Indifference And Ignorance Quotes & Sayings

We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair. — Gabrielle Giffords

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference which is an elegant name for ignorance. — G.K. Chesterton

What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him-even concerning his own body-in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key. And woe to that fatal curiosity which might one day have the power to peer out and down through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and then suspect that man is sustained in the indifference of his ignorance by that which is pitiless, greedy, insatiable, and murderous-as if hanging in dreams on the back of a tiger. Given this situation, where in the world could the drive for truth have come from? Insofar as the individual wants to maintain — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations ... What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us. — Daniel O'Connell

We can't plead ignorance, only indifference. Those alive today are the generations that came to know better. We have the burden and the opportunity of living in the moment when the critique of factory farming broke into the popular consciousness. We are the ones of whom it will be fairly asked, What did you do when you learned the truth about eating animals? — Jonathan Safran Foer

The AIDS disease is caused by a virus, but the AIDS epidemic is not. The AIDS epidemic is fueled by stigma, by hate, by misinformation, by ignorance, by indifference. Science has accomplished miracles over the past 20 years, and science can now end this disease - but it cannot end the epidemic. We need more than medicine. We can do something about these things. We need to speak out about the changes we need to make in our society. — Elton John

The Excellence Manifesto #2

I will resist impatience.
I will resist deceitfulness.
I will resist bitterness.
I will resist ignorance.
I will resist foolishness.
I will resist pridefulness.
I will resist unrighteousness.

I will conquer laziness.
I will subdue indifference.
I will beat incompetence.
I will defeat averageness.
I will overcome fearfulness.
I will transcend weakness.
I will quash unproductiveness. — Matshona Dhliwayo

That's the true enemy of the future. Ignorance. Indifference. Failure to adapt. — Sophie Littlefield

These stupid peasants, who, throughout the world, hold potentates on their thrones, make statesmen illustrious, provide generals with lasting victories, all with ignorance, indifference, or half-witted hatred, moving the world with the strength of their arms, and getting their heads knocked together in the name of God, the king, or the stock exchange-immortal, dreaming, hopeless asses, who surrender their reason to the care of a shining puppet, and persuade some toy to carry their lives in his purse. — Stephen Crane

We are born knowing nothing and with much striving we learn but a little; yet all the while we are bound by laws that hearken to no plea of ignorance, and measure out their rewards and punishments with calm indifference. — Paul Elmer More

The costs of an ignorance of science are nor just practical ones like misbegotten policies, forgone cures, and a unilateral disarmament in national competitiveness. There is a moral cost as well. It is an astonishing fact about our species that we understand so much about the history of the universe. the forces that make it tick, the stuff it's made of; the origin of living things, and the machinery of life. A failure to nurture this knowledge shows a philistine indifference to the magnificent achievements humanity is capable of; like allowing a great work of art to molder in a warehouse. — Steven Pinker

Next day, after lunch, I went to see "our" doctor, a friendly fellow whose perfect bedside manner and complete reliance on a few patented drugs adequately masked his ignorance of, and indifference to, medical science. — Vladimir Nabokov

... the gaps
in sensitivity displayed are vast.
Concepts that have not often been surpassed
For ignorance or downright nastiness -
That the habit of indifference is less
Destructive than the embrace of love, that crimes
Are paid for never or a thousand times,
That the gentle come to grief - all these are forced
Into scenes, dialogue, comments, and endorsed
By the main action, manifesting there
An inhumanity beyond despair. — Kingsley Amis

I wondered whether I wanted to hear more. The Jean business was long over, but even when you have ceased to love someone, that does not necessarily bring an indifference to a past shared together. Besides, though love may die, vanity lives on timelessly. I knew that I must be prepared to hear things I should not like. Yet, although where unfaithfulness reigns, ignorance may be preferable to knowledge, at the same time, once knowledge is brutally born, exactitude is preferable to uncertainty. — Anthony Powell

It is a mistake always to contemplate the good and ignore the evil, because by making people neglectful it lets in disaster.
There is a dangerous optimism of ignorance and indifference. — Helen Keller

I like to think of my best moment on the job as quiet victories. Victories over what? Over the "system", over the various bureaucracies not watching me, over my colleagues' indifference, over my patron's ignorance, over the very concept of horn-blowing pride. — Paul Lester Wiener

The power of a corrupt government is located in the ignorance and indifference of its people - rjs — Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

Regarding the Forbidden Book:
There comes a time in every civilization where the forces of goods and progressive thinking have to face the forces of ignorance, evil and tyranny.

What becomes of the later generations depends on what is done there and then in that place at that time.

Find out if you may have taken part when these two forces went head to head.

Indifference is no longer an option. — Claire Hamelin Manning

It is the incompetent and the neglected artist who charges the public with ignorance, stupidity, and indifference. He raves loudly, but he is incomprehensible, even inarticulate, in his work. — Walter J. Phillips

It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, unpublicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world. — Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies. — Moses Finley

The arm or the leg of the human body may be amputated without destroying life, yet no man would, therefore, think or say the member was of no importance, or that the functions of the body might be as fully and perfectly performed without it as with it. The salvation of that man is secured who builds on Christ - that sure foundation - but it is no matter of indifference whether he build wood, hay, and stubble, or gold, silver, and precious stones, as the fire shall try every man's work. There is an essential difference between ignorance or error and the neglect or abandonment of what is known to be a part of the truth of God. We may accept with all confidence one of very limited information and of a very defective judgment, but not one who, knowing the mind of the Lord in a particular case, is prepared to class it with unimportant things and neglect it. — William Sommerville

The fast-food hamburger has been brilliantly engineered to offer a succulent and tasty first bite, a bite that in fact would be impossible to enjoy if the eater could accurately picture the feedlot and slaughterhouse and the workers behind it or knew anything about the 'artificial grill flavor' that made the first bite so convincing. This is a hamburger to hurry through, no question. By comparison, eating a grass-fed burger when you can picture the green pastures in which the animal grazed is a pleasure of another order, not a simple one, to be sure, but one based on knowledge rather than ignorance and gratitude rather than indifference.
To eat slowly, then, also means to eat deliberately, in the original sense of the word: 'from freedom' instead of compulsion. — Michael Pollan

The brevity of our lives breeds a kind of temporal parochialism - an ignorance of or an indifference to those planetary gears which turn more slowly than our own. — Kathryn Schulz

The seeming imperfections of Earth, the hazards and inequalities of life, the cruelty, harshness and apparent indifference to suffering and affliction are not what they seem; as it is Earth is perfect for its purpose. It is ignorance of that purpose which makes it appear imperfect. — Kolbrin BIble

There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed. — Benjamin Robbins Curtis

If ignorance and passion are the foes of popular morality, it must be confessed that moral indifference is the malady of the cultivated classes. — Henri Frederic Amiel

The challenge to shifting perspective can be broken down into two general categories. The first relates to passive ignorance - people are not aware that they even have a perspective and that others might see things differently. The second relates to active indifference or resistance - we don't care that the other side may see things differently; we only want to see things our own way. — Donny Ebenstein

Sadly, the doctrinal ignorance in the pulpits of today is being replicated in the doctrinal ignorance and indifference of the pews, and the people are not even seeing the picture, much less getting it. — Albert Mohler

We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see. — Ben Okri

Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge. — Anton Webern