David Farr Quotes

Man is not the enemy here, but the fellow victim.

There is also a natural and very, very strong empathy with the underdog, with people who have suffered, people who have been pushed around by foreigners in particular, but also by their own people.

Only the tortured can understand those who have been tortured.

I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that's ever happened to me has taught me compassion.

The Jewish background is not that far from the black groove. Blacks are downtrodden, Jews are downtrodden, therefore they have something in common in that affliction. Being downtrodden often makes one more empathetic and sympathetic.

As many times as I've seen 'The Merchant of Venice,' I always take Shylock's side. For all the hatred that guy is shown, he has a reason to hate in return. He's treated cruelly. And it's tragic that he learns to be intolerant because of what others do to him.

Extremist perspectives win sympathy and recruits because they offer narratives that claim to identify deep injustices and enemies.

Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him.

I have in my bones, and in my blood, the knowledge that you have to help the people who are persecuted.

This is for all ill-treated fellows Unborn and unbegot, For them to read when they're in trouble And I am not.

Empathy is the most mysterious transaction that the human soul can have, and it's accessible to all of us, but we have to give ourselves the opportunity to identify, to plunge ourselves in a story where we see the world from the bottom up or through another's eyes or heart.

I cannot tell how much my heart suffered for my people while at Leavenworth.

I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on.

He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested.

I see myself in all the people in the world who are suffering and who are very badly treated and who are often made to feel that they have no place on this Earth.

Once you allow yourself to identify with the people in a story, then you might begin to see yourself in that story even if on the surface it's far removed from your situation. This is what I try to tell my students: this is one great thing that literature can do - it can make us identify with situations and people far away.

We would not be interested in human beings if we did not have the hope of someday meeting someone worse off than ourselves.

Violence ravaged my life. I was a victim of hatred, and I have dedicated my life to reversing that hatred.

As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.

Nobody's really unsympathetic, I think. People do good and bad things. If a character's totally unsympathetic, they're not real and I'm not interested. Even the real monsters have to have a spark of something you can relate to.

See things from the boy's point of view.

No matter how heinous someone's behaviour, if you make them a comic character, you can't expect people to hate them.

Many people suffer at the hands of others. The world can be unfair, at times mercilessly so. Millions of people in the world are genuine victims, right now. All of us will be at some point, whether it's for small matters or large, for a long duration or short. But we aren't all victims, not all the time anyway, not for everything.

Two words guided the making of 'Babel' for me: 'dignity' and 'compassion.' These things are normally forgotten in the making of a lot of films. Normally there is not dignity because the poor and dispossessed in a place like Morocco are portrayed as mere victims, or the Japanese are portrayed as cartoon figures with no humanity.