Daily Inspiration Quote by Lakhdar Brahimi

Brahimi’s line reads like a diplomatic x-ray: it doesn’t praise “the underdog” so much as warn you how politically combustible that instinct can be. The repetition of “very, very” is telling. A diplomat doesn’t usually double down on emotion unless he’s trying to make elites take seriously a force they prefer to manage as optics. He’s naming empathy as something close to a reflex - natural, strong, and therefore available to be mobilized.

The craft of the quote is in its careful partitioning of blame. “Foreigners in particular” acknowledges the deep historical memory of occupation, intervention, and humiliation that runs through postcolonial politics. But Brahimi refuses the easy morality play where all suffering is imported. “Also by their own people” is the hard addendum: oppression can be domestic, and grievance can be exploited by local power as readily as it’s provoked from abroad. That pivot is the subtext of many conflicts Brahimi worked around - where external actors become both scapegoat and accelerant, while internal regimes and factions convert pain into loyalty.

Contextually, this is the worldview of a mediator who’s seen sympathy become a currency. Empathy for the pushed-around can be humane, but it can also become a shortcut to taking sides, especially when narratives of victimhood are clean and villains are conveniently foreign. Brahimi is describing a psychological fact with strategic consequences: people don’t just want justice; they want recognition of injury. Whoever supplies that recognition - insurgents, demagogues, or states - can inherit legitimacy.