Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated…

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question is what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. People don’t become inured to what they are shown — if that’s the right way to describe what happens — because of the quantity of images dumped on them. It is passivity that dulls feeling.

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Regarding the Pain of Others (2003), p.101, Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 0-374-24858-3

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