Success Quote by Myriam Miedzian

Power loves to drape itself in the language of duty, but Miedzian yanks the curtain back: the job, as institutions quietly define it, is not to save lives. It is to manage risk, protect careers, maintain the machine. The line works because it doesn’t accuse any single villain; it indicts a culture where “priorities” are built into incentives. In that world, compassion isn’t a virtue, it’s a liability - the kind of liability that makes you hesitate, ask inconvenient questions, refuse the acceptable collateral damage.

Her phrasing is blunt on purpose. “Halls of power” is almost architectural: compassion doesn’t just get rejected by individuals, it echoes off stone walls designed to filter it out. The second sentence turns moral failure into workplace math. If being “concerned about human life” threatens employment, then the institution has already decided which lives count and which outcomes are tolerable. It’s a critique of bureaucratic self-preservation disguised as realism.

The gender turn at the end sharpens the blade. Men are punished for compassion; women are pre-screened out for it. That’s not only sexism, it’s a reminder that power sorts people by presumed temperament. Women are often coded as “too emotional” and therefore “unfit” for decision-making, while men are rewarded for hardness until softness becomes a career-ending deviation. Miedzian’s intent is less to preach than to warn: when empathy is treated as disqualifying, the cruelty isn’t incidental - it’s policy, dressed as professionalism.