Roland Allen Quotes

Americans in general have a lot of compassion, we just don't always have the same view of how that compassion is implemented.

I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.

One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.

I feel that the world is increasingly about the bottom line, and not so much about human respect or human dignity. In that regard, people who care about other people will not be in a position to make choices and do things that other people who they're competing against will get to do.

A calling is you feel - you look out and see the need - maybe it's the need for the poor, to help poor people. Maybe it's the need to get involved in the race problem, as Martin Luther King was - felt called.

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed.

We don't woo our wives with clubs. We don't leave old folks on ice floes. And maybe the time has come to quit diving into rip tides to save people we don't know. We've outgrown a lot of survival-of-the-fittest strategies, and risking our lives for strangers might be one of them.

If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.

Because a human being is endowed with empathy, he violates the natural order if he does not reach out to those who need care. Responding to this empathy, one is in harmony with the order of things, with dharma; otherwise, one is not.

I am compelled, because of my faith, to have compassion for the weak and vulnerable in our midst.

I am very grateful for the opportunities I've had and feel I have a duty to repay my good fortune through philanthropic endeavors that expand the reach of human possibility and compassion.

Government does not have a monopoly on compassion.

That's the difference between governments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do.

People are nicer than economists give us credit for. The economists cannot understand why people would work long and hard to clean up a community after a hurricane. … Most economists don’t have any interest in or understanding of psychology.

We are a compassionate society.

I have the kind of conscience that it doesn't feel right if I watch other people suffer and I do nothing about it.

With our brains and our smarts and our altruistic capability, we can do a lot of good.

Canadians are a compassionate people and we should be. But at what cost?

We all, as individuals, can and should act compassionately and charitably. We can volunteer our time, energy, and dollars to help the underprivileged. We can feed the hungry, house the homeless. Most of us feel a moral and ethical responsibility to do so - to 'do unto others.'

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.

True compassion is universal in scope. It is accompanied by a feeling of responsibility.

We cannot close ourselves off to information and ignore the fact that millions of people are out there suffering. I honestly want to help. I don't believe I feel differently from other people. I think we all want justice and equality, a chance for a life with meaning. All of us would like to believe that if we were in a bad situation someone would help us.

If we lacked curiosity, we should do less for the good of our neighbor. But, under the name of duty or pity, curiosity steals into the home of the unhappy and the needy. Perhaps even in the famous mother-love there is a good deal of curiosity.

Compassion and justice are companions, not choices.