Indifference Quotes

“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.”
― Elie Wiesel

“I'm not anti-social. I'm just not social.”
― Woody Allen

“Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“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

“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, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

“A man's vanity is more fragile that you might think. It's easy for us to mistake shyness for coldness, and silence for indifference.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor’s Edge

“Politeness is organized indifference.”
― Paul Valéry

“But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“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.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.”
― Jack Kerouac

“The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.”
― Wilhelm Stekel, The Beloved Ego: Foundations of the New Study of the Psyche

“I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don't even ripple.”
― Gillian Flynn, Dark Places

“And I — my head oppressed by horror — said:
"Master, what is it that I hear? Who are
those people so defeated by their pain?"
      And he to me: "This miserable way
is taken by the sorry souls of those
who lived without disgrace and without praise.
      They now commingle with the coward angels,
the company of those who were not rebels
nor faithful to their God, but stood apart.
      The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened,
have cast them out, nor will deep Hell receive them —
even the wicked cannot glory in them.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

“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 a hat.

He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.”
― Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

“Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.”
― Cesare Pavese, Il mestiere di vivere: Diario 1935-1950

“She knew with painful certainty that the opposite of love was not hate, but indifference.”
― Susan Wiggs, Summer by the Sea

“They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.”
― Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

“The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.”
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

“If we only see things through the cold-eyed lens of factuality and don’t listen to the yearning and screaming of unexpressed feelings, life may remain bleak in a mire of clinical hollowness, sodden in apathy and indifference. ("Morning after")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A person is wise if he listens to millions of advice and doesn't implement any of it.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“By squirming out of our dungeon of indifference and wriggling from ourself-centered vault of unawareness, love can conjure up an aura of mental opulence and an inkling of infinity.( "Love as dizzy as a cathedral”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“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, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“People who feel imprisoned in a pen of alienation, in a world of misfits, clobbered by unresponsiveness and indifference, may find release by ring-fencing a mental space to reflect on their mindset and to recover their true self. ("Did not expect it would ever happen there" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“People, walking on the catwalk of indifference and evaporating in a bubble of apathy, may be unconscious of the decay of their emotions and the scattering of their attention that are crucial obstacles to refreshing their mental framework and to topping up the content of their life story. ( “Twilight of desire “ )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“The addiction to our mobiles may insidiously unlock evil actions by helplessly surrendering to the plague of blatant indifference, arrogant inattention, and flighty bee-lining and sophisticated acts of revenge. Smartphones may unstitch positive points in our lives and incidentally enchant us by instant selfies but, with some, they might inexorably trigger off shabby and despicable practices. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me" )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“When attention turns into indifference or love fades away into a grey zone of discomfort, only imagination can bring us back to the limelight of life. ("Is that all there is?")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“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

“But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince