Selected indifference quotes

1. Thy praise or dispraise is to me alike; One doth not stroke me, nor the other strike.

2. Spring is noticed, if at all By people sitting in railway trains.

3. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

4. Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

5. The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

6. When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.

7. He has great tranquility of heart who cares neither for the praises nor the fault-finding of men.

8. If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

9. Mistrust the person who finds everything good, and the person who finds everything evil, and mistrust even more the person who is indifferent to everything.

10. The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power.

11. I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn.

12. Winner knows nothing about food.

13. If I never saw another fistfight or car chase or Doberman attack, I wouldn't have any feeling of loss. And that goes for Rottweilers, too.

14. And the world said, Child, you will not be missed. You are cheaper than a wrench, your back is a road; Your death is a table in a book. You had our wit, our heart was sealed to you: Man is the judgment of the world.

15. I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.

16. We must have friendship for all; we must be merciful toward those that are in misery; when people are happy, we ought to be happy; and to the wicked we must be indifferent. These attitudes will make the mind peaceful.

17. So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee.

18. 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.

19. Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.

20. Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

21. Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

22. Let the long contention cease! Geese are swans, and swans are geese.

23. When a man steals your wife there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

24. I can levitate birds. No one cares.

25. Go on, prove me wrong. Destroy the fabric of the universe. See if I care.

26. 'Lies are told only to convey to someone that one has no need either of him or his good opinion.'

27. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'stop!' When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

28. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. ... The state of affairs might be somewhat unpleasant, but what of it? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.

29. Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.[[1]]

30. Disraeli felt that 'nothing could compensate his obscure youth, not even a glorious old age.' Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon.

31. Give us back our suffering, we cry to Heaven in our hearts - suffering rather than indifferentism; for out of nothing comes nothing. But out of suffering may come the cure. Better have pain than paralysis! A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore!

32. What does the court want with you? It receives you when you come and it dismisses you when you go.

33. The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

34. The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief. Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. (p. 13)

35. For all that has been said of the love that certain natures (on shore) have professed to feel for it, for all the celebrations it had been the object of in prose and song, the sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.

36. 3) Mother Nature doesn't care if you're having fun.

37. [The] chief [of the gods of Cimmeria] is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breathes power to strive and slay into a man's soul. What else shall men ask of the gods? ... There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people. In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.

38. 'For most people, self-awarness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. Its about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn't give a rat's ass'

39. I am not one of those weak-spirited, sappy Americans who want to be liked by all the people around them.I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it. My affections, being concentrated over a few people, are not spread all over Hell in a vile attempt to placate sulky, worthless shits.

40. Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes

41. We're the phone company. We don't care; we don't have to.

42. I let them think what they want. If they just care enough to bother with what I do then, I'm already better than them anyway.

43. 'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.

44. The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.

45. The after-silence, when the feast is o'er, And void the places where the minstrels stood, Differs in nought from what hath been before, And is nor ill nor good.

46. Every death even the cruellest death drowns in the total indifference of Nature Nature herself would watch unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race I hate Nature this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face that can bear everything this goads us to greater and greater acts

47. I don't know why I did it, I don't know why I enjoyed it, and I don't care

48. You sought to prove how I could love, And my disdain is my reply. The lion on your old stone gates Is not more cold to you than I.

49. [I don't] care a twopenny damn what [becomes] of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte.

50. When you don't care then You've got nothing to loose And I won't hesitate Because every moment life is slipping away It's okay.

51. So without an original or helpful thought in my head, I just sat for some minutes and watched these poor disconnected people shuffle past. Then I did what most white Australians do. I read my newspaper and drank my coffee and didn't see them anymore.

52. Britney: I don't care what they look like. They just have to be . . . okay, I do care a little bit what they look like.

53. Empathy: 'We all need to intimately know the sorrows of others, so that the saying, 'There but for the grace of God, go I,' becomes an epitaph to our indifference, rather than a trite allegory of elitism for those who have forgotten that they too are human, that they too are frail, that they too are subject to such miseries. And in this dervish whirlwind of vanity, indifference, greed and ignorance we fuel, we all at times, ask whatever forces we believe in for clarity and meaning of our purpose in this existence.'

54. To do his duty somehow, always to speak well of the Prior, and let the world go its own way.

55. The Rock: IT-IT-IT-IT-IT DOESN'T MATTER!

56. But tir'd at length poor Beauty slept, And while she rested, wearied quite, Indifference to the dear lamp crept, And quench'd its warm, and splendid light.

57. To have no food for our heads no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how do we cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the Times, Death of Thought from Starvation, or Death of Moral Activity from Starvation, how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! One would think we had no heads nor hearts, by the total indifference of the public towards them. Our bodies are the only things of any consequence.

58. Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.

59. I know all beyond High Park's a desert to you.

60. Bigotry may be called the appalling frenzy of the indifferent. This frenzy of the indifferent is in truth a terrible thing; it has made all monstrous and widely pervading persecutions. In this degree it was not the people who cared who ever persecuted; the people who cared were not sufficiently numerous. It was the people who did not care who filled the world with fire and oppression. It was the hands of the indifferent that lit the faggots; it was the hands of the indifferent that turned the rack. There have come some persecutions out of the pain of a passionate certainty; but these produced, not bigotry, but fanaticism - a very different and a somewhat admirable thing. Bigotry in the main has always been the pervading omnipotence of those who do not care crushing out those who care in darkness and blood.

61. The people ran into the street but by then all was still The rock seemed where it always was or where it always will be When someone asked where he had gone they said: 'Oh he was daft. Who cares about that crazy fool.' And then they'd start to laugh.

62. There's something burning somewhere. Does anybody care? Is anybody there?

63. 'Course I care. I always care. But there's no point in making a song and dance about it, like that night he stayed here. Know something? There's only one thing that'll bring 'em back, and that's indifference. The one thing you can't fake.'

64. 'Recite the Qur'an in such a way that your hearts develop a love for it and your skin becomes softened by it. However as soon as your hearts become indifferent to it (meaning that the Qur'an has no effect on you), then stop reciting it.'

65. As for what you say or hint of 'local' conditions: I knew of them. I don't think they have much changed (even for the worse). I used to hear them discussed by my mother; and have ever since taken a special interest in that part of the world. The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long.

66. Who cares? Sometimes you need rebirth.' (On the destruction of America)

67. The most useful thing I could do before this meeting is to keel over. On the other hand, artists are keeling over by the thousands every day and nobody seems to pay the least attention.

68. 'Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth. You all know what I mean. What's the point in a cry for help if no one hears the scream?' - from 'No Voices in the Sky'

69. One day when I'm walking and I see -- at first I thought maybe he was resting -- but I saw a big dead seal on the beach, which was really sad. However, the thing that I thought was puzzling was there was a couple, a young guy and a girl on a beach towel not 15 feet from this big, dead mammal, and I look up and they're waving at me, like, 'Isn't it a pretty day?' And I'm like, 'There's a big dead seal right there.' They're putting on lotion. It was just bizarre. And, curtain. I just didn't want to be at the beach anymore.

70. [Minding one's own business] is a cheap and second rate virtue, much extolled in certain circles, over estimated by the world at large; in constant use as an excuse for laziness; an alibi for indifference coldness and neglect; the slacker's refuge; the sluggard's sure defense.

71. The Americans didn't even think about the outcome of the bombing, because the Sudanese were so far below contempt as to be not worth thinking about. Suppose I walk down the sidewalk in Cambridge and, without a second thought, step on an ant. That would mean that I regard the ant as beneath contempt, and that's morally worse than if I purposely killed that ant.

72. What will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next couple of weeks. Very casually, with no comment, no particular thought about it, that's just kind of normal, here, and in a good part of Europe.

73. There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content. to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.

74. Stop threatening me... I've lived in terror and I've come out of it. Kill me or not, torture me or not, it doesn't matter to me. Just decide what to do.

75. Earlier generations went to see what was forbidden in life and developed a real excitement about the movies. Today's rating system keeps kids out of the good ones. I wouldn't want them to see movies like Natural Born Killers, but my tendency is you're better off seeing things than not. That glazed indifference kids develop can be worse than over-excitement.

76. Poor captive bird! Who, from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody.

77. Watch me now. Try. Couldn't walk down that line. Just pass me by. Just passing by. ~ Pass Me By'

78. The red-faced president took afternoon tea With her majesty The Queen And they watched old films flicker Across the old palace movie screen Crying, 'What a shame!' As she slipped in the rain Poor dancing girl Well, she won't dance again...

79. Everybody wants to go to bed with everybody else, they're lined up for blocks, so I'll go to bed with you. They won't miss us.

80. Nought cared this Body for wind or weather When Youth and I lived in't together.

81. A hat not much the worse for wear.

82. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing.

83. 'Me, I don't give a fuck. You know, a hole's a hole. As long as there's a little heat in there I don't give a fuck.' (from 'Testing for Jeopardy')

84. Let the bastards freeze in the dark.

85. He really didn't care about a lot of things that you're supposed to care about in the public arena. He really just didn't care.

86. I have no apprehension whatsoever. I've been through this so many times. And I found that one way or the other, your life doesn't change at all. Which is sad, in a way. Because the people love your film... nothing great happens. And people hate your film... nothing terrible happens. Many years ago, I would... I would... a film of mine would open, and it would get great reviews, and I would go down and look at the movie theater. There'd be a line around the block. And when a film is reviled, you open a film and people say 'Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie.' You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say 'Oh, they hated your film.' You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares. They're not interested. They've got their own lives, and their own problems, and their own shadows on their lungs, and their x-rays. And, you know, they've got their own stuff they're dealing with.... So, I'm just never nervous about it.

87. There would be no compromise, no sweet-talking, no tears that could soften the hardest heart. It's not my heart that's hard, anyway. It's hers. Having no concern for what she's doing to me, the risks she's making me take against my will. My whole future down the toilet

88. What bothered him was that he didn't exactly care. He didn't not care either. He was just going through the motions as he had a thousand times before, and this time, suddenly, it all seemed so silly

89. The long blue days, for his head, for his side, and the little paths for his feet, and all the brightness to touch and gather. Through the grass the little mosspaths, bony with old roots, and the trees sticking up, and the flowers sticking up, and the fruit hanging down, and the white exhausted butterflies, and the birds never the same darting all day long into hiding. And all the sounds, meaning nothing. Then at night rest in the quiet house, there are no roads, no streets any more, you lie down by a window opening on refuge, the little sounds come that demand nothing, ordain nothing, explain nothing, propound nothing, and the short necessary night is soon ended, and the sky blue again all over the secret places where nobody ever comes, the secret places never the same, but always simple and indifferent, always mere places, sites of a stirring beyond coming and going, of a being so light and free that it is as the being of nothing.

90. nobody cries when we die/we outlaws/let me ride

91. If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

92. Gennifer Flowers: I'm here with the Intercontinental Champion-- The Rock: Whoa, actually, Genny, it's The People's Intercontinental Champion. GF: Excuse me... The People's Intercontinental Champion, The Rock. Now, Rock, the people want to know--if you were the leader of this country, how would you run things? TR: Well, actually, Genny, The Rock feels like this. First and foremost, the term 'leader' is really beneath The Rock. The Rock feels like a more appropriate term would... 'ruler.' GF: OK, if you were the ruler, how would you handle the homeless situation? TR: I'll tell you what, Genny, that's a touchy subject for The Rock, the homeless situation in America. The Rock feels like this: as long as The Rock still has his palatial palace down on South Beach in Miami, FL, he really couldn't give a damn whether they live in a Frigidaire box or a Kenmore box. As long as those homeless pieces of trash keep their cardboard boxess off The Rock's freshly mowed grass, everything will be copasetic. GF: Well, how about the judicial system? TR: Well, first and foremost, as long as The Rock's fans across the country realize that The Rock is the judge and the jury, everything should be fine. Actually, after The Rock has contemplated that for a second, if The Rock were the jury, nine times out of ten he'd be a hung jury... if ya smell what The Rock is cooking. GF: How would you run the White House? TR: Tough job, tough question. But The Rock of course is up to answering it. The Rock feels like this: As long as all the interns in the White House, beneath The Rock, knew their damn role, and they didn't get out of hand, step out of line, and they didn't do anything orally wrong--excuse me, Genny--morally wrong, then The Rock wouldn't have to do what he does best, and that's lay the smackdown in a major way. Thank you very much, Genny.

93. Gennifer Flowers: I'm here with the Intercontinental Champion-- The Rock: Whoa, actually, Genny, it's The People's Intercontinental Champion. GF: Excuse me... The People's Intercontinental Champion, The Rock. Now, Rock, the people want to know--if you were the leader of this country, how would you run things? TR: Well, actually, Genny, The Rock feels like this. First and foremost, the term 'leader' is really beneath The Rock. The Rock feels like a more appropriate term would... 'ruler.' GF: OK, if you were the ruler, how would you handle the homeless situation? TR: I'll tell you what, Genny, that's a touchy subject for The Rock, the homeless situation in America. The Rock feels like this: as long as The Rock still has his palatial palace down on South Beach in Miami, FL, he really couldn't give a damn whether they live in a Frigidaire box or a Kenmore box. As long as those homeless pieces of trash keep their cardboard boxess off The Rock's freshly mowed grass, everything will be copasetic. GF: Well, how about the judicial system? TR: Well, first and foremost, as long as The Rock's fans across the country realize that The Rock is the judge and the jury, everything should be fine. Actually, after The Rock has contemplated that for a second, if The Rock were the jury, nine times out of ten he'd be a hung jury... if ya smell what The Rock is cooking. GF: How would you run the White House? TR: Tough job, tough question. But The Rock of course is up to answering it. The Rock feels like this: As long as all the interns in the White House, beneath The Rock, knew their damn role, and they didn't get out of hand, step out of line, and they didn't do anything orally wrong--excuse me, Genny--morally wrong, then The Rock wouldn't have to do what he does best, and that's lay the smackdown in a major way. Thank you very much, Genny.

94. Whether they were bank directors or mental cases, the people who were loaded on those trains meant nothing to me. It was really none of my business.

95. No person is important enough to make me angry.

96. You mean nothing to no one but that's nobody's fault.

97. Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!

98. I never cared about whatever tragic event happened in China. It's faraway decoration, even if in blood and plague.

99. How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!

100. Discussing coronation ceremonies with Vidal, 'I quickly moved on to...the moment when two masons appear and ask the newly crowned king for instructions as to his tomb. 'Masons? Masons! Yes. You one? I'm one. But I've forgotten all the odds and ends. Dull, really.' (Vidal, Palimpsest, 206)