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Reflections on Hate and the Trump for President Campaign

[additional-authors]
October 16, 2016

When Donald Trump turned on Hillary Clinton in the 2nd Presidential Debate and said “You have hate in your heart” his obvious projection revealed what is in Trump’s own heart. Not only is he consumed with himself, as classical narcissists are, but anyone who isn’t fawning all over him and those who criticize him, as far as he is concerned, are sorely deficient, bad, sad, a disaster, and worthy of being pummeled, slandered, and attacked mercilessly – the sign of a true playground bully.

I have considered the corrosive nature of hatred, and having just emerged from Yom Kippur when the Jewish people strives to self-critique, improve our lives and exorcise negativity and destructive impulses from our hearts, minds, and souls, I searched my book of quotations on the theme of hate, and I offer these pearls of wisdom.

I begin with a famous statement of German Pastor Martin Niemoller who criticized Hitler in the 1930s and suffered seven years in a concentration camp as a result:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

– Pastor Martin Niemoller, German Protestant thinker, teacher and activist

“Thou shalt not hate another in one’s heart!”

–Leviticus 19:18

“I feel fairly certain that my hatred harms me more than the people whom I hate.”

-Max Frisch, Swiss architect, playwright, and novelist

“One of the reasons people cling to their hate so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”

–James Baldwin, American novelist, writer

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

–Hermann Hesse, German poet, novelist, painter

“Hatred like love feeds on the merest trifles. Everything adds to it. Just as the being we love can do no wrong, so the one we hate can do no right.”

–Honoré de Balzac, French novelist, playwright

“Never let yourself hate any person. It is the most devastating weapon of one’s enemies.”

-Katherine Hepburn’s father

“Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.”

-Anton Chekhov, Russian short-story writer and dramatist

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

– The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is human nature to hate the person whom you have hurt.”

-Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Roman Senator and historian (c.55-c.120)

“In time we hate that which we often fear.”

-William Shakespeare

“People hate those to whom they have to lie.”

-Victor Hugo, French poet, novelist, and dramatist

“There is a revisionist theory, one of those depth-psychology distortions or half-truths that crop up like toadstools whenever the emotions get infected by the mind that says we hate worst those who have done the most for us. According to this belittling and demeaning theory, gratitude is a festering sore.”

-Wallace Stegner, American novelist and writer

“If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a person well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”

-John Steinbeck, American novelist

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.”

-Maya Angelou, American poet

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”

-George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright, critic and polemicist

“Never waste a minute thinking about people you don't like.”

-President Dwight D. Eisenhower

“I can forgive the whites in America for hating the blacks; I cannot forgive them, however, for making the blacks believe that they are worthy of being hated.”

-James Baldwin, American writer

“Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;

People love in haste, but they detest at leisure.”

–Lord Byron, British poet

“I used to think that people who regarded everyone benignly were a mite simple or oblivious or just plain lax — until I tried it myself. Then I realized that they made it only look easy. Even the Berditchever Rebbe, revered as a man who could strike a rock and bring forth a stream, was continually honing his intentions. ‘Until I remove the thread of hatred from my heart,’ he said of his daily meditations, ‘I am, in my own eyes, as if I did not exist.’”

-Marc Barasch, American author, editor, and activist

“I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.”

-Booker T. Washington, African-American educator, author, orator

“There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.”

-Gautama Buddha

“No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to their human heart than its opposite.”

-Nelson Mandela, South African President

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