Apathy Quotes - Page 11

• The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against.

  Chris Hedges

  Reality, Long, Empowering

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

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• It's just this long overdue. These people [ex-Nazi brought to trial] should be grateful to the apathy that exists there that prevented them from being brought to trial earlier. All of the people that they committed crimes against had their lives snuffed out, some of them at very young ages. Some of them never had a chance to get married and have children.

  Marvin Hier

  Children, Grateful, Long

  Source: www.npr.org

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• May I just single out for salutations, on the "anti-war" side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam.

  Julie Burchill

  Stars, War, Dancer

  "Silly show-offs against Saddam!" by Julie Burchill, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2003.

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

  Bill Watterson

  Care, Materials

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• When we sat down to eat I took inventory of the people in the room, and the remnants of my good mood evaporated when I realized how very little I had in common with them – the career dads, the responsible and diligent moms – and I was soon filled with dread and loneliness. I locked in on the smug feeling of superiority that married couples give off and that permeated the air – the shared assumptions, the sweet and contented apathy, it all lingered everywhere – despite the absence in the room of anyone single at which to aim this.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Mom, Sweet, Couple

  Bret Easton Ellis (2010). “Lunar Park”, p.158, Pan Macmillan

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• Consolation has been wrongly reviled. Consolation is not apathy or inaction. It is not closing one's eyes to the evils of the world. Rather, consolation is the first step in regaining personal equilibrium and strength, which necessarily precedes the ability to act.

  Vera Nazarian

  Eye, Evil, World

  Source: fantasyworlds.wordpress.com

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• I watched the coral reefs that I studied as a student vanish in the blink of an eye, and for decades I wrote and spoke of ocean obituaries. But big scary problems without solutions lead to apathy, not action.

  Nancy Knowlton

  Ocean, Eye, Scary

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• Physically it's kind of lassitude, the apathy and tiredness that precedes the flu or some other illness, or death. My legs ache and feel heavy, my skin has become more sensitive to cold and to heat, to the hardness or rigidity of things. Nothing interests me, I feel uncomfortable being still but would feel even more uncomfortable if I moved. I don't know whether speaking is painful or just boring. I sit here, staring straight ahead, with no desires, no needs, hollow. I'm not even sad. I feel only passivity and indifference.

  Antonio Lobo Antunes

  Desire, Skins, Needs

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• Error is better than apathy. Error can be corrected in time to change the outcome. Apathy is seldom corrected until it is too late.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Errors, Too Late, Outcomes

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• Privilege and complacency paralyze me with fear sometimes. But the less vulnerable we are because of privilege, the country we're born in, or the security we enjoy, the more vulnerable our souls are to apathy.

  Brandi Carlile

  Country, Soul, Complacency

  "Singer-Songwriter Brandi Carlile: On Leaving a Better World for Her Daughter". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com. 2015.

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• Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses.

  Richard Crossman

  Loss, Challenges, Majority

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• A lot of you cared, just not enough.

  Jay Asher

  Sad, Suicide, Tragedy

  Jay Asher (2011). “Thirteen Reasons Why”, p.280, Penguin

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• Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy

  Joseph Conrad

  Grief, May, Violence

  Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I've been accused of being very vain about my apathy.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Vain, Accused

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• There are some men formed with feelings so blunt that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of their lives.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Empathy, Feelings

  Edmund Burke (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Edmund Burke (Illustrated)”, p.76, Delphi Classics

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• A pretty face had been damaged by acne scars and she wore and extra forty pounds on her frame like a threat. Her eyes were dull with anger disguised as apathy. If she kept on her current path, she'd grow into the type of person who fed her kids Doritos for breakfast and purchased angry bumper stickers with lots of exclamation points. But right now, she was just another in a long line of pissed-off small-town girls with a shitty outlook.

  Dennis Lehane

  Girl, Kids, Eye

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• …their eager, childlike attention was refreshing to see as compared with the decent, deathlike apathy of weary civilized people, in whom natural curiosity has been quenched in toil and care and poor, shallow comfort.

  John Muir

  People, Curiosity, Comfort

  John Muir, Peter Browning (1988). “John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations”, p.39, Great West Books

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• I suppose it is because nearly all children go to school nowadays and have things arranged for them that they seem so forlornly unable to produce their own ideas.

  Agatha Christie

  Education, Children, Learning

  Agatha Christie (2010). “An Autobiography”, p.62, HarperCollins UK

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• ...a very terrifying aspect of our society, and other societies, is the equanimity and the detachment with which sane, reasonable, sensible people can observe [war and human suffering]. I think that's more terrifying than the occasional Hitler ...or other that crop up - these people would not able to operate were it not for this apathy and equanimity - and therefore I think that it is in some sense the sane and reasonable and tolerant people who should share a very serious burden of guilt, that they very easily throw on the shoulders of others who seem more extreme and more violent.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Thinking, People

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• Apathy is so hard not to feel in this world that I see it and the devil walking hand in hand ruining our world. We can take more control by being conscious to start with.

  Lisa Germano

  Devil, World, Conscious

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

  Daniel Defoe

  Inspirational, People, Empathy

  Daniel Defoe, James T. Boulton (1975). “Selected Writings of Daniel Defoe”, p.166, CUP Archive

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• It takes constant vigilance not to slip into negativity or simple apathy. It takes courage to believe over any given period of time that we are getting better and not sliding into decline.

  Julia Cameron

  Believe, Simple, Negativity

  Julia Cameron (2009). “Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance”, p.116, Penguin

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• My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is dangerous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apathy but to hyper - and pessimistic - activism.

  Michel Foucault

  Pessimistic, Activism, Dangerous

  Source: www.nicklewis.org

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• The heartbreak of runaway corruption, abuse of power and indefensible criminality by our government and media should, must inspire all good we-the-people Americans to wake the hell up from the embarrassing self-inflicted curse of apathy and start demanding Constitutional accountability from our elected employees.

  Ted Nugent

  Heart, Self, Media

  "Ted Nugent on GOP: 'I pray to God they finally rediscover their scrotum'". Interview with Jared Boyd, www.al.com. July 20, 2016.

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• First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy.

  Gail Collins

  Party, Swings, Political

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