Comparative Suffering Quotes

There are other people who have it a lot worse

There is always someone worse off than yourself.

The poor peasant here hives under conditions quite different from those of Russia. Though often terrible, they are not as appalling as they were there.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide?

One pain is lessened by another's anguish.

If we're saying there are incidents of oppression in this country, systematically or individually in this country, I don't think saying, 'Well, in country X, Y or Z it's 10 times worse' is making things any better. I think that may be true, but why can't we improve?

There are people much less fortunate than us, and I don't mean people hungry sleeping in the streets either.

It's not that humans and non-humans are identical... but the lack of understanding that led to the slave trade is the same lack of understanding many people have about animals today. When slaves were brought over from Africa, many people believed they were not humans, that they didn't have feelings. Many people believe that primates and other animals don't have feelings, too, but they do.

If it hurts me, it must hurt the other ones twice as much.

Jealousy ought to be tragic, to save it from being ridiculous.

There's always going to be somebody worse off than me.

Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.

Every one thinkes his sacke heaviest.

That argument is just as offensive as if somebody from a foreign country asked, “Why are you guys so outraged by the attack on the World Trade Center when Americans kill far more Americans than Al Qaeda ever has?” It’s just as offensive.

No matter how bad someone has it, there are others who have it worse. Remembering that makes life a lot easier and allows you to take pleasure in the blessings you have been given.

CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

If we threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

As much as a given condition can be bad at a moment in time, it could be a lot worse.

In America people get depressed for no reason. They say, 'I'm sad my boyfriend didn't call me.' I tell them, 'How would you like to spend 12 hours on a line to get bread or a chicken?' That is depressing.

And yet to every bad there is a worse.

In some of the Israeli media, but not all, they read about very nasty things done by Israeli settlers and soldiers to Palestinian Arabs. This is a pain in the neck for many Israelis. They say: Leave us alone, what can we do about it? Or they say: Look at Syria, look at Iraq, the West Bank is paradise by comparison. I was one of the first to say, shortly after the Six-Day War, that occupation is corrupting. It corrupts the occupier and, in a different way, it corrupts the occupied.

There are a lot of ups and downs. But there are always people who have it worse.

That which makes the vanity of others unbearable to us is that which wounds our own.

Happiness doesn't require laughter, only well-being and a sense that the world is breaking someone else's heart, not mine.

I know things aren't perfect for women in the U.K. and in America, but there are women in the rest of the world who have it far worse.