Regarding The Pain Of Others Quotes & Sayings

One can feel obliged to look at phototgraphs that record great cruelties and crimes. One should feel obliged to think about what it means to look at them, about the capacity actually to assimilate what they show. Not all reactions to these pictures are under the supervision of reason and conscience. — Susan Sontag

We all faced painful ethical challenges before we even knew how to spell our names. There were tough choices. Tradeoffs. Confusing signals regarding how to live one's life. And here we are now, today, still struggling. Still trying to sort things out. Still trying to work our way through life effectively. About the only thing that has changed is the scope of the problem. There's more at stake now. And we're in a position, as grownups, to do a lot more-good or bad-for ourselves, our organization, our world. But we still must wrestle with our imperfect ethics. — Price Pritchett

With time, many staged photographs turn back into historical evidence, albeit of an impure kind - like most historical evidence. — Susan Sontag

Impermanence and non-self are not negative. They are the doors that open to the true nature of reality. They are not the causes of our pain. It is our delusion that causes us to suffer. Regarding something that is impermanent as permanent, holding to something that is without self as having a self, we suffer. Impermanence is the same as non-self. Since phenomena are impermanent, they do not possess a permanent identity. Non-self is also emptiness. Emptiness of what? Empty of a permanent self. Non-self means also interbeing. Because everything is made of everything else, nothing can be by itself alone. Non-self is also interpenetration, because everything contains everything else. Non-self is also interdependence, because this is made of that. Each thing depends on all other things to be. That is interdependence. Nothing can be by itself alone. It has to inter-be with all other things. This is non-self. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Often something looks, or is felt to look, "better" in a photograph. Indeed, it is one of the functions of photography to improve the normal appearance of things. (Hence, one is always disappointed by a photograph that is not flattering.) — Susan Sontag

Anecdote: In a controversial way, Comedian and actor Bill Cosby sought to teach his son the pain of being lied to. Convinced his son had been dishonest regarding an issue, Cosby promised that if he told him the truth, he would not hit him. When his son did confess, Cosby did hit him. Seeing his son's shock and hurt, Cosby said he hoped this lesson had deepened his understanding of the anguish generated by a sense betrayal. — Bill Cosby

Regarding life, it is much the best to think that the experiences we have are necessary for us. It is by means of experience that we develop and not through our imagination. Imagination is nothing. Explanation is nothing. One can only experience and somehow describe
with, in Camus's phrase, lucid indifference. At the same time, experience is fundamentally illusory. When one is experiencing emotional pain or grief, one feels that everything that happens in life is unreal. And this is a right understanding of life. — Joy Williams

By empowering people to initiate a conversation prior to surgery regarding their pain control options, we hope to reduce the incidence of narcotic addiction and all of the unfortunate consequences that surround it. — Kristi Funk

Is there an antidote to the perennial seductiveness of war? And is this a question a woman is more likely to pose than a man? (Probably yes.) — Susan Sontag

It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation - a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility, which regards suffering as something that is a mistake or an accident or a crime. Something to be fixed. Something to be refused. Something that makes one feel powerless. — Susan Sontag

Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking. Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead. — Susan Sontag

Wherever people feel safe ( ... ) they will be indifferent. — Susan Sontag

It is felt that there is something morally wrong with the abstract of reality offered by photography; that one has no right to experience the suffering of others at a distance, denuded of its raw power; that we pay too high a human (or moral) price for those hitherto admired qualities of vision - the standing back from the aggressiveness of the world which frees us for observation and for elective attention. — Susan Sontag

Photographs that depict suffering shouldn't be beautiful, as captions shouldn't moralize. — Susan Sontag

What is odd is not that so many of the iconic news photos of the past, including some of the best-remembered pictures from the Second World War, appear to have been staged. It is that we are surprised to learn they were staged and always disappointed. — Susan Sontag

Pain defines moments in the lives of all human beings. The trial is not the endurance of pain but the choices we make regarding how to endure. — Richelle E. Goodrich

To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo's martyrdom to a mere instance. — Susan Sontag

An appallingly high percentage of doctors and other practitioners are still pretty much out of the loop regarding trigger points, despite their having been written about in medical journals for over sixty years. — Clair Davies

Sometimes I hesitate to use the term sexual abuse. It conjures up worst-case scenarios in our minds, and we think, "That will never happen to my kids." And we never begin the conversation regarding sexual abuse with our children. But one violation left in secret can cause significant pain. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

In fact, there are many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding - at a distance, through the medium of photography - other people's pain. — Susan Sontag

We are to celebrate what God has done for us (18; 106; 136).10 Prayer: Father God, give me insight into what form of worship is pleasing to You. I don't want to be negative in my church regarding how we come to You and worship. Amen. Action: Pray about this new division in our churches. Be willing to create harmony, not discord. Today's Wisdom: It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. - M. SCOTT PECK — Emilie Barnes

[regarding a toothache] It made me realize how much one's mind is at the mercy of one's physical well-being, as at times I felt quite demented. My admiration for people who withhold information under torture has increased ten-fold since this ghastly night, for I am quite certain that even the threat of such pain would be enough to make me blab put any secret, and even to make up further disclosures if I felt that these might mitigate the pain at all. Truly a most shattering revelation. — Miss Read

Although I was deliberately dismissive of this idea at the beginning of the chapter, the real answer is, "Well, yes, sort of." Nathan DeWall, together with Naomi Eisenberger and other social rejection researchers, conducted a series of studies to test out the idea that over-the-counter painkillers would reduce social pain, not just physical pain. In the first study, they looked at two groups of people. Half of them took 1,000 milligrams a day of acetaminophen (that is, Tylenol), and half of them took equivalently sized placebo pills with no active substances in them. Both groups took their pills every day for three weeks. Each night, the participants answered questions by e-mail regarding the amount of social pain they had felt that day. By the ninth day of the study, the Tylenol group was reporting feeling less social pain than the placebo group. — Matthew D. Lieberman

Up to a point, the weight and seriousness of such photographs survive better in a book, where one can look privately, linger over the pictures, without talking. Still, at some moment the book will be closed. The strong emotion will become a transient one. — Susan Sontag

The memory of war, however, like all memory, is mostly local. — Susan Sontag

Knowledge is power, as some say. But on some days it is just as much pain and confusion as it is power; and any wise man worth his salt as a wise man at least understands this. One may be able to comprehend all the human perspectives in the universe, but this gives more to decipher regarding what is actually true; and even after discovering the truth, the challenge is in maintaining a patience for the infinite number of opinions that do not reflect that truth. Its consistency in man is challenge. A worldly knowledge ends at the former challenge of confusion, but the knowledge of Christ ends at the latter challenge of patience. — Criss Jami

Narratives can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us. — Susan Sontag

Lord, I pour out my heart before You regarding the things in my life that cause me grief. I lift my hands to You because I know You are my hope and Your compassion for me never fails. Heal me of all emotional pain, and use the sorrow I have suffered for good. I pray that in Your presence I will find total restoration. — Stormie O'martian

When we are aware of the pain, we have to train ourselves to lean into that pain. By leaning into the pain, we resist the temptation to avoid building fig leaves that protect us from the fear we feel regarding who we are. Our feelings are critical to our spiritual development. — Chris McAlister

It is intolerable to have one's sufferings twinned with anybody else's. — Susan Sontag

All that we see is but the reflex of a power that endures, untouched by the pain ... a transcendent anonymity regarding itself in all of the self-centered, battling egos that are born and die in time. — Joseph Campbell

Making suffering loom larger, by globalizing it, may spur people to feel they ought to "care" more. — Susan Sontag

God gave a choice to Adam and Eve to eat the fruit which caused death and pain to all mankind. How is that different than allowing a choice regarding abortion? A person may make the choice to end one life but god allowed a choice that impacts every man, woman and child that has ever been and ever will be. If we strive to follow the image of god how can we outlaw choices and deny the same rights, freedoms and choices that god allowed? We shouldn't determine the choices of others. — C. L. Ferguson