Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul.
Interpretation
True sympathy involves deep personal engagement, unlike superficial pity.
In this quote, Martin Luther King, Jr. emphasizes the difference between mere pity and genuine sympathy. He argues that while pity is often an impersonal act, such as sending a check, true sympathy requires one to invest emotionally and spiritually, demonstrating a deeper personal connection and commitment to others' suffering and needs.
In practice
In a speech about community support, one might say: 'As Martin Luther King, Jr. wisely noted, true sympathy requires deep personal connection.'
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
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I don't wait for people to give me respect. I always give them respect.
When you say 'yes' to others, make sure you are not saying 'no' to yourself.
Will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me becuase it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ? The bright day of Christian community dawns wherever the early morning mists of dreamy visions are lifting
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I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I'm just more sexually attracted to women. But I'm really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.
Every American ought to have the right to be treated as he would wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be treated. This is not the case.
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