Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Those who are comfortable cannot truly understand the suffering of those who are not.
In plain terms
You cannot understand another's pain if you are safe.
What can you take from it?
Recognize your own comfort may blind you to others' pain.

Where it applies

  • social work
  • activism
  • interpersonal relationships

Putting it to work

  • listen to direct experience
  • acknowledge limitations

Questions to consider

  • What pain do you struggle to understand?
  • How does comfort affect your empathy?

Another view

Shared knowledge or imagination can sometimes bridge the gap of experience.

More from Alexander Solzhenitsyn

  1. Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D'you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men's …

    Permalink to quote #13
  2. You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything he's no longer in your power - …

    Permalink to quote #15
  3. The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must t…

    Permalink to quote #12

Related quotes

  1. All for myself the sigh would swell, The tear of anguish start; I little knew what wilder woe Had filled the Poet's heart. I did not know the nights of gloom, …

    Anne BronteAnne Bronte quote #1
  2. He who feels it, knows it Lord.

    Bob MarleyBob Marley quote #24
  3. None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.

    Pearl BuckPearl Buck quote #32