Best 283 quotes in «apathy quotes» category

I stood there, watching her. The whole world was a dream, I realized. Everyone was acting in a bad soap opera. The whole world was one big FOX TV show.

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.

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.

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.

It is related of Buonaparte, that he one day rebuked a French lady for busying herself with politics. "Sire," replied she, "in a country where women are put to death, it is very natural that women should wish to know why." And, dear sisters, in a country where women are degraded and brutalized, and where their exposed persons bleed under the lash-- where they are sold in the shambles of "negro brokers"-- robbed of their heard earnings-- torn from their husbands, and forcibly plundered of their virtue and their offspring; surely in such a country, it is very natural that women should wish to know "the reason why"-- especially when these outrages of blood and nameless horror are practiced in violation of the principles of our Constitution. We do not, then, and cannot concede the position, that because this is a political subject women ought to fold their hands in idleness, and close their eyes and ears to the "horrible things" that are practiced in our land. The denial of our duty to act is a bold denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed "the white slaves of the North"-- for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.

Looking at Tim, one cannot help feeling great waves of uncertainty, an absence of aim, of purpose, as if he is a person who simply doesn’t matter.

Marvin disregarded it with cold loathing while his logic circuits chattered with disgust and tinkered with the concept of directing physical violence against it. Further circuits cut in saying, Why bother? What's the point? Nothing is worth getting involved in. Further circuits amused themselves by analyzing the molecular components of the door, and of the humanoids' brain cells.

Lovecraft says he knows about tentacles but that motherfucker never bedded a girl from West Chester and survived She was a toothache that one and she tasted like crack the best thing about her was if I was ever hungry I could always make a meal out of whatever was making rest at the corners of her mouth I can't remember her name as is the case with most of them then again I can't remember how many donuts I ate this morning or how many beers I'll drink tonight, tomorrow

Love letters to the depressed and the future heart broken I’m leaving the light on in my old street Hoping I see some surrender on the other side of town Blink twice if you can see me. Blink thrice if you need me. We’ve been walking alone for too long, putting all our rotten eggs in the same basket Skipping in the dark, singing do rei (forget) me.

Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or uncles, and only leave the house to go to the movies or to the nearest bar. "How're you making it?" on may ask, running into them along the block, or in the bar. "Oh, I'm TV-ing it"; with the saddest, sweetest, most shamefaced of smiles, and from a great distance. This distance one is compelled to respect; anyone who has traveled so far will not easily be dragged again into the world. There are further retreats, of course, than the TV screen or the bar. There are those who are simply sitting on their stoops, "stoned," animated for a moment only, and hideously, by the approach of someone who may lend them the money for a "fix." Or by the approach of someone from whom they can purchase it, one of the shrewd ones, on the way to prison or just coming out.

Men have nothing in common with me--there is no point of contact; they have foolish little feelings and foolish little vanities and impertinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being interested in him-- caring whether he is happy or isn't, or whether he is wealthy or poor, whether his sweetheart returns his love or not, whether his mother is sick or well, whether he is looked up to in society or not, whether his enemies will smite him or his friends desert him, whether his hopes will suffer blight or his political ambitions fail, whether he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected and despised in a foreign land? These things can never be important to the elephant; they are nothing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has nothing against the spider--he cannot get down to that remote level; I have nothing against man. The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent.

Me, I couldn’t give two halves of a quarter fuck when I was alive. I tried, I swear. It just wasn’t going to happen. In fact, the only thing I truly cared about was ensuring that I could comfortably not care without repercussion, and I was damn good at it.

Modern life is, for most of us, a kind of serfdom to mortgage, job and the constant assault to consume. Although we have more time and money than ever before, most of us have little sense of control over our own lives. It is all connected to the apathy that means fewer and fewer people vote. Politicians don’t listen to us anyway. Big business has all the power; religious extremism all the fear. But in the garden or allotment we are king or queen. It is our piece of outdoors that lays a real stake to the planet.

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie-- Dust unto dust-- The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die As all men must; Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell-- Too strong to strive-- Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell, Buried alive; But rather mourn the apathetic throng-- The cowed and the meek-- Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong And dare not speak!

Neither the next day, nor the day after that, did M. Folantin's unhappiness dissipate; he simply let himself drift, incapable of resisting this crushing feeling of depression. Mechanically, under a rainy sky, he would make his way to his office; then he would leave it, eat, and go to bed at nine, only to resume the following day the exact same routine; little by little he slid into complete spiritual apathy.

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

Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.

Participate in your life, don't just bear witness to the rain washing you away.

It was not our war, but it would be our disgrace, our shame. The West was filling to declare a war over the price of oil, but when it came to the wholesale slaughter of human beings we folded our hands across our chests and tapped our heels, with great anticipation that Sunday's sporting events would be wonderfully entertaining

Regardless of our efforts, we have arrived at the inevitable destination of apathy.

Self-help and those stupid proverbs, they do nothing. Soul food? It’s like trying to cure starvation with a sugar cube. It might taste sweet on the lips but once it dissolves, the emptiness is still there.

Shame on the misguided, the blinded, the distracted and the divided. Shame. You have allowed deceptive men to corrupt and desensitize your hearts and minds to unethically fuel their greed.

Sometimes not giving a fuck is caring the most.

She was surprised at how deflating his presence was.

She must have been pretty once. At least, like everyone, she had been young. Now her eyes, her mouth, her whole body exuded weakness. Could it be that she was ill and waiting for her next attack? Some people who know that at a particular hour they are going to start suffering again have that expression, subdued and yet tense, like drug addicts waiting for the hour of their dose.

Shirking and sharking, in all their many varieties, have been sown broadcast by the ill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history from the outermost circle of such evil, have been insensibly tempted into a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad course, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong, it was, in some offhand manner, never meant to go right.

So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you.

Soon after this incident the court rose. As I was being taken from the courthouse to the prison van, I was conscious for a few brief moments of the once familiar feel of a summer evening out-of-doors. And, sitting in the darkness of my moving cell, I recognized, echoing in my tired brain, all the characteristic sounds of a town I'd loved, and of a certain hour of the day which I had always particularly enjoyed. The shouts of newspaper boys in the already languid air, the last calls of birds in the public garden, the cries of sandwich vendors, the screech of streetcars at the steep corners of the upper town, and that faint rustling overhead as darkness sifted down upon the harbor—all these sounds made my return to prison like a blind man's journey along a route whose every inch he knows by heart. 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.

Stones make no splash on a frozen lake.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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)

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 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 nonchalance irritated her more because it was not assumed.

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.

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 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.