“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”

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Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Elie Wiesel155

writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and … 1928–2016

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Different Drum: Community Making and Peace

“Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Lectures on Philosophy (1959), p. 76

“If we decide – and this is our decision; it’s not imposed on us from above – if we decide that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is a good ethical principle to live by, then it becomes entirely unjustified and arbitrary to extend this principle to human beings but not also to extend it to other animals capable of suffering. Why should the suffering of nonhumans be less important than that of humans? Surely a universe with less suffering is better than one with more, regardless of whether the locus of suffering is a human being or not, a rational being or not, a member of the moral community or not. Suffering is suffering, and these other variables are morally irrelevant.”

Steve Stewart-Williams (1971)

Source: Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Think You Know (2010), p. 274

“Remember brick walls let us show our dedication. They are there to separate us from the people who don't really want to achieve their childhood dreams.”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

“Human beings are made to have a connection with the Gods and yet we have separated ourselves from them.”

Patxi Xabier Lezama Perier (1967) sculptor and writer

Quoted on Contemporary art, http://coolturamagazine.com/xabier-lezama-mitologia-vasca/, February 15, 2020.

“If Allah were to permit us to speak, the truth would emerge and falsehood would vanish and be pulled away from you.”

Muhammad al-Mahdi (869–941) 12th and last Imam in Twelver Shia Islam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.25 p. 183
Religious-based Quotes

“An ordinary human being, with a personal conscience, personally answering for something to somebody and personally and directly taking responsibility, seems to be receding farther and farther from the realm of politics.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Onassis Prize For Man and Mankind (1993)
Context: An ordinary human being, with a personal conscience, personally answering for something to somebody and personally and directly taking responsibility, seems to be receding farther and farther from the realm of politics. Politicians seem to turn into puppets that only look human and move in a giant, rather inhuman theatre; they appear to become merely cogs in a huge machine, objects of a major civilizational automatism which has gotten out of control and for which nobody is responsible.

“Nevertheless, I still wonder. Each of us, with money, gets further and further away from those moments where the hand pulls the beet root from the soil, shakes the fish from the net into the basket—not to mention the way it separates us from one another, so that when enough money comes between people, they lie apart like parts of a chicken hacked up for stewing.”

Samuel R. Delany book Tales of Nevèrÿon

Source: Tales of Nevèrÿon (1979), Chapter 4, “The Tale of Potters and Dragons” Section 1 (p. 161)

“Is there to be no getting away from this loathsome vegetative physicality?... Utter contempt for the lewd enticements that always lure us back into life's clutches. And when, half-parched, we seek to quench our thirst, the gods laugh us to scorn.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's Diary-notes, 4 July, 1946, p. 156; as cited in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 113
Beckmann himself castigated the folly of supposing that sexual gratification leads to fulfillment.
1940s

“I wanted to build walls around him, I wanted to separate inside from outside, I wanted to give him an infinitely long blank book and the rest of time.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 280

“Suffering pulls us farther away from other human beings. It builds a wall made of cries and contempt to separate us.”

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