Indifferent Quotes - Page 21

• If you hate your enemies, you will contract such a vicious habit of mind that it will break out upon those who are your friends, or those who are indifferent to you.

  Plutarch

  Hate, Hatred, Mind

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• Anyone familiar with the numerous accounts of the Buddha's extraordinary compassion and reverence for living beings - for example his insistence that his monks strain the water they drink lest they inadvertently cause the death of any micro-organisms - could never believe that he would be indifferent to the sufferings of domestic animals caused by their slaughter of food

  Philip Kapleau

  Believe, Animal, Compassion

  Philip Kapleau (1982). “To Cherish All Life: A Buddhist Case for Becoming Vegetarian”, Harper San Francisco

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• That a country, [England], eminently distinguished for its mechanical and manufacturing ingenuity, should be indifferent to the progress of inquiries which form the highest departments of that knowledge on whose more elementary truths its wealth and rank depend, is a fact which is well deserving the attention of those who shall inquire into the causes that influence the progress of nations.

  Charles Babbage

  Education, Country, Science

  Charles Babbage (1830). “Reflections on the Decline of Science in England: And on Some of Its Causes, by Charles Babbage (1830). To which is Added On the Alleged Decline of Science in England, by a Foreigner (Gerard Moll) with a Foreword by Michael Faraday (1831).”, p.1

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• O trees of life, O when are you wintering?We are not unified. We have no instinctslike those of migratory birds. Useless, and late,we force ourselves, suddenly, onto the wind,and fall down to an indifferent lake.We realise flowering and fading together.And somewhere lions still roam. Never knowing,as long as they have their splendour, of any weakness.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Fall, Wind, Knowing

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• The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.
  Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

  Milan Kundera

  Understanding, Age, Too Late

  "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". Book by Milan Kundera, 1979.

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• Kindness Day? Kindness Day? Do you suppose if we were kind and enthusiastic for centuries uninterruptedly, that someone would create 'Nasty, Indifferent Day'?

  Patch Adams

  Kindness, Nasty, Century

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• The definition of deism is the philosophical idea of God as a first cause of the universe, who lays down the laws of nature and lets them run like clockwork, indifferent to the fate of the people subject to them.

  Elizabeth S. Anderson

  Running, Philosophical, Fate

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• We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, taking only the pleasant and agreeable out of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Faith, Ideas, People

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). “God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas”, p.8, Westminster John Knox Press

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• A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Wisdom, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.6, Hayes Barton Press

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• Every act of irreverence for life, every act which neglects life, which is indifferent to and wastes life, is a step towards the love of death. This choice man must make at every minute. Never were the consequences of the wrong choice as total and as irreversible as they are today. Never was the warning of the Bible so urgent: 'I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, that you and your children may live.'

  Erich Fromm

  Children, Blessing, Men

  Erich Fromm (1963). “War Within Man: A Psychological Enquiry Into the Roots of Destructiveness”

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• . . . the whole idea of WHAT HAPPENED WAS.... is not about dating. It is more about people who are not committed to who they are or are indifferent about their life in general, which is how I felt about myself when I wrote it. I had turned 40 and I was unhappy and I wanted to write about that. Dating just became the framework. . . . I like all those fringy, weird, nonverbal, quiet, tiny little things, those powerful interchanges between people, things that go unsaid, that people know are happening all the time but nobody wants to talk about. That's what I want to make movies about.

  Tom Noonan

  Powerful, Writing, Ideas

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• In God's name, Monsieur, let us remain indifferent; let us strive to be equally attached to whatever obedience marks out for us, be it agreeable or disagreeable. By the grace of God, we belong to Him; what else should we desire except to please Him?

  Vincent de Paul

  Names, Grace, Desire

  Saint Vincent de Paul, Pierre Coste (1992). “Correspondence, conferences, documents”, New City Pr

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• Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every remeeting a foretaste of the resurrection. That is why even people who are indifferent to each other rejoice so much if they meet again after twenty or thirty years of separation.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Years, People, Giving

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• Even today a crude sort of persecution is all that is required to create an honorable name for any sect, no matter how indifferent in itself.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Names, Matter, Today

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• Secular humanists suspect there is something more gloriously human about resisting the religious impulse; about accepting the cold truth, even if that truth is only that the universe is as indifferent to us as we are to it.

  Tom Flynn

  Religious, Cold, Truth Is

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• One friend dies and we remain indifferent; another dies, perhaps less intimate, and we see ourselves as dead, and weep, mourn, tear our hair or find ourselves caught up in the madness of the wake, competing with others as to who was closest, now suffers most.

  Fay Weldon

  Hair, Mourning, Suffering

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• In order to understand life it is not only necessary not to be indifferent to men, but not to be indifferent to flocks, to trees. One should be indifferent to nothing.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Men, Order, Tree

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• Embracing and rejecting tradition, bound and liberated by faith, torn between obscurantism and reason, self-assured and self-critical, they were a kaleidoscope of fragments, positions held and abandoned, images formed and shattered, God-fearing Jew, God-denying Jew, passionate and indifferent, hero and villain, yea-sayer, nay-sayer.

  Israel Shenker

  Hero, Self, Passionate

  Israel Shenker (1985). “Coat of Many Colors: Pages from Jewish Life”, Doubleday Books

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• Any theology that is indifferent to the theme of liberation is not Christian theology.

  James H. Cone

  Christian, Theme, Liberation

  James H. Cone (1970). “A Black Theology of Liberation”, p.9, Orbis Books

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• A human feast is an indifferent morsel to a god.

  Wole Soyinka

  Perspective, Humans

  Wole Soyinka (1998). “Early Poems”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Upon the clothes behind the tenement, That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines, Linking each flat, but to each indifferent, Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.

  Claude McKay

  Clothes, Shining, Lines

  Claude McKay (1953). “Selected poems”

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• This above all-ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must," then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Strong, Nature, Writing

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• Insect politics, indifferent universe. Bang your head against the wall, but apathy is worse.

  Don Henley

  Wall, Bangs, Apathy

  Song: Inside Job, Album: Inside Job, 2000

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• We should be most careful about retreating from the specific challenge of our age. We should be reluctant to turn our back upon the frontier of this epoch... We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand slow march of our intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.

  James A. Michener

  Space, Our Generation, Challenges

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• Doctors have told me I have a high pain threshold, but I can only know what I feel. I think I'm good at minimising the pain and being indifferent to it.

  Johnny Knoxville

  Pain, Thinking, Doctors

  "Johnny Knoxville's house of pain" by Steve Rose, www.theguardian.com. November 4, 2010.

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