Quotes about Apathy

From its abstractionist posture, intellectualism typically conveys the impression that it is chiefly or only from passion that rationality can suffer; the folk-wisdom among rationalists is that emotion is the primary pollutant obstructing rational processes. But it is also, and far more pertinently in our age, from apathy that rationality suffers: when people do not care enough to think about received opinions, when they have no inherent drive to dissociate themselves from the dogmas and biases of their age, when their own freedom and the transcendence of the truth mean so little to them that they will not endure the painful task of self-reflection, when the very scale or profundity of problems the modern age has generated invite a defeatist attitude, then indeed it is truer than ever what Kierkegaard wrote a century and a half ago: "What the age needs is passion," not barbaric but sublimated energy. Hegel's truism about history--that "nothing great is ever accomplished without passion"--explains a great deal about our effete culture, our sterile education and stagnant politics. Like Marx and Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Hegel wrote out of a prodigious reservoir of passion that did not in the least prevent them from being critical and rational. In our present era--wracked by a morbid boredom and an unshakeable conviction that there is nothing worth learning and preserving--I believe the lesson is clear. Difficult and risky as it may be, heat as well as light is called for.

Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

-THE GENERAL PUBLIC'S APATHY REGARDING VIRTUALLY ANYTHING SUBSTANTIVE IS PARTLY DUE TO SENSORY OVERLOAD.  WHAT HAS OCCURED IS A CULTURAL AND NEUROCHEMICAL SHELL SHOCKING INTO COGNITIVE DISSONANCE AND CHRONIC SOMATOPSYCHOSIS. -.-

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

From a shamanic perspective, the psychic blockade that prevents otherwise intelligent adults from considering the future of our world – our obvious lack of future, if we continue on our present path – reveals an occult dimension.  It is like a programming error written into the software designed for the modern mind, which has endless energy to expend on the trivial and treacly, sports statistic or shoe sale, but no time to spare for the torments of the Third World, for the mass extinction of species to perpetuate a way of life without a future, for the imminent exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves, or for the fine print of the Patriot Act.  This psychic blockade is reinforced by a vast propaganda machine spewing out crude as well as sophisticated distractions, encouraging individuals to see themselves as alienated spectators of their culture, rather than active participants in a planetary ecology.

“What is happening to our world is almost too colossal for human comprehension to contain.  But it is a terrible, terrible thing,” lamented Arundhati Roy, the Indian novelist – turned – activist, who documented and protested the enormous dam projects in India, orchestrated by the World Bank, displacing 30 million people from their homes, with little tangible result beyond the enrichment of multinational corporations and an increase in India’s debts.  “To contemplate its girth and circumference, to attempt to define it, to try and fight it all at once, is impossible.  The only way to combat it is by fighting specific wars in specific ways.”   But among the people I knew in New York, there was little contemplation of the situation, and no courage, anger, desire, or will to fight against it.

What you permit, you promote.

There is a disctict differenc between between live like you were dying and live like you will eventually die. The difference lies in the attitude.

It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.

Happiness, enthusiasm, joy and love are just as contagious as sadness, apathy, despair and fear. Which will you spread?

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing. With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.

“I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction.”

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference and undernourishment. (Robert Maynard Hutchins, American pedagogue, 1899-1977)

There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones. (Anwar El Sadat, president of Egypt, 1918-1981)

Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.

Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.

There is so much apathy in the world today . . . but who cares?

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society.

Every great sin ought to rouse a great anger. Mob law is better than no law at all. A community which rises in its wrath to punish with misdirected anger a great wrong is in a healthier moral condition than a community which looks upon its perpetration with apathy and unconcern.

The long mechanic pacings to and fro, The set, gray life, and apathetic end.

Much of the indifference, apathy, and even cruelty we see has its origin in the false education given the young concerning the rights of animals, and their duty towards them.

The continual intrusion into our minds of the hammering noises of arguments and propaganda can lead to two kinds of reactions. It may lead to apathy and indifference, the I-don't-care reaction, or to a more intensified desire to study and to understand. Unfortunately, the first reaction is the more popular one.

The preacher and the writer may seem to have an... easy task. At first sight, it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men's hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words, shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means, in practice, turning a face of flint toward the easy cliché, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology - dear, no doubt, to the faithful, but utterly meaningless to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospel.

Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.

Tolerance is composed of nine parts apathy to one of brotherly love.

Above all, it is not necessary that we should have any unexpected, extraordinary experiences in meditation. This can happen, but if it does not, it is not a sign that the meditation period has been useless. Not only at the beginning, but repeatedly, there will be times when we feel a great spiritual dryness and apathy, an aversion, even an inability to meditate. We dare not be balked by such experiences. Above all, we must not allow them to keep us from adhering to our meditation period with great patience and fidelity. It is, therefore, not good for us to take too seriously the many untoward experiences we have with ourselves in meditation. It is here that our old vanity and our illicit claims upon God may creep in by a pious detour, as if it were our right to have nothing but elevating and fruitful experiences, and as if the discovery of our own inner poverty were quite beneath our dignity. With that attitude, we shall make no progress.

Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm.