Apathy Quotes

The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.

Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.

Any man filled with empathy is capable of gaining valuable insights on the human condition through the suffering of others. You do not need to suffer to know suffering, but you need empathy first to identify and feel the suffering of others around you.

I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame.

Lack of something to feel important about is almost the greatest tragedy a man may have.

Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There ain't any cool willow trees- except you grow your own in a bottle.

I might define a ‘journey’ as something that life itself calls me to. And I might then define a ‘trip’ as something I create to avoid a journey by mimicking a journey. And while fear is most certainly part and parcel of both, the latter is emboldened by fear while the former surrenders to it.

Not to he who is offensive to us are we most unfair but to he who does not concern us at all.

The Airlines lady who travels in the same compartment as us day after day, has bruises on her arms and face today and her eyes keep welling, but no one asks her why. Our eyes dart towards her, but we go back to travelling in too much proximity. Two inches from one another and expressionless.

This is a day of celebration!Today, we are divorcing the pastand marrying the present.Dance,and you will find Godin every room.Today, we are divorcing resentmentand marrying forgiveness.Sing,and God will find you in every tune.Today, we are divorcing indifferenceand marrying love.Drink, and play that tambourine against your thighs.We have so much celebrating to do!

Power without compassion is like a giant that blocks the sunlight.

To really change the world, we have to help people change the way they see things.

The gut is the seat of all feeling. Polluting the gut not only cripples your immune system, but also destroys your sense of empathy, the ability to identify with other humans.

Compassion only plagues those with hearts, much like a field of thorns only troubles those who bleed.

All the girls stared at me with hatred in their eyes. It was a big drama that had to be acted out. But deep down, nobody really cared. The other girls didn't care about Jennifer. Jennifer didn't care about me. I didn't care about anything.Everyone was so full of crap.

The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.

I suddenly felt that it was all the same to me whether the world existed or whether there had never been anything at all: I began to feel with all my being that there was nothing existing. At first I fancied that many things had existed in the past, but afterwards I guessed that there never had been anything in the past either, but that it had only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I guessed that there would be nothing in the future either. Then I left off being angry with people and almost ceased to notice them. Indeed this showed itself even in the pettiest trifles: I used, for instance, to knock against people in the street. And not so much from being lost in thought: what had I to think about? I had almost given up thinking by that time; nothing mattered to me. If at least I had solved my problems! Oh, I had not settled one of them, and how many there were! But I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared.

His room was a sickly dual-tone of crimson and charcoal, like an Untitled Rothko, the colours bleeding into each other horribly and then rather serenely. The overall effect was overwhelmingly unapologetic but it grew on you like a wart on your nose you didn't realise it was a part of your identity until one day it simply was. His room was his identity. Fiercely bold, avant-garde but never monotonous. He was red, he was black, he was bored, and he was fire. At least to me he seemed like fire. A tornado of fire that burned all in its wake leaving only the wretched brightness of annihilation. His room was where he charmed and disarmed us. We were his playthings. Nobody plays with fire and leaves unscarred. The fire soon seeps into chard and soot. The colours of his soul, his aura, and probably his heart if he didn't stop smoking.

They all had a thousand good economic and political reasons why they couldn’t stop. I’m not a politician or a businessman; how am I supposed to persuade them about these things. What are we supposed to do; quite likely the world will collapse and disappear under water; but at least that will happen for political and economic reasons we can all understand, at least it will happen with the help of science, technology and public opinion, with human ingenuity of all sorts! Not some cosmic catastrophe but just the same old reasons to do with the struggle for power and money and so on. There’s nothing we can do about that.

I think that certain emotions can compromise you when you’re at war. If you stop to mourn the dead, or even to breathe in what you’ve done, you’ll be dead as well. Your brain goes to a primitive region, one inaccessible to feelings beyond pure anger and pure fear. Your brain is reduced to two impulses: fight or flight. Kill or be killed. No room for more delicate feelings. No room for a soul. All you’re thinking about is how to maneuver your body in space so it will survive.

Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.

You live recklessly when you do not take God's law seriously or respond to the gospel properly. Reckless living can look like laziness and apathy. When you simply aren't motivated and tell yourself that God has forgiven you in Jesus, so you're not going to fight temptation and sin - that is reckless living, and it's far more dangerous than you realize.

You'll learn. Silence and apathy are the best ways of saying Fuck You

...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

Lovecraft says he knows about tentaclesbut that motherfucker never bedded a girl from West Chesterand survivedShe was a toothachethat oneand she tasted like crackthe best thing about her was if I was ever hungryI could always make a meal out of whateverwas making rest at the corners of her mouthI can't remember her nameas is the case with most of themthen again I can't rememberhow many donuts I ate this morningor how many beers I'll drink tonight,tomorrow

One response was given by the innkeeper when Mary and Joseph wanted to find a room where the Child could be born. The innkeeper was not hostile; he was not opposed to them, but his inn was crowded; his hands were full; his mind was preoccupied. This§ is the answer that millions are giving today. Like a Bethlehem innkeeper, they cannot find room for Christ. All the accommodations in their hearts are already taken up by other crowding interests. Their response is not atheism. It is not defiance. It is preoccupation and the feeling of being able to get on reasonably well without Christianity.

They say that wisdom comes from suffering. This is not true. Wisdom comes from having unconditional empathy for all mankind. Any man filled with empathy is capable of gaining valuable insights on the human condition through the suffering of others. You do not need to suffer to know suffering, but you need empathy first to identify and feel the suffering of others around you. If you do not feel love for all mankind, nor see everyone around you as a valuable human and an extension of yourself, then you will never feel real empathy.

Apathy is sustainable only as long as injustice doesn't harm us--and we don't care that it's harming others. Apathy lasts only until injustice knocks on our door, and we're forced to look into its eyes.

Indifference may not wreck a man's life at any one turn but it will destroy him with a kind of dry-rot in the long run.

At the end of the day--of almost any day, regardless of what we have done or left undone--apathy tells us that it's perfectly acceptable to live with illusions of our own justice.

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.

When all that's left mediocrity and each day just bleeds into the next.

I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone.

Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.

We are not built for mediocrity, but we build it into our lives nonetheless.

The nonchalance irritated her more because it was not assumed.

LED lighting has its place: cold, detached, hollow places like office buildings, factories, fast food chains and public schools - places full of humans but no human emotions. LED lighting really belongs in the apathy of the digital age, where science and technology rules over friendship, love and freedom. Incandescent light bulbs have a warm yellow-orange glow like the glow of a nice fireplace, where friends and family might sit and talk together or where children might open Christmas presents, a glow that can project celluloid films and bring back old memories, a glow that can light the text of a paperback novel. Something that beautiful, with that much power, could never last very long in a time as depressing and uncertain as the 21st century.

less apathy,more empathy.

Things will happen that you can’t prevent, things will fall apart that you can’t hold together, but ultimately you’re shaping yourself and that final product speaks volumes about who you really are, not what people see you as or what you want to be.

it doesn't matter if Prince Charles falls off his horseor that the hummingbird is so seldomseenor that we are too senseless to goinsane.coffee. give us more of that NOTHINGcoffee.

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum qtd. in Halter)

When sweet lullabies are whispered into the sky, my heart is filled with with the sorrow of time. So when the kiss of a midnight moon ends, drop sweet nothings to fill my ear. Too many years to be sincere, and too many lost favorites that were never there.A tear or two, and maybe three; apathy is-and may not be me.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Apathy is the opposite of caring. If you’re apathetic towards something, then it isn’t something you want.

We may not choose apathy, but when we choose anything other than love and empathetic justice, we get apathy by default.

You can present the material, but you can't make me care.

Comfort...was the key ingredient to making the prisoner crave the prison.

The gut is the seat of all feeling.

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.

...the opposite of love is not hate -- it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate. Therefore, there's some way in which I can get to them.

It is curious what patches of hardness and tenderness lie side by side in men’s dispositions. I suppose he has some test by which he finds out whom Heaven cares for.

Just because you have stolen someone's heart, luckily owned and occupied as a home, doesn't give you the audacity to enforce hurtful policies.

If we could change just one thing in time, what would we change?WARS, so that we could learn by our mistakes?FAMINE, so that we could feed the world's populace?DISEASE, so that we would never have any sick?POLLUTION, so that we would live in a pristine environment?GREED, so that we all learn that life isn't all about money?OLD AGE, so that we could all live forever?LOVE, so that we could all live in peace and harmony?BEING ALONE, so that we would never-ever be alone throughout life?MAN'S APATHY, so that he would truly understand what it's all about?The choice is hard, because no matter where we start, we will always leave out someone and something.

Our actions in the present build the staircase to the future. The question is whether that staircase is going up or down.

I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving.""Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?""Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well.""But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested. "Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said."But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!""That's terrible!" Nero cried.

Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

Choose empathy over apathy.

Tolerance is a tremendous virtue but the immediate neighbours of tolerance are apathy and weakness.