Best 283 quotes in «apathy quotes» category

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.

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death. Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another.

The apocalypse didn't happen overnight. The world didn't end in a satisfying climax of explosive special effects. It was slow. It was boring. It was one little thing at a time. One moral compromise, one abandoned ideal, one more justified injustice. No dramatic wave of destruction sweeping across the world, just scattered spots of rot forming throughout the decades, seemingly isolated incidents until the moment they all merged.

The dead know everything, but don't give a damn.

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. Bad bacteria in the gut creates neurological issues. Autism can be cured by detoxifying the bellies of young children. People who think that feelings come from the heart are wrong. The gut is where you feel the loss of a loved one first. It's where you feel pain and a heavy bulk of your emotions. It's the central base of your entire immune system. If your gut is loaded with negative bacteria, it affects your mind. Your heart is the seat of your conscience. If your mind is corrupted, it affects your conscience. The heart is the Sun. The gut is the Moon. The pineal gland is Neptune, and your brain and nervous system (5 senses) are Mercury. What affects the moon or sun affects the entire universe within. So, if you poison the gut, it affects your entire nervous system, your sense of reasoning, and your senses.

The gut is the seat of all feeling.

The fundamental basis by which the court’s decision might be made is, in itself, imperfect and subject to contradictions. There is very little consideration given to a priori knowledge regarding the circumstances being presented and as a result, arguments must be made empirically, under the assumption that assumptions themselves are, in fact, likely to give way to specious reasoning...Decisions must be made meticulously and according to specific, yet immeasurable criteria that can only be further manipulated by any cunning lawyer with the ability to make emotional pleas based on a requisite amount of inconsequential evidence to affect a decision beneficial to his clients. And so, in this respect, the law is capable of proving nothing except that its absurd attention to detail is really a kind of a façade meant to cover up the fact that a truly logical and just way to deal with such matters has not yet been devised. And the absence of adequate definition to its principles has given way to a kind of apathy among the men employed by the courts, who want nothing more now than to make a living for themselves and their families and not work themselves into too much of a frenzy about how little can be changed through their own initiative. Thus things aren’t likely to.

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.

The important thing is for me to feel love towards my fellow human beings—and sometimes, that has to be at a distance.

The principle locations of exploitation have moved, through the mechanism of 'globalisation', to where most of us can't see them and don't really care about them if we do.

The nonchalance irritated her more because it was not assumed.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves.

There are no good or evil people. There is only a great, unfathomable mob trampling itself underfoot. The life-giving sources of the old morality have dried up and vanished in the sands of oblivion. There's no other source to draw from, no place to refresh oneself. There is no example, no inspiration. It is night. A night of indifference, apathy, chaos.

There is no shame in feeling bad about having to kill. The shame comes when you no longer care.

There was nothing abstract or theoretical in his world. The stars had no significance. The sky was not interesting unless it showed probability of rain. He ate corn, corn, corn. He ate beans, beans, beans.

The scary thing about apathy is that it is never conscious. We don’t wake up every morning choosing to be apathetic – but we must consider a responsibility when we choose to believe that we can leave the world as it is, and meaningful changes are too radical to pursue.

The young woman had read a good many novels, and she had seen a good many films; this education by newspaper, serial and film had, in a thousand and one ways, blunted her sensibilities to the wonderful; reading about and seeing impossible events had prepared her to be un-astonished by the most improbable phenomena. All the same, her terror had brought with it a stupefaction, and the doctor's voice drew her from a species of torpor that came close to swooning.

The top three symptoms that I observed in high altitude workers were: 1. Forgetfulness & Confusion; 2. Irritability; 3. Fatigue & Apathy.

The world won't be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

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.

This is the kind of paradox, I think, of what it is to be a halfway intelligent American right now, and probably also a Western European, is that there are things we know are right, and good, and would be better for us to do, but constantly it's like "Yeah, but, you know, it's so much funnier and nicer to go do something else." and "Who cares?" and "It's all bullshit anyway.

They wrote to me and said something about it, and I said that if it doesn't involve any work, I'll do it. (On being named Minnesota's first Poet Laureate)

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.

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

Though he felt a little guilt over disappearing, it wasn't even guilt, just sadness over not even wanting to call her.

Today we’re all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy towards our work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

To be poor is to suffer. It's the kind of suffering that freezes the heart stone cold.

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)

Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.

Una volta aveva letto un romanzo d'amore che le aveva prestato la sorella. Non aveva capito niente di quelle emozioni e si era annoiata da morire. Era anormale? Il suo corpo e il suo cuore sarebbero stati eternamente sordi a quel genere di richiami?

To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.

Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy.

We are all transformed by stardust, say both the wisest and most unhinged scholars of our day. Therefore, if one could be transported to the stars, one could reform her body and her mind and become a person different than the flawed wretch she currently is. It is a risky proposition, trusting the fickle cosmic winds to better a terrestrial, mortal body, but what is magic if not a declaration that one no longer cares?

We are living a shallow, hollow Christianity and hardly realize it. Our Christianity looks nothing like the Book of Acts, and we somehow have no problem with that. It is anemic and weak compared to the apostolic glory days. We have started to rewrite our theology based on our lack of experience, rather than based upon the scriptures.

We are being bought off by our affair with the contemporary drug of choice: ease.

What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.

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

We’re losing society to apathy, to digital technology, the people who care about nobody else but themselves. They share every little detail of their stupid lives online as if the world even gives a damn… digital technology is getting smarter and society is getting dumber,” Mandy whispered in a voice filled with disbelief. “Society is… it’s slipping away.

What a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everything-- makes one gentle and pliable.

We cannot play ostrich. Democracy just cannot flourish amid fear. Liberty cannot bloom amid hate. Justice cannot take root amid rage. America must get to work. In the chill climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing wind. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust. We must dissent from a nation that has buried its head in the sand, waiting in vain for the needs of its poor, its elderly, and its sick to disappear and just blow away. We must dissent from a government that has left its young without jobs, education or hope. We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.

You are a soulless monster whose fright mask is incapable of capturing human expressions.

Yes, this was the evening hour when—how long ago it seemed!—I always felt so well content with life. Then, what awaited me was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. This was the same hour, but with a difference; I was returning to a cell, and what awaited me was a night haunted by forebodings of the coming day. And so I learned that familiar paths traced in the dusk of summer evenings may lead as well to prisons as to innocent, untroubled sleep.

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

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.

While failure is a voyage of discovery, apathy is a voyage of defeat. I would rather fail than give up.

While ignorance might be bliss, apathy can be deadly.

All hippies around now just represent complete apathy.

You’re still human,” Shallan said, reaching across, putting her hand on Navani’s knee. “We can’t all be emotionless chunks of rock like Jasnah.” Navani smiled. “She sometimes had the empathy of a corpse, didn’t she?

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

You still long for freedom, my friend, and that longing is your cage. You do not even realize what you are missing, or what it is that you are longing for, but something in you calls out to be aware. You have become parched in the desert of apathy, and thirst for the Bacchic springs forever out of your reach. And while your highest aspects thirst for freedom, so too your basest roots thrust outwards and strangle the hopes—