I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Apathy is a sort of living oblivion.
—Horace Greeley (1811–72) American Elected Rep, Politician, Reformer, Editor
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
These are days when no one should rely unduly on his “competence.” Strength lies in improvisation. All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
—Walter Benjamin
Indifference is an excellent substitute for patience.
—Mason Cooley (1927–2002) American Aphorist
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) American Educator
Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
—Frederic Chopin (1810–49) Polish-French Composer, Pianist
Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
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 (1880–1968) American Author
I shall stay the way I am because I do not give a damn.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.
—Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian Short-Story Writer
A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally both in mind and body as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world and therefore, as an Englishman, always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German’s self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth—science—which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws—but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted—when we tolerate what we know to be wrong—when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened—when we fail to speak up and speak out—we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.
—Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68) American Politician, Civil Rights Activist
There is nothing harder than the softness of indifference.
—Juan Montalvo (1832–89) Ecuadorian Author, Essayist
Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.
—Cyril Connolly (1903–74) British Literary Critic, Writer
They act as if they supposed that to be very sanguine about the general improvement of mankind is a virtue that relieves them from taking trouble about any improvement in particular.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Political Leader, Writer, Editor, Journalist
Men are accomplices to that which leaves them indifferent.
—George Steiner (1929–2020) American Critic, Scholar
Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal which takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice.
—Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) British Historian
Everybody in America is soft, and hates conflict. The cure for this, both in politics and social life, is the same—hardihood. Give them raw truth.
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933) American Biographer, Poet, Essayist, Writer
Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand.
—Bodie Thoene
Scientists announced today that they have discovered a cure for apathy. However, they claim no one has shown the slightest interest in it.
—George Carlin (1937–2008) American Stand-up Comedian
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension.
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970) American Novelist, Artist
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.
—Dan Millman (b.1946) American Children’s Books Writer, Sportsperson
A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.
—Peter Marshall
The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.
—Vaclav Havel (1936–2011) Czech Dramatist, Statesman
By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy – indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction.
—William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian Physician
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.
—William Lloyd Garrison (1805–79) American Journalist, Abolitionist
People have moved beyond apathy, beyond skepticism into deep cynicism.
—Elliot Richardson (1920–99) American Lawyer, Politician