Barack Obama Quotes

AIDS is a horrible disease, and the people who catch it deserve compassion.

Our virtues are made by love, and our sins are caused by the lack of it.

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity.

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

I've never thought about it before, but I suppose bad people might need someone to pray to, too.

I believe Aids is the most important issue we face, because how we treat the poor is a reflection of who we are as a people.

Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all.

'Ida' is about humanity, about guilt and forgiveness. It's not a film that deals with an issue as such. It's more universal.

Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity. Without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster. The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.

If once we admit, be it for a single hour or in a single instance, that there can be anything more important than compassion for a fellow human being, then there is no crime against man that we cannot commit with an easy conscience.

We must show sympathy with sinners, but not with their sins.

Unless a man has pity he is not truly a man. If a man has not wept at the worlds pain he is only half a man, and there will always be pain in the world, knowing this does not mean that a man shall dispair. A good man will seek to take pain out of things. A foolish man will not even notice it, except in himself, and the poor unfortunate evil man will drive pain deeper into things and spread it about wherever he goes.

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting, I said, but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too.

Many years ago I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realised, 'I am killing him - all for the passing pleasure it brings me'. Something inside me clicked. I realised as I watched him fight for breath that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.

To suffer with the other and for others; to suffer for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love and in order to become a person who truly loves - these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.

Every hand and every hour should be devoted to rescue the world from its insanity of guilt, and to assuage the pangs of human hearts with balm and anodyne. To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.

Can one be fully human without experiencing tragedy? The only tragedy there is in the world is ignorance; all evil comes from that.

Cruelty, I truly believe, is the one and only sin.

Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness.

Civilization means, above all, an unwillingness to inflict unnecessary pain ... those of us who heedlessly accept the commands of authority cannot yet claim to be civilized men.

When men are inhuman, take care not to feel towards them as they do towards other humans.

Forgiveness flounders because I exclude the enemy from the community of humans and myself from the community of sinners.

Will covers a multitude of flaws, just as love covers a multitude of sins.

Why only hate? Where does love remain? Or at least a little decency toward other people?