Apathy

This page is for quotes on the subject of Apathy.

Quotes

Organized alphabetically by author.

• All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
  • Widely attributed to Edmund Burke, but not found in his works. Possibly paraphrased from a quote of John Stuart Mill below.

• I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate — it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.
  • Leo Buscaglia

• Relativism is not indifference; on the contrary, passionate indifference is necessary in order for you not to hear the voices that oppose your absolute decrees.
  • Karel Čapek, "On Relativism" (1925)

• 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.
  • Helen Keller

• Nothing is more conducive to peace of mind than not having any opinion at all.
  • Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Aphorisms (1764-99)

• Once you have glimpsed the world as it might be, as it ought to be, as it's going to be (however that vision appears to you), it is impossible to live compliant and complacent anymore in the world as it is.
  • Victoria Safford in "The Small Work in the Great Work" in The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear (2004) by Paul Rogat Loeb

• Indifference, if let alone, will produce obduracy; and obduracy, if let alone, will produce torment.
  • Henry Melvill, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 344.

• Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
  • John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, Feb. 1st 1867.

• Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
  • George Jean Nathan

• There are few signs in a soul's state more alarming than that of religious indifference, that is, the spirit of thinking all religions equally true— the real meaning of which is, that all religions are equally false.
  • Frederick William Robertson, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 344.

• The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
  • George Bernard Shaw, The Devil's Disciple (1897)

• He who has never hoped can never despair.
  • George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra (1906)

• He who does not punish evil commands it to be done.
  • Leonardo da Vinci

• Harold Wilson is going around the country stirring up apathy.
  • William Whitelaw

• The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of beauty is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death.
  • Elie Wiesel, US News & World Report, 27 October 1986

• Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand.
  • "Prof. McDoogle" in National Lampoon's Van Wilder