Indifference is a state of apathy or lack of concern about something or someone. It can manifest in personal relationships, social issues, and politics. At work, indifference is a lack of engagement, resulting from a lack of motivation and resulting in a lack of productivity and a lowering of morale. Indifference hinders progress towards solving problems. Here are some quotations on indifference:
Without revolution, civilization comes to halt, because with complacency arrives indifference, and with indifference comes the fall of civilization.
The case for doing what one sees as one’s duty must be strong, but how can we be indifferent to the consequences that may follow from our doing what we take to be our just duty?
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Being a Jew, one learns to believe in the reality of cruelty and one learns to recognize indifference to human suffering as a fact.
We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. (attributed)
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
For one who is indifferent, life itself is a prison. Any sense of community is external or, even worse, nonexistent. Thus, indifference means solitude. Those who are indifferent do not see others. They feel nothing for others and are unconcerned with what might happen to them. They are surrounded by a great emptiness. Filled by it, in fact. They are devoid of all hope as well as imagination. In other words, devoid of any future.
Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.
Yes, I am my brother’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death.
The horrors which we have seen, and the still greater horrors we shall presently see, are not signs that rebels, insubordinate, untamable people are increasing in number throughout the world, but rather that there is a constant increase in the number of obedient, docile people.
The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that’s the essence of inhumanity.
Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.
If a person loves only one other person, and is indifferent to his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism.
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.
Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don’t stand a chance against it.
Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.
We should not permit tolerance to degenerate into indifference.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
First they came for the Jews. I was silent. I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists. I was silent. I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists. I was silent. I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me. There was no one left to speak for me.
In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.
When Hitler attacked the Jews … I was not a Jew, therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church — and there was nobody left to be concerned.
The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.
Deep caring about each other’s fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame. The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.
These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest. The executives who brought down the major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru.
Democracy, like love, can survive any attack—save neglect and indifference.
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
