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(While accepting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award) I've been thinking about why you have to get famous to get an award for helping other people...If your name is John Doe, and you work night and day doing things for your helpless neighbors, what you get for your effort is tired. So, Mr. and Mrs. Doe, and all of you who give of yourselves, to those who carry too big a burden to make it on their own, I want you to reach out and take your share of this...Because if I have earned it, so too have you.
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Frank Sinatra
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The inventor of the highway guard rail did not get a Nobel Prize, nor are humanitarian awards given to designers of clearer prescription drug labels.
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Steven Pinker (Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress)
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It’s just how it is. Not everybody was born to be inherently ‘good’. The world is going to be filled with different characters, different flavours, different levels of respectability and whatnot, and Louis just so happens to be on the lower ranks. He’s not good, he’s not brave, and he’s not out to save anyone except himself. Even fairytales have their villains — it’s a part of life. And it’s always been that way. Louis’ always been a bit harsher around the edges. He certainly isn’t going to be winning any “Humanitarian of the Year” awards, that’s for sure. And he doesn’t mind it so much, being thoroughly unaffected by anything and everything and totally removed from his peers and their very trivial lives. Because he’s not like the rest of them. That’s the thing. They’re all the fucking same. With their money and their uppity attitudes and twattiness and their preconceived notions and recycled sentences that disappear as quickly as they come. The same.
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Velvetoscar
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I admit I still recoil against a society that has so slipped in caring that ordinary human sharing and thoughtfulness appears to warrant a"humanitarian award" and diligent effort seems too often the exception rather than the rule.
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Marian Wright Edelman (the measure of our success: a letter to my children and yours)
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It's not the awards and prizes that add value to one's work, it's the work that adds value to the awards and prizes.
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Abhijit Naskar
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It's a little weird that I'm getting an award for being nice and generous and kind... which is what we're all supposed to do for one another.
That's the point of being human.
I think that kindness is an innate quality that we all have.
We need to see more of it in the world.
I want everyone to know that we all really, really love one another.
Deep down, we all love one another.
We need to get back to that.
My wish is that we all try.
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Ellen DeGeneres
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Someone asked me the other day, why haven't I won any awards! To which I say - how do you award the Everest! You may designate it as the tallest peak and all that, but how does that make any difference in the greatness of the Everest! Or how do you award the sun and the trees and the birds and the ocean? You simply cannot! You know why? Because the greatest forces of good are beyond recognition.
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Abhijit Naskar (Find A Cause Outside Yourself: Sermon of Sustainability)
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4.8.22
Congratulations to All of the recipients who received National Humanitarian Awards in Barbados.
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Charmaine J. Forde
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Mission over Recognition (The Sonnet)
Let me show you what is
action without expectation!
What is it to do your duty,
without regard for recognition!
Quite often I lose count of my works,
Yet I've never had a fancy book launch.
I write in silence, I release in silence,
I have no relation to praise and applause.
I am the peak of humanitarian literature,
All without an ounce of support or award.
I am not a writer, I am world reformer,
My first concern is an integrated world.
Whatever happens next, know that it had
nothing to do with the making of a mission.
It's easy to bask in the glory of the sun,
not so much to fuel solar combustion.
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Abhijit Naskar (Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets)
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I am the peak of humanitarian literature,
All without an ounce of support or award.
I am not a writer, I am world reformer,
My first concern is an integrated world.
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Abhijit Naskar (Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets)
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Quite often I lose count of my works,
Yet I've never had a fancy book launch.
I write in silence, I release in silence,
I have no relation to praise and applause.
I am the peak of humanitarian literature,
All without an ounce of support or award.
I am not a writer, I am world reformer,
My first concern is an integrated world.
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Abhijit Naskar (Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets)
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Heather Mills
As a tireless campaigner for many charitable causes, Heather Mills joined Diana in support of the banishment of land mines all over the world. For her efforts against land mines, Ms. Mills was awarded the inaugural UNESCO Children in Need Award. She is also Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Association, and she has been active in helping amputees by promoting the use of prostheses.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was a truly remarkable human being. All too often today we refer to people as icons; in Diana’s case, the word is wholly appropriate. She was a wife, a mother, a humanitarian, and a true ambassador.
Despite what the press wanted us to believe, Diana didn’t court publicity. On the contrary, she did far more behind the scenes to help people than in front.
Her willingness to reveal her own frailties has, I am sure, encouraged many people to seek help and come to terms with their own personal problems.
She was able to reach out to people in a way that few can. In the early days of HIV and AIDS, when everyone was so afraid of this so-called new disease, Diana’s simple gesture of shaking hands with an AIDS patient at a hospital in London broke down the taboo and removed the stigma around the disease. Her palace advisers had initially tried to dissuade her from making this gesture, but Diana--who always led with her heart--went against them and did what she believed to be right.
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
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This is a story of personal fascism as opposed to organized fascism. [It] indicates how it is possible for us to have a Gestapo, if the country should go fascist. A character like Monty would qualify brilliantly for the leadership of the Belsen concentration camp. Fascism hates weakness in people; minorities. Monty hates fairies, Negroes, Jews, and foreigners. In the book, Monty murders a fairy. He could have murdered a Negro, a foreigner, or a Jew.” Despite the message being thickly ladled at times, Crossfire’s story was deftly told. Robert Young’s earnest homilies about brotherhood don’t carry half the weight of Robert Mitchum explaining how ugly realities released by the war can’t be neatly tucked away. “The snakes are loose,” he says, like a man who knows how bad it’s going to get. Crossfire shocked everyone, including Schary and Scott, by being a box-office hit. Whether its success was due to a timely message or taut storytelling, no one was sure (although surveys prior to the film’s release suggested little public interest in ethnically themed stories). As the picture reaped humanitarian awards, anti-Communist crusaders moved in on Scott and Dmytryk. Both were branded Red and sent to jail, members of the infamous Hollywood Ten.
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Eddie Muller (Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (Turner Classic Movies))
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In fact, there are two types of capital at stake for the humanitarian professionals of the asylum industry: one material, the other the social capital awarded to "do-gooders.
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Adrienne Pine (Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry)
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I need no praise, I need no offering,
A life of service is my paradise.
I need no reward, I need no award,
Nothing can put a price on sacrifice.
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Abhijit Naskar (When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation)
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Question: Have you ever considered winning an award?
Naskar: Not really - I am a misfit - not quite mainstream enough for any of the fields. Besides, I am here to bridge cultures, not win awards.
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Abhijit Naskar (Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch)
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No Throne, No Kingdom (The Sonnet)
I need no throne, I need no kingdom,
Human hearts are my heavenly abode.
I need no badge, I need no scepter,
Reason is my partner, warmth my zip code.
I need no praise, I need no offering,
A life of service is my paradise.
I need no reward, I need no award,
Nothing can put a price on sacrifice.
I know no etiquette, I know no manners,
These are all constructs of shallowness.
Humanity ought to drive behavior,
Humility destroys all narrowness.
To forge wholeness and sanity is our mission.
Ending all falsity let's be incarnate integration.
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Abhijit Naskar (When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation)
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College students often ask me why anyone should pay for professional journalism when there are plenty of people out there, like themselves, willing to write blogs for free? One answer is that government and corporations are investing millions of dollars into their professional communications campaigns. We deserve at least a few professionals working full-time to evaluate all this messaging and doing so with some level of expertise in ascertaining the truth.
Young people are not alone in their skepticism about the value of professional journalism. A 2010 Gallup Poll showed Americans at an under 25 percent confidence in newspapers and television news—a record low. Pew Research shows faith in traditional news media spiking downward as Internet use spikes upward, and that a full 42 percent believe that news organizations hurt democracy. This is twice the percentage who believed that in the mid-1980s, before the proliferation of the net.
As cultural philosopher Jürgen Habermas offered during his acceptance speech of a humanitarian award in 2006, "The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralized access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus." To be sure, the rise of citizen journalism brings us information that the mainstream media lacks either the budget for or fortitude to cover. Initial reports of damage during Hurricane Katrina came from bloggers and amateur videographers. However, these reports also inflated body counts and spread rumors about rape and violence in the Superdome that were later revealed not to have occurred.
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Douglas Rushkoff (Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now)
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Withhold your trust from the critics, the scholars, the writers, the award-winners, the showrunners, because they will write about crime and decorate their art with crime, and it will bring you to tears, but identification of a burning building does not extinguish a fire. Knowing what is right doesn’t make us right. It makes us responsible.
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Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)