Collective Pain Quotes

To hear of a thousand deaths in war is terrible, and we 'know' that it is. But as it registers on our hearts, it is not more terrible than one death fully imagined.

Humanity needs to weep, and this is the time to weep.

We are misery-making machines! Homo sapiens has perfected the art of causing suffering. Pain is humankind's collective GDP.

Look beyond the individual to the cause of his misery.

The title of my book is 'American Histories,' plural. And as far as I'm concerned, my reading of history is it is a sort of nightmare. It is a sort of nightmare, and I'm trying to wake up from it. And as any nightmare, it's full of much that is unspeakable.

By community I mean that community you have a special vision for, that only you see, that no one else in a room sees. That special community in pain, that through a pain you've suffered, you're able to have that vision, that super-ray vision.

I believe in the importance of individuality, but in the midst of grief I also find myself wanting connection - wanting to be reminded that the sadness I feel is not just mine but ours.

The most demeaning experience any country ever had to bear.

We need a president that can heal, that can bring people together, that can get us back. We have so much common pain in this country that can get us back to a sense of common purpose and common cause.

And so the ordinary unendurable torments we all experienced were indeed exceptional in the way they were absorbed in each heart.

How vivid is the suffering of the few when the people are few and how the suffering of nameless millions in two world wars is blurred over by numbers.

All my friends are artists, so I am used to collective agony as a mode.

Poetry is not about personal pain or tragedy. It should resonate the society's grief.

You have not yet suffered enough! For you suffer only from yourselves, you have not yet suffered from man.

Suffering is easier to endure when shared.

But then, the flames of a fire are not made less painful by the knowledge that others are burning with you.

I have nothing negative to say because what happened to me has happened to many others and I need to always remember that it was not personal what happened to me.

I do feel like all the people I meet, all the people I'm in discussions with, if I'm working with somebody, I sense the same energy that everybody is suffering from the same predicament.

We are all connected. The pain and suffering of others is yours also, on some level, whether you choose to pay attention or not. The reason we can't achieve total bliss is because you're not here solo.

He didn't know of course. Not really. And yet that was what he said, and I was soothed to hear it. For I knew what he meant. We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delineaments, weight, and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all. "I know," he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.

Better one suffer than a nation grieve.

Mankind's suffering belongs to all men.

I can bear my own sorrows, but the sorrows arising from the calamities visiting Islam and Muslims have crushed me. I feel each blow delivered to the Muslim world as delivered first to my own heart.

Our common liberty is consecrated by a common sorrow.

To walk behind others on a road you are traveling together, to give precedence to others without envy - this is painful for an individual and painful for a nation.