Humanitarian Gesture Quotes

We can all make a difference in the lives of others in need, because it is the most simple of gestures that make the most significant of differences.

Today, somehow in some way, I will manage to help somebody who doesn't look or talk like me, someone who is in need and doesn't care about the outer me, someone who is hopefully able to recognize a sincere gesture of kindness and love.

We could add privilege theory to Žižek’s long list of fake left ist “radicals” who bombard the existing system. As with “ Médecins sans frontières , Greenpeace, feminist and anti-racist campaigns,” privilege theory runs the risk of falling prey to what Žižek names “interpassivity”: the risk of “doing things not in order to achieve something, but to prevent something from really happening, really changing. All this frenetic humanitarian, Politically Correct, etc. activity fi ts the formula of ‘Let’s go on changing something all the time so that, globally, things will remain the same!’ ” The problem with privilege theory—especially as vulgarized in liberal universities—is that it ends up becoming “an empty gesture which obliges no one to do anything definite.” White liberal multiculturalists put on display their “progressive” leanings by calling for inclusivity and tolerance, parading their own self-critique—in a pleasure-ridden act of virtue signaling—as a model for others to follow. Whiteness or white privilege is treated as a reified thing that could be singled out and denounced, and not as “a set of power relations,” as Charles W. Mills insightfully puts it. Privilege-checking does not necessarily translate into campus radicalism. It remains utopian and impotent when it fails to confront capitalism itself: “The true utopia is the belief that the existing global system can reproduce itself indefinitely; the only way to be truly ‘realistic’ is to think what, within the coordinates of this system, cannot but appear as impossible.” The advocates of privilege theory are today’s “true utopians.” They muzzle ideology critique, believing that gradualist reform is the key to social transformation. But privilege theory’s antiracist insights are diluted, never really touching the reality of domination and exploitation, never “demanding ‘impossible’ changes of the system itself.

The decision to donate Mectizan grew the pie. Initially, most of the increase went to West African and Latin American countries, communities and citizens. But Merck subsequently benefited as well, even though such benefits weren’t the primary reason for Merck’s decision. The MDP boosted Merck’s reputation as a highly responsible enterprise. In January 1988, Business Week described Merck as one of ‘the best in public service’ and called the MDP ‘an unusual humanitarian gesture’. Fortune named Merck America’s most admired company for seven years in a row between 1987 and 1993, a record never equalled before or since. This reputation for serving society in turn attracted both investors and stakeholders.

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.

The pact with Russia and the ensuing war and partition of Poland among the two showed that Hitler could not be trusted and that the Soviet Union was in the same category as fascist Germany. In Czernovitz, our townspeople reacted in a humanitarian way by offering the refugees shelter for the night, a meal, a place to sleep. However, some Poles were such antisemites that when they realized that they were offered shelter by a Jewish family, refused to accept that humane gesture. However, within a few weeks, through the good offices of the Red Cross, the refugees were sorted out, some how.

A proclamation like “Immigrants steal our jobs,” and its rejoinder, “Our economy needs immigrants” treats immigrants as commodities to be traded in capitalist markets and discarded if deemed defective. Migrant justice must not endorse categories of desirable or undesirable, expectations of gratitude or assimilation, gestures of charitable humanitarianism, tropes of migrating to modernity, the commodification of labor to benefit capital accumulation, or state borders and other carceral regimes as legitimate institutions of governance.

Look At The Stars (The Sonnet) Look up my friend, look at the stars, You know some of them exploded long ago. Yet their light keeps shining even when they're gone, For none of their rays is tainted by ego. Not a kernel of kindness ever goes to waste, Not a gesture of gentleness ever goes awry. The unselfish one is the happiest person in the world, You'll find joy when you answer someone's cry. You're thirsty, you seek a glass of water, That is just plain necessity. Someone else is thirsty, you share your last glass, That my friend, is plain humanity. When self-preservation turns trivial, ‘n humanity common sense, That's when a star is born, amidst all self-serving nuisance.

I’ve visited more lands than I’ve set foot on, I’ve seen more landscapes than I’ve laid eyes on, I’ve experienced more sensations than all the ones I’ve felt, Because however much I felt I never felt enough, And life always pained me, it was always too little, and I was unhappy. ... I cross my arms on the table, I lay my head on my arms, And I need to want to cry, but I don’t know where to find the tears. No matter how hard I try to pity myself, I don’t cry, My soul is broken under the curved finger that touches it. . . What will become of me? What will become of me? ... As it is I stay, I stay . . . I’m the one who always wants to leave And always stays, always stays, always stays. Until death I’ll stay, even if I leave I’ll stay, stay, stay . . . ... Make me human, O night, make me helpful and brotherly. Only humanitarianly can one live. Only by loving mankind, actions, the banality of jobs, Only in this way—alas! —only in this way can one live. Only this way, O night, and I can never be this way! I’ve seen all things, and marveled at them all, But it was too much or too little—I’m not sure which—and I suffered. I’ve lived every emotion, every thought, every gesture, And remained as sad as if I’d wanted to live them and failed to. I’ve loved and hated like everyone else, But for everyone else this was normal and instinctive, Whereas for me it was always an exception, a shock, a release valve, a convulsion. ... I’m unable to feel, to be human, to reach out From inside my sad soul to my fellow earthly brothers. And even were I to feel, I’m unable to be useful, practical, quotidian, definite, To have a place in life, a destiny among men, To have a vocation, a force, a will, a garden, A reason for resting, a need for recreation, Something that comes to me directly from nature.