Daily Inspiration Quote by Andrew Young

Young’s line lands like pastoral tough love: compassion without romanticizing victimhood. “Look at those they call unfortunate” starts by challenging the label itself. He doesn’t say “the unfortunate,” he says “those they call,” hinting that misfortune is often a story other people tell about you, sometimes to pity you, sometimes to excuse you, sometimes to keep you in place. Then he pivots: “at a closer view” - not surveillance, but scrutiny that refuses easy narratives. The payoff is blunt: “many of them are unwise.”

The intent isn’t to sneer at hardship; it’s to reframe agency. Coming from a clergyman shaped by the civil rights era and public service, Young knew how quickly society turns structural injustice into moral diagnosis, and also how easily people internalize that diagnosis as destiny. He walks a risky line: insisting that some suffering is self-inflicted without pretending all suffering is.

The subtext is a warning about the seductions of pity. Calling someone “unfortunate” can be a way to avoid the harder work of asking what choices, habits, or short-term thinking keep them stuck - and what support would actually change outcomes. “Unwise” is carefully chosen: softer than “bad,” more actionable than “doomed.” Wisdom can be taught, modeled, practiced.

Still, the phrase “many of them” matters. Young leaves room for the obvious truth his audience would know: plenty of misery is manufactured by unequal schools, racism, low wages, illness. His provocation is aimed at the reflex to treat every setback as fate, when sometimes it’s a curriculum problem - and the lesson is overdue.