“People talk of “social outcasts.” The words apparently denote the miserable losers of the world, the vicious ones, but I feel as though I have been a “social outcast” from the moment I was born. If ever I meet someone society has designated as an outcast, I invariably feel affection for him, an emotion which carries me away in melting tenderness.”

— Osamu Dazai , book No Longer Human

The Second Notebook
No Longer Human

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Osamu Dazai 39

Japanese author 1909–1948

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 218 (1987)

“Unlike storybook heroes and heroines but like many actual heroes and heroines, she was something of a social outcast.”

Pauline Kael book State of the Art

As Simone Weil noted, it was the people with irregular and embarrassing histories who were often the heroes of the Resistance in the Second World War; the proper middle-class people may have felt they had too much to lose.
"Busybody," review of Silkwood (1984-01-09), p. 107.
State of the Art (1985)

“These poems were written by someone I once was and who is so distant to me now that I scarcely recognize him anymore. They speak for a time and a feeling which of course has gone from me but for which I still have a close affection and kinship.”

Laurie Lee (1914–1997) British writer

Preface to Selected Poems, André Deutsch Ltd, London, 1983, ISBN 0233975039
Other Quotes

“I've been the girl with her skirt pulled high,
Been the outcast never running with mascara eyes.
I see the world as a candy store
With a cigarette smile saying things you can't ignore.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

God Is a DJ, written by Pink, Billy Mann and Jonathan S. Davis
Song lyrics, Try This (2003)

“Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. I, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

“The moment I step out of my adult identity, it becomes obvious that my tribe is not significantly different from other tribes in its habitual projection of blame for conflict onto an enemy. It is disturbing for an individual to reject the tribe’s claim to self-righteousness because it excludes him or her from the civil religion, the social immortality system, and the ritual of scapegoating, in which guilt is alleviated by being assigned to an outcast or enemy that the tribe may destroy in the name of God.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), pp. 148-149

“School is a place that adds to emotional pain for most children alive today. It is even more so the case for the two most isolated kids in school: 1. The social outcasts who are isolated in every way. 2. The social actors who are surrounded by other kids, but no one sees them because they are in a relationship not with them, but with the role they play.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“I always have the most sympathy for that painting of mine, which the other people appreciate the least. It gives me the impression of an outcast and it takes on a romantic-interesting quality. I therefore always put this work first and want to prove to everyone that he is wrong if he does not appreciate this above all my other works. It is certainly rather foolish, and I do not know, it comes from an 'esprit de contradiction' or just from pity. The bad end has something attractive, one has sympathy for it.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands: De meeste sympathie heb ik altijd voor dat schilderij van mij, wat de andere mensen het minst waardeert / bevalt. Dit geeft mij de indruk van een verstoteling en het neemt een romantisch-interessante hoedanigheid aan. Ik zet dit werk dan ook altijd voorop en wil iedereen bewijzen dat ie ongelijk heeft als hij deze niet boven al mijn andere werken waardeert. Dat is zeker nogal dwaas, en ik weet niet of het voortkomt uit 'esprit de contradiction' of uit medelijden. Het ongeluk heeft iets aantrekkelijks, men heeft er sympathie voor.
Source: 1860's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 40 - quote from Bilders' diary, 8 March 1860, written in Amsterdam

“I could feel my colour. I could feel racism…in the way people looked at you, and the way they talked to you. Now, though, because of the mixing of cultures, it seems like some kind of brilliant social experiment…In some ways it seems to me the city of the future.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

In the cultural scene in London
Jeet Thayil on why 'Where are you from?' is a complicated question for all of us

“The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice.”

Albert Nolan (1934) South African priest and activist

Source: Jesus Before Christianity: The Gospel of Liberation (1976), p. 27.
Context: The remarkable thing about Jesus was that, although he came from the middle class and had no appreciable disadvantages himself, he mixed socially with the lowest of the low and identified himself with them. He became an outcast by choice. Why did Jesus do this? What would make a middle-class man talk to beggars and mix socially with the poor? What would make a prophet associate with the rabble who know nothing of the law? The answer comes across very clearly in the gospels: compassion.

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Osamu Dazai 39

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