"Compassion is not pity ... compassion never considers an object as weak or inferior. Compassion, one might say, works from a strength born of awareness of shared weakness, and not from someone else's weakness. And from the awareness of the mutuality of us all. Thus to put down another as in pity is to put down oneself."
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Source : Matthew Fox (1999). “A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice”, p.20, Simon and Schuster