“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.”

—  Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), p. 101,
Context: Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don't become inured to what they are shown — if that's the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

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Susan Sontag168
American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist 1933–2004

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