angelina Jolie

  Girl, Suffering, Levels

  "Angelina Jolie's powerful speech about ending sexual violence against women across the globe" by Evan Bartlett, www.indy100.com. June 14, 2015.

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• My reporting in Africa wouldn't be political per se, but it's certainly the point of my reporting - and of a lot of other reporters I know: Human suffering is bad, and if reporting stories about it brings it to light and someone does something, that's part of the point of journalism. And it's a thin line between that and activism, and you have to be careful about that.

  Sebastian Junger

  Political, Suffering, Journalism

  "A Few Good Men". Interview With Adam Weinstein, www.motherjones.com. September/October 2010.

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• So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.

  George Eliot

  Pain, Men, Justice

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.6060, Delphi Classics

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• Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.

  Rob Bell

  Jesus, Jobs, Believe

  Rob Bell (2011). “Love Wins: At the Heart of Life’s Big Questions”, p.4, HarperCollins UK

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• I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

  Margaret Atwood

  Suffering, Machines, Lunatic Asylums

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Alias Grace: A Novel”, p.51, Anchor

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• We will have an unchallenged, open, panoramic opportunity on a global scale to demonstrate the finest aspects of what we know in this country: peace, freedom, democracy, human rights, benevolent sharing, love, the easing of human suffering.
  Is that going to be our list of priorities or not?

  Jimmy Carter

  Inspirational, Country, Business

  "Jimmy Carter on The American Dream". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org.

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• If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.

  Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

  Nature, Real, Science

  Attributed to Szent-Györgyi in "The Development of Spatial Cognition" by Robert Cohen, 1985.

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• We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.

  Copyright: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.

  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Health, Exercise, Medicine

  "On Death and Dying". Book by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, Ch. 2, 1969.

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• Nothing, including human suffering, happens by chance.

  John Calvin

  Suffering, Chance, Inevitable

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• Let's get up off our knees, stop cringing before bogeymen and virtual fathers, face reality, and help science to do something constructive about human suffering.

  Richard Dawkins

  Father, Reality, Suffering

  "Science saves". www.theguardian.com. December 30, 2004.

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• Some will protest that in a world with so much human suffering, it is something between eccentric and obscene to mourn a dog. I think not. After all, it is perfectly normal—indeed, deeply human—to be moved when nature presents us with a vision of great beauty. Should we not be moved when it produces a vision—a creature—of the purest sweetness?

  Charles Krauthammer

  Dog, Thinking, Perfectly Normal

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• Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognize indifference to human suffering as a fact.

  Andrea Dworkin

  Believe, Reality, Suffering

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• It cannot be emphasized too strongly that Christianity has a vested interest in human misery. Christianity, perhaps more than any religion before or since, capitalized on human suffering; and it was enormously successful in insuring its own existence through the perpetuation of human suffering.

  George H. Smith

  Successful, Suffering, Religion

  George H. Smith (2010). “Atheism: The Case Against God”, p.309, Prometheus Books

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• What I love most about nature is how indifferent it is to us humans and human suffering. While we are here with our little or big tragedies - the wind is blowing, the leaves are rustling in the trees, the flowers bloom, and die - there's a great comfort in that indifference.

  Valzhyna Mort

  Flower, Wind, Tree

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• 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.

  Elie Wiesel

  Pain, Compassion, People

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• To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the "size" of human suffering is absolutely relative.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Men, Soul, Mind

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.40, Beacon Press

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• I love the majesty of human suffering.

  Alfred de Vigny

  Suffering, Majesty, Humans

  La Maison du Berger (1844)

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• I turned to human suffering because - this may sound odd - animal suffering is more difficult for me to deal with.

  Rigoberto Gonzalez

  Animal, Suffering, Sound

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I talked about the human suffering in Iraq. And I also saw the need to advance a freedom agenda. Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein was there, stirring up even more trouble in a part of the world that had so much resentment and so much hatred that people came and killed 3,000 of our citizens. I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived and the stir-up-the-hornet's- nest theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned. The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.

  George W. Bush

  Water, People, Hatred

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• The words of that philosopher who offers no therapy for human suffering are empty and vain.

  Epicurus

  Suffering, Philosopher, Empty

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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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