Indifference Quotes

“When we feel abandoned along the road of indifference, we can jam our path into our thinking mind, breaking free from the shackles of inattention, getting our life together, uncovering our identity, and resurfacing in a world of sympathy and understanding. (”Life with sea view”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We are seeing a globalization of indifference. There is a culture of conflict, which makes us think only of ourselves. Makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are also insubstantial. We've become used to the suffering of others. It doesn't affect me. No one in our world feels responsible.”
― Jonathan Pryce - Pope Francis

“He was a man who had already died once.

There was no reason why he should feel any sense of responsibility or attachment to the world. To him, it was nothing more than a sheet of newspaper covered in the scribblings of cockroaches.”
― Yukio Mishima, Life for Sale

“Southern themes will range from generous and luscious love to cruel and bitter hate, but no one can ever claim that the South is petty or indifferent.”
― Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

“Where there is love, there is action. And lack of action is actually lack of love.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sleepless for Society

“Indifference is acceptable from a vegetable, not from a human being.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity

“Like all disappearing forms, art seeks to duplicate itself by means of simulation, but it will nevertheless soon be gone, leaving behind an immense museum of artificial art and abandoning the field completely to advertising.
A dizzying eclecticism of form, a dizzying eclecticism of pleasure - such, already, was the agenda of the baroque. For the baroque, however, the vortex of artifice has a fleshly aspect. Like the practitioners of the baroque, we too are irrepressible creators of images, but secretly we are iconoclasts - not in the sense that we destroy images, but in the sense that we manufacture a profusion of images in which there is nothing to see. Most present-day images - be they video images, paintings, products of the plastic arts, or audiovisual or synthesized images - are literally images in which there is nothing to see. They leave no trace, cast no shadow, and have no consequences. The only feeling one gets from such images is that behind each one there is something that has disappeared. The fascination of a monochromatic picture is the marvellous absence of form - the erasure, though still in the form of art, of all aesthetic syntax. Similarly, the fascination of trans sexuality is the erasure - though in the form of spectacle - of sexual difference. These are images that conceal nothing, that reveal nothing - that have a kind of negative intensity. The only benefit of a Campbell's soup can by Andy Warhol (and it is an immense benefit) is that it releases us from the need to decide between beautiful and ugly, between real and unreal, between transcendence and immanence. Just as Byzantine icons made it possible to stop asking whether God existed - without, for all that, ceasing to believe in him.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“And I believe our sorrow was the more intense because nobody else seemed to share it. They were disgusted, amused, shocked, outraged, or even excited by the story. But we listened for the one who would say, "Poor little girl," or "Poor baby," but there was only head-wagging where those words should have been. We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veils.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

“The simulation of Western values is universal once one gets beyond the boundaries of our culture. Is it not true, though, that in our heart of hearts we ourselves, who are neither Alakaluf nor Aboriginal, neither Dogon nor Arab, fail signally to take our own values seriously? Do we not embrace them with the same affectation and inner unconcern - and are we not ourselves equally unimpressed by all our shows of force, all our technological and ideological pretensions? Nevertheless, it will be a long time before the utopian abstraction of our universal vision of differences is demolished in our own eyes, whereas all other cultures have already given their own response - namely, universal indifference.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

“With indifference people are continuously breeding a society full of disparity – they are constantly aiding the creation of more inequality. We are constantly making way for a world where some parents give their kids x-box to soothe them, for their birthday, and many more parents are forced to use leftover cardboard boxes as cradle for their babies because they don't even have a roof over their head. This is our so called civilization - this is our so called modern humanity - shame on us - shame on us as a species - shame on us as civilized beings - shame on us as thinking and breathing individuals of conscience. No more - no more - we must break this disparity - and we must do it right now - and we are not going to do it by fighting over whose ideology is the best - we are going to do it only by taking actual responsibility of our society - by taking actual responsibility of the world - we are going to do it by acting as a living cure for those disparities, by using our own resources as means to erase those gaps however we can. Only with action born from our heart can we end disparity, not with talks of argument and inaction of complacency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America

“Where you need to be calm, you burst out in rage, and where you need to be on fire, you remain indifferent.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“Sobre su espalda y sus costados arrastraba consigo por todas partes hilos, pelos, restos de comida... Su indiferencia hacia todo era demasiado grande como para tumbarse sobre su espalda y restregarse contra la alfombra, tal como hacia antes varias veces al día.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“His stomach turned inside out, like a glove, and he vomited.
   It wasn't disagreeable at all. Almost like a liberation, in fact. A kind of suicide, in a way. These particles of matter that showered from his mouth, after he had thought them consumed and digested, did not disgust him. No, he was completely indifferent to them; and to everything else, for that matter. It was only when he vomited that he could be indifferent even to life itself.”
― Roland Topor, The Tenant

“From the realization of oneness rises the desire for justice - from the realization of oneness rises the desire for equality - from the realization of oneness rises the desire for unification. And do not confuse the realization of oneness to be a comforting experience, for the moment you become one with the rest of humanity, is the moment the sleeplessness and restlessness begin. Because once your mind is one with humanity it can't rest in peace till it sees the sufferings, disparities and discriminations alleviated. And remember, better sleepless for justice than soulless in indifference - better sleepless for equality than soulless in apathy - better sleepless for harmony than soulless in complacency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Better sleepless for justice than soulless in indifference - better sleepless for equality than soulless in apathy - better sleepless for harmony than soulless in complacency.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Heartache in love is far better than heartlessness in apathy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Indifference is convenience but equality is necessity, and sometimes we have to give up our convenience to make way for the necessity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Synthetic Civilization (The Sonnet)

The watchwords of civilization,
Are reason and inclusion.
Yet we live by the golden rules,
Of rigidity and exclusion.
We dress up in fancy clothes,
To feel powerful and important.
Beneath the lies of civilization,
Beats a heart most impotent.
We boast proudly about equality,
Unaware of our biases most inane.
We admire the rights of our own,
Rights of others are business of the UN.
Enough of this make belief ascension.
It’s time to humanize our synthetic civilization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“Once she had thought belief depended on inclination. But she fought against this new realization as hard as she could, trying to shut out the future as before she had shut out the past; yet still it gained ground. It mingled with her daily life, with the war, with the winter, until it scarcely seemed a separate thing at all, but merely a state of mind produced by living alone, living in England and all the rest of it. She deeply hoped it was. There were times when it seemed a trivial and shallow depression. And there were times when the fear of it touched her as cold as wet steel: when she could see herself hardly aware that she was unhappy, because her feelings had so nearly atrophied, and receiving no compensations in return.”
― Philip Larkin

“Technically, under the Golden Rule, you wouldn’t have to do anything for anybody and you would still be in the clear. But that merely stops the transference of evil with you. It’s just indifference. If the evil stopped with you, and there was no good to push it out, then that evil is still inside you.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“You want revolution? Then dismantle all indifference and stand up - stand up and do not move - do not move from your conviction of justice - do not move from your conviction of equality - do not move from your conviction of humanity - do not move an inch - even if all the artilleries in the world are charged against you - do not move and do not harm - just stand - keep standing - keep standing like a pillar of insanity - an insanity for sanctity - an insanity for serenity - an insanity for unity - let them break every single bone in your body - let all the blood in your veins pour out - let every trace of life seep out of your wounds - but still do not move - till there is a single kernel of life left in you. This is what revolution looks like - this is what civilized revolution looks like - no guns, no bombs, not even a baton, just a whole lot of determination, that even the mighty gods cannot deter - a revolution that turns an animal world into a human world - a revolution that turns a jungle into a modern society – a revolution that turns distance into unity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity

“Indifference is silent, so is realization, but the difference between the two is that the silence of indifference sustains a life of complacency, whereas the silence of realization pours in your veins such courage that you no longer are able to maintain indifference of any sort - wherever and whenever you see injustice and discrimination you leap in revolution - you leap with a strong conviction of equality and humaneness - you leap in an act of revolution.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity

“Only dogs and donkeys sleep while their society suffers, not humans.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Martyr Meets World: To Solve The Hard Problem of Inhumanity

“Better die a daring reformer than a cowardly conformer.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America

“A civilized world is built by concerned and caring brothers and sisters, not by cold and indifferent strangers.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Constitution of The United Peoples of Earth

“The dream of identity ends in indifference.
What can be read between the lines of these stories is that chance and destiny are not to be found elsewhere, in some imaginary decree.
Chance is already present in the unpredictability of ordinary life. There is nothing more unpredictable than any moment of daily life.
All one needs to do is to acknowledge immediately the non-existence of this individual structure, and to recognize that the ego exists only in the showing-through [transparition] of the world and all its most insignificant possibilities.
It is no use wondering where freedom or identity lies and what is to be done with them. Human beings are the coming-to-pass of what they are and what they do.
Therein lies the movement of becoming, and what they wanted to be is not an issue; their ideals or free will are not an issue: these are merely retrospective justifications.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“Here lies the total abstraction and the source of all domination: in the breakdown of the dual relation.
The strategy of domination is, indeed, to ensure that, through all the techniques of communication, through inescapable, streaming information, there can no longer be any response. It is a domination by signs empty of meaning. But, on the other side, there is an equal indifference and blank resistance.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“Sonnet of Breath

The heart holds a breath,
A breath that is indivisible.
Yet we rarely take it in,
For we are raised as vegetable.
We are seeking joy here and there,
Yet there's an ocean of it within us.
It's a joy that comes alive when we care,
At the sight of selfishness it disappears.
Intimacy breeds stability and serenity,
But not the one that thrives on body.
Intimacy that's chaste and unifying,
Manifests only in innocent amity.
Human mind is the source of all ascension.
We are the origin of all civilized creation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“I ain't in the state of mind where I give a darn.”
― B.M. Bower, The Flying U's Last Stand

“Where there is accountability, there is action, where there is indifference, there is prayer.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Solo Standing on Guard: Life Before Law