אני אוהב את הכל. איני יכול שלא לאהוב את כל הבריות, את כל העמים. רוצה אני בכל מעמקי לב בתפארת הכל, בתקנת הכל. אהבתי לישראל היא יותר נלהבה. יותר עמוקה, אבל החפץ הפנימי מתפשט הוא בעזוז אהבתו על הכל ממש. אין לי כל צורך לכוף את רגש אהבה זה, הוא נובע ישר מעומק הקודש של החכמה של הנשמה הא-להית.
Be very wary of any ideology which proclaims you must have the utmost empathy and loyalty to complete and total strangers on the other side of the world but needn’t have any responsibility or loyalty to your parents, spouse and most of all your unborn child if they inconvenience you.
Dickens famously mocked "telescopic philanthropy" through the character Mrs. Jellyby, who neglects her own children to focus on missions in Africa:
"She was a lady of very remarkable strength of character who... devoted herself entirely to the public... [while] her own family were entirely neglected."
The father of modern conservatism Edmund Burke argued that social health begins in the "little platoon":
"To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind."
C.S. Lewis warned that the devil tries to turn our malice toward our neighbors and our love toward the "remote":
"The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary."
The late philosopher Roger Scruton often spoke on "Oikophobia" (the fear or hatred of home/one's own):
"The person who loves humanity but cannot stand his neighbor is a familiar type; so is the person who spends his life for the 'oppressed' while being a tyrant to his own children."
