You should be nicer to him,' a schoolmate had once said to me of some awfully ill-favored boy. 'He has no friends.' This, I realized with a pang of pity that I can still remember, was only true as long as everybody agreed to it.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the importance of kindness and how perceptions of friendships can change based on people's attitudes.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens reflects on a moment from his youth when he was reminded to be kinder to a boy who lacked friends due to his unfortunate appearance. The pang of pity he felt underscores the notion that social acceptance and friendship can be fleeting and are often determined by collective agreement; if people choose to be kind, they can change someone's social standing and experience.
In practice
During a discussion about bullying, this quote can remind us to be empathetic.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
In the Friend-place nothing true can be said. Let Me Just Be Here.
Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.
Hear no ill of a friend, nor speak any of an enemy.
When I went to San Francisco in that cold late spring of 1967, I did not even know what I wanted to find out, and so I just stayed around a while and made a few friends.
A doubtful friend is worse than a certain enemy. Let a man be one thing or the other, and we then know how to meet him.
One Best Book is Equal To Hundred Good Friends But One Good Friend is Equal To A Library.
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