MLK Describes "True Altruism"

True altruism is more than the capacity to pity; it is the capacity to sympathize. Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul. Pity may arise from interest in an abstraction called humanity, but sympathy grows out of a concern for "a certain man," a particular needy human being who lies at life's roadside. Sympathy is feeling with the person in need—his pain, agony and burdens.

Martin Luther King, Jr.,  On Being a Good Neighbor (sermon), pp. 7-8