If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the choice we have in how we view others, particularly those in need, whether with fear or as part of our shared humanity.
Susan Sarandon's quote invites us to reflect on our perceptions of others, especially those who are marginalized or struggling. It highlights the human tendency to view people in extreme circumstances as 'other' or different, fostering fear and separation. Alternatively, it encourages us to see them as part of our larger human family, deserving of compassion and connection. This perspective can promote empathy and a sense of community, challenging us to act with kindness rather than judgment.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one could use this quote to encourage attendees to connect with those less fortunate.
At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.
Suffering should not define you as a woman! And just because you’re a man it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and don’t accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic – this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real man!
Knowledge is the key to stopping the spread of AIDS. Yet millions of children are missing an education. Missing their teachers who have died of the disease. Missing from class as they stay home to care for their dying mothers and fathers. Children are missing your support. United for Children. Unite against AIDS.
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.
Do you really expect me to say gravity hasn't taken its toll? No. But as I'm earning these lines [in my face], I'm making an aesthetic choice.
When my children wake up in the morning they know they will eat breakfast, get hugs from their parents, go to a good, safe school. Plates are full and store windows are glittering. But at the same time the great majority of the world's children and women stand - no - shiver on the precipice
She is the mother I never had, she is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person.
Said of her husband on the day their divorce became final: Oh, don't worry about Alan. . . . Alan will always land on somebody's feet.
Of course what he most intensely dreams of is being taken out on walks, and the more you are able to indulge him the more will he adore you and the more all the latent beauty of his nature will come out.
She had an air of seeming to wait, as if for a man to get through with something more important than herself, a battle or an operation, during which he must not be hurried or interfered with. When the man had finished she would be waiting, without fret or impatience, somewhere on a highstool, turning the pages of a newspaper.
No woman will ever satisfy me. I know that now, and I would never try to deny it. But this is actually okay, because I will never satisfy a woman, either. Should I be writing such thoughts? Perhaps not. Perhaps it’s a bad idea. I can definitely foresee a scenario where that first paragraph could come back to haunt me, especially if I somehow became marginally famous.
I was eight years old when I got the talk about what to do if a police officer stops me. I was 15 when I was face-down on the curb for the first time.
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