100 Quotes About Indifference

She knew with painful certainty that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference. Susan Wiggs

Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100, 000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100, 000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100, 000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98, 000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98, 000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene, ' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either. It even manages to pollute the central question, the word I just employed, the most important word of all: the word love, by making love compulsory, by saying you MUST love. You must love your neighbour as yourself, something you can't actually do. You'll always fall short, so you can always be found guilty. By saying you must love someone who you also must fear. That's to say a supreme being, an eternal father, someone of whom you must be afraid, but you must love him, too. If you fail in this duty, you're again a wretched sinner. This is not mentally or morally or intellectually healthy. And that brings me to the final objection - I'll condense it, Dr. Orlafsky - which is, this is a totalitarian system. If there was a God who could do these things and demand these things of us, and he was eternal and unchanging, we'd be living under a dictatorship from which there is no appeal, and one that can never change and one that knows our thoughts and can convict us of thought crime, and condemn us to eternal punishment for actions that we are condemned in advance to be taking. All this in the round, and I could say more, it's an excellent thing that we have absolutely no reason to believe any of it to be true. Christopher Hitchens

Each time a person passes by you and you say 'hello', imagine that person turning into a candle. The more positivity, love and light you reflect, the more light is mirrored your way. Sharing beautiful hellos is the quickest way to earn spiritual brownie points. You should start seeing hellos as small declarations of faith. Every time you say hello to a stranger, your heart acknowledges over and over again that we are all family. Suzy Kassem

Isn't forgiveness a holy virtue? And if so, then why do we insist on keeping historical records of resentment? Is the Creator an advocate of love or hate? And if love, then why are we still pushing so much hatred? What is there ever to be gained from vocalizing hatred? Only more hatred. Who wants that? And why? Suzy Kassem

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. Richard Dawkins

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

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. . Thurgood Marshall

But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in Arundhati Roy

Every war, every plague is God’s judgment. But every man who rises up to stop the wars and the plagues is God’s instrument. Human action is God’s will, not blind indifference in the face of suffering. Unknown

The difference between men and women is this--if you catch a woman butt-naked, she tries to cover the private parts with her hands. A man will sit there just like you found him even if he doesn't have much to be proud of. Deb Baker

It may well be that we will have to repent in this generation. Not merely for the vitriolic words and the violent actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence and indifference of the good people who sit around and say, "Wait on time. Unknown

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent. Virginia Woolf

You can't be neutral on a moving train. Howard Zinn

My hours are filled with fantasy and indifference. In day and night dreams, I think of my heaven with you. All the time in between, I carelessly spend in hell without you. Kamand Kojouri

There was always a screen behind which one could hide– a superior who in turn had his superior– orders, instructions, duties, commands– and finally the many-headed monster, morale, necessity, hard reality, responsibility, or whatever it was called– there was always a screen behind which to evade the simple law of humanity. Erich Maria Remarque

Segregation is a word of the past. Unity is the key to a peaceful future. Suzy Kassem

Some scars don't hurt. Some scars are numb. Some scars rid you of the capacity to feel anything ever again. Joyce Rachelle

Pleasure and pain are on the same side of the coin of human experience. The opposite is indifference or numbness. R. N. Prasher

Our country is the best country in the world. We are swimming in prosperity and our President is the best president in the world. We have larger apples and better cotton and faster and more beautiful machines. This makes us the greatest country in the world. Unemployment is a myth. Dissatisfaction is a fable. In preparatory school America is beautiful. It is the gem of the ocean and it is too bad. It is bad because people believe it all. Because they become indifferent. Because they marry and reproduce and vote and they know nothing. John Cheever

A mind that establishes indifference is the mind that builds failure. Israelmore Ayivor

No one knows if I'm dying to laugh or to cry So my verse hasthis almost imperceptible thrill Life is sad, the world is crazy! Not worth killing yourself for it Not for anyone For no love Life goes on, indifferently! Mario Quintana

I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple. Gillian Flynn

You need fire, conviction, to write. You can't write out of indifference. Marty Rubin

For a minute, the fantasy frightened her, but ultimately, this fear saved her from feeling alone. Stephen Grosz

Now, if you asked him what he was going to do with himself, he'd tell you he guessed he might do anything he set his mind to. But he'd say it in a far-off way, as if he didn't really mean it or care much at all. Jennifer Niven

Since total skepticism about ultimate beliefs is strictly impossible, in that no belief can be doubted except on the basis of some other belief, indifference is always in danger of giving place to some sort of fanaticism that can be as intolerant as any religion has ever been. Lesslie Newbigin

When words have vanished, when daily habits have extinguished emotional exchange, only killing silence remains and indifference takes over. ( "Words had disappeared" ) Erik Pevernagie

Embrace all emotions: sadness, happiness, sorrow, hate, love, prejudice, fear; they are weapons against our greatest enemy: indifference. Dave Matthes

However, I must admit that keeping myself to myself has not always been comforting. At times, I seemed to suffer spells of depression and loneliness, longing to become healthy again; of going out and facing a world of injustices, of misery, of widespread indifference. Lawrence G. Taylor

I hate feeling hate but feeling nothing feels worse. Brian Spellman

Beyond their immaculate design, the reason sharks rule the ocean is their complete indifference to everything except feeding, procreation, and defending their territory. The shark does not love. It feels no empathy. It trusts nothing. It lives in perfect harmony with its environment because it has no aspirations or desires. And no pity. A shark feels no sorrow, no remorse, hopes for nothing, dreams of nothing, has no illusions about itself or anything beyond itself. . Rick Yancey

He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish. Gustave Flaubert

Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell. Randy Alcorn

Since my arrival in Rome, I have had many opportunities to wonder if compassion’s opposite is cruelty, or to reflect whether or not indifference would serve as a better black to its white. Andrew Levkoff

Faced with delicate issue, consider kindness and deference. It's neither familiarity, indifference nor ire, but a perceived warmth to another soul Val Uchendu

It's indifference that breaks hearts, not love. Marty Rubin

Keep your ideals with you and seek help from them. These are useless for me. Your shoe do not fit mine. I am done with the exhibitionist of yours. You are professing of something that is even worthless for you. You are so insecure and coward to accept the truth. Dnt make me as miserable as you are. Let me explore myself. Let me unlearn the lie this world has given to me . Let me just undo al the data which is being engraved on my mind. Let me be a child who is just born. Adeel Bin Ahmed

His hatred for all was so intense that it should extinguish the very love from which it was conceived. And thus, he ceased to feel. There was nothing further in which to believe that made the prospect of feeling worthwhile. Daily he woke up and cast downtrodden eyes upon the sea and he would say to himself with a hint of regret at his hitherto lack of indifference, 'All a dim illusion, was it? Surely it was foolish of me to think any of this had meaning.' He would then spend hours staring at the sky, wondering how best to pass the time if everything–even the sky itself– were for naught. He arrived at the conclusion that there was no best way to pass the time. The only way to deal with the illusion of time was to endure it, knowing full well, all the while, that one was truly enduring nothing at all. Unfortunately for him, this nihilistic resolution to dispassion didn’t suit him very well and he soon became extremely bored. Faced now with the choice between further boredom and further suffering, he impatiently chose the latter, sailing another few weeks along the coast , and then inland, before finally dropping anchor off the shores of the fishing village of Yami. Ashim Shanker

To conquer, you must endure not just your own suffering but the suffering of others. Indifference is the ultimate evolutionary achievement, the highest rung on nature's ladder. Rick Yancey

His unwavering confidence - but now, it feels like a brand of indifference Emily Giffin

...the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say "Fuck you, I eat the way I like splashing gravy everywhere (p. 156) Jack Kerouac

These are the words of a fool: I am happy to be a fool, for i won't spend my time gazing at lines difficult to decipher, while my mates are drinking with glee. Michael Bassey Johnson

Let us not still our anger against indifference and inattention and let us not glitziness, superciliousness and mumbo jumbo slither into our thinking and our actions, if we don’t want our conscience to be backfired on. (“Twilight of desire”) Erik Pevernagie

I’ve pressed sofar away frommy desire thatif you askedme what Iwant I would, accepting the harmoniouscompletion of thedrift, say annihilation, probably. A.R. Ammons

This is the world in which everyone is sensitised to risk but indifferent to fate. David Runciman

Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons in Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the gray world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn't even notice them. . Terry Pratchett

The universe doesn't know good or bad, only less or more. Pat Cadigan

Indifference is a well that never runs dry, and as good a word for evil as was ever composed. Fernando A. Torres

Meddling is the evil, not indifference. Marty Rubin

The West's post- Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good. Philip Gourevitch

Pain and darkness have been our lot since the Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher level ... that consciousness can evolve to a plane more benevolent than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference. Dan Simmons

I need to learn to stay away from those who want to steal my heart and replace it with steel. Maria Nieves

Hate is a strong emotion. Much more stronger than indifference. But those who burn with hate can also love just as intensely. Morgan Rhodes

If I hate a person, then I must still love him as well.. For the insignificant ones, I don't hate.. I just lose interest and become indifferent.. Laarni Venus Marie

They say that people fall in and out of love, but do they, too, fall in hate? Or fall into indifference? It has hindered men for ages the notion that one falls in love rather than decides to truly love, the notion that his lack of control, on the B-side, can also make him fall in hate or indifference without the responsibility to help it or control it. Criss Jami

Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time. Peter Kreeft

Indifference is the worst kind of response when love is expressed. Hate is not the antithesis of love; it’s the nonexistence of feeling, a pervasive apathy. When hate is present, so is love. It’s passion gone sour and fueled by pain, but, nonetheless, it’s passion and love is apparently still alive. Yet when indifference seeps into our spirits, an emotional numbness and permitted scotoma takes the place of any passion — whether it’s love or hate — and resigns in a new state of being. M.B. Dallocchio

What else could I do? You couldn't just say no. I had to think about...my...position. Helen Maryles Shankman

Incredulity and indifference were her only reaction: incredulity, because she could not conceive of what would bring human beings to such a state –indifference, because she could not regard those who reached it, as human any longer. Ayn Rand

The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism–an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own. Kathryn Schulz

And remember, silence is all it takes to validate evil and remember, indifference is all it takes to endorse it. Adeosun Olamide

Silence and indifference would not take you anywhere at the end of the day. Sunday Adelaja

Up until then it had only been himself. Up to then it had been a private wrestle between him and himself. Nobody else much entered into it. After the people came into it he was, of course, a different man. Everything had changed then and he was no longer the virgin, with the virgin's right to insist upon platonic love. Life, in time, takes every maidenhead, even if it has to dry it up; it does not matter how the owner wants to keep it. Up to then he had been the young idealist. But he could not stay there. Not after the other people entered into it. James Jones

Only those who are brainwashed and foolsbelieve in the existence of a god. Those who are indifferent just pretend. A.J. Beirens

Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatestof them all, because it is the only one that sins against life. Unknown

We ought to know that all people are not the same and so we must not expect the same attitude from all people. Different people behave differently and that is what makes different people different Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I don't worry about what other people think of me. It's one of the things I most admired about my dad growing up. He didn't give a hoot what others thought. He was who he was. It's one of the qualities that has kept me most sane. Chris Kyle

She seemed always to have seen him through a blur - first of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference - and now the fog had thickened till he was almost indistinguishable. Edith Wharton

If you'd called me an ox, I'd have said I was an ox; if you'd called me a horse, I'd have said I was a horse. If the reality is there and you refuse to accept the name men give it, you'll only lay yourself open to double harassment. Zhuangzi

Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement. Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory. Yukio Mishima

Compassion only plagues those with hearts, much like a field of thorns only troubles those who bleed. Richelle E. Goodrich

... each of us describes our existence by means of objects which are indifferent to us, which survive us, and which are then thrown back into the common stock from which they are soon gathered again and ascribed other roles in other circumstances. Andrew Motion

He was nothing but a conduit, after all, and there isn't a culvert in the world that remembers the water flowed through it once the rain has stopped. Stephen King

After all, what Buddhism offers as a solution is universalised indifference - a learning of how to withdraw from too much empathy. This is why Buddhism can so easily turn into the very opposite of universal compassion: the advocacy of a ruthless military attitude, which is what the fate of Zen Buddhism aptly demonstrates. Unknown

To remain indifferent to the challenges we face is indefensible. If the goal is noble, whether or not it is realized within our lifetime is largely irrelevant. What we must do therefore is to strive and persevere and never give up. Dalai Lama Xiv

I can see wherecreation oftenstops while thebody still livesand oftendoes not careto.the death of lifebefore lifedies. Charles Bukowski

Indifference to ideas is a sign of good health. Marty Rubin

People who are indifferent about the happenings around them are human biomasses. Sunday Adelaja

I never thought meeting you would be this boring. I thought we'd put our Italian emotion into gear and scream the place down. I never expected indifference. Melina Marchetta

If you are not interested in your own country’s problems, than what difference remains between you and a cow eating grass in a quiet corner unaware of anything around itself! Mehmet Murat Ildan

Divisions in mankind are unnatural. They are man made. DAndre Lampkin

Among your farewells, see you soon, now I have no time and stormy silences, I met someone....that someone, is me. Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Familiarity makes the lion more dangerous. Jocelyn Murray

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored – it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on. Pearl S. Buck