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33b4ee4
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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.
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activism
apathy
hate
indifference
inspirational
love
opposite
philosophy
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Elie Wiesel |
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cf9a2d2
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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.
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design
disease
evolution
fear
indifference
natural-selection
purpose
science
starvation
suffering
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Richard Dawkins |
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5ffa2f2
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You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now.
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hate
indifference
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W. Somerset Maugham |
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7c5afc1
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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.
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indifference
love
unrequited-love
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Gabriel García Márquez |
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7483b78
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The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.
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indifference
love
misattributed-elie-wiesel
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Wilhelm Stekel |
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1f7aad5
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"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."
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change
generations
good-people
indifference
repentance
silence
social-justice
social-movements
violence
vitriol
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Martin Luther King Jr. |
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df40f99
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"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."
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indifference
mediocrity
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Dante Alighieri |
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09f3490
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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 . 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 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.
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despair
desperation
exasperation
eyes
indifference
nationality
peace
personal
public
smallness
war
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Arundhati Roy |
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2704279
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Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.
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desire
indifference
life
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Kahlil Gibran |
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e033a58
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You can't be neutral on a moving train.
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history
indifference
justice
neutrality
passivity
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Howard Zinn |
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a041cd9
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"Let's say that the consensus is that our species, being the higher primates, Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet for at least 100,000 years, maybe more. Francis Collins says maybe 100,000. Richard Dawkins thinks maybe a quarter-of-a-million. I'll take 100,000. In order to be a Christian, you have to believe that for 98,000 years, our species suffered and died, most of its children dying in childbirth, most other people having a life expectancy of about 25 years, dying of their teeth. Famine, struggle, bitterness, war, suffering, misery, all of that for 98,000 years. Heaven watches this with complete indifference. And then 2000 years ago, thinks 'That's enough of that. It's time to intervene,' and the best way to do this would be by condemning someone to a human sacrifice somewhere in the less literate parts of the Middle East. Don't lets appeal to the Chinese, for example, where people can read and study evidence and have a civilization. Let's go to the desert and have another revelation there. This is nonsense. It can't be believed by a thinking person. Why am I glad this is the case? To get to the point of the wrongness of Christianity, because I think the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The central one is the most immoral of all, and that is the one of vicarious redemption. You can throw your sins onto somebody else, vulgarly known as scapegoating. In fact, originating as scapegoating in the same area, the same desert. I can pay your debt if I love you. I can serve your term in prison if I love you very much. I can volunteer to do that. I can't take your sins away, because I can't abolish your responsibility, and I shouldn't offer to do so. Your responsibility has to stay with you. There's no vicarious redemption. There very probably, in fact, is no redemption at all. It's just a part of wish-thinking, and I don't think wish-thinking is good for people either.
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atheism
atheist
atheist-argument
belief
christianity-is-immoral
christopher-hitchens
compulsory
crime
dawkins
debate
dictatorship
divine-dictatorship
eternal-father
eternal-punishment
ethics
evidence
fear
great-atheist-argument
guilt
health
hitchens
hitchslap
homo-sapiens
human-sacrifice
immoral-christianity
indifference
intellect
love
love-your-neighbor
morality
myth
reason
redemption
responsibility
richard-dawkins
supreme-being
totalitarianism
truth
wishful-thinking
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Christopher Hitchens |
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6dd458a
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But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference.
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indifference
life
quality-of-life
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry |
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0d00a68
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He was bored now when Emma suddenly began to sob on his breast; and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, became drowsy through indifference to the vibrations of a love whose subtleties he could no longer distinguish.
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crying
indifference
love
sadness
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Gustave Flaubert |
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d6a663a
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Indifference is more truly the opposite of love than hate is, for we can both love and hate the same person at the same time, but we cannot both love and be indifferent to the same person at the same time.
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indifference
love
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Peter Kreeft |
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f35c66d
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The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
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apathy
auschewitz
evil
genocide
good
hitler
hollow
holocaust
indifference
rwanda
sentiment
south-sudan
sudan
talk
tolerance
west
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Philip Gourevitch |
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fc4b149
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Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifference n'apprend rien: c'etait un leurre, une illusion fascinante et piegee. Tu etais seul et voila tout et tu voulais te proteger: qu'entre le monde et toi les ponts soient a jamais coupes. Mais tu es si peu de chose et le monde est un si grand mot: tu n'as jamais fait qu'errer dans une grande ville, que longer sur quelques kilometres des facades, des devantures, des parcs et des quais. L'indifference est inutile. Tu peux vouloir ou ne pas vouloir, qu'importe! Faire ou ne pas faire une partie de billard electrique, quelqu'un, de toute facon, glissera une piece de vingt centimes dans la fente de l'appareil. Tu peux croire qu'a manger chaque jour le meme repas tu accomplis un geste decisif. Mais ton refus est inutile. Ta neutralite ne veut rien dire. Ton inertie est aussi vaine que ta colere.
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indifference
solitude
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Georges Perec |
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4d07cee
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Confidential matters are not dealt with over the telephone, you'd better come here in person. I cannot leave the house, Do you mean you're ill, Yes, I'm ill, the blind man said after a pause. In that case you ought to call a doctor, a real doctor, quipped the functionary, and, delighted with his own wit, he rang off. The man's insolence was like a slap in the face. Only after some minutes had passed, had he regained enough composure to tell his wife how rudely he had been treated. Then, as if he had discovered something that he should have known a long time ago, he murmured sadly, This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice.
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bureaucracy
indifference
malice
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José Saramago |
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d3d41e2
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Pain and darkness have been our lot since the Fall of Man. But there must be some hope that we can rise to a higher level ... that consciousness can evolve to a plane more benevolent than its counterpoint of a universe hardwired to indifference.
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evolution
indifference
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Dan Simmons |
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c0be49c
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Tolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
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change
compassion
conscience
conviction
guilt
hell
hunger
indifference
power
rationalization
starvation
stewardship
tolstoy
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Randy Alcorn |
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810ccc0
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Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored -- it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.
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empathy
indifference
prejudice
race
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Pearl S. Buck |
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6670fda
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She felt a bored indifference toward the immediate world around her...She took it as a regrettable accident, to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull.
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boring
dagny-taggart
dull
indifference
people
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Ayn Rand |
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f223a7d
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Bor'ba imeet svoiu prelest'. Borot'sia - znachit zhit', pust' bor'ba prinosit gore, pust' ona ranit, - vse luchshe, chem besprosvetnyi mrak otvrashcheniia, iad prezritel'noi zamknutosti, kholod tekh, kto otreksia ot bor'by, chem smert' serdtsa, kotoraia zovetsia ravnodushiem.
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indifference
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Honoré de Balzac |
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5e0f24e
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She seemed always to have seen him through a blur - first of sleepiness, then of distance and indifference - and now the fog had thickened till he was almost indistinguishable.
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indifference
perspective
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Edith Wharton |
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cea8d19
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The price of eternal vigilance is indifference.
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attention
indifference
marshall-mcluhan
media
vigilance
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Marshall McLuhan |
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6e0e1ea
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This is the stuff we are made of, half indifference and half malice.
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indifference
malice
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José Saramago |
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5f2942b
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Estas solo, y al estar solo, no has de mirar nunca la hora, no has de contar nunca los minutos. No has de abrir de nuevo tu correo febrilmente, no has de seguir decepcionado si solo encuentras en el un prospecto invitandote a adquirir por la modica suma de setenta y siete francos los tesoros del arte occidental o una vajilla de postre con tus iniciales grabadas. Has de olvidarte de esperar, de emprender, de tener exito, de perseverar. Te dejas llevar, y eso te resulta casi facil.
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indifference
tú
un-hombre-que-duerme
you
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Georges Perec |
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1c80b7e
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his unwavering confidence - but now, it feels like a brand of indifference
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indifference
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Emily Giffin |
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cb10980
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It's a dangerous game Cherrycoke's playing here. Often he thinks the sheer volume of information pouring in through his fingers will saturate, burn him out...she seems determined to overwhelm him with her history and its pain, and the edge of it, always fresh from the stone, cutting at his hopes, at all their hopes. He does respect her: he knows that very little of this is female theatricals, really. She has turned her face, more than once, to the Outer Radiance and simply seen nothing there. And so each time has taken a little more of the Zero into herself. It comes down to courage, at worst an amount of self-deluding that's vanishingly small: he has to admire it, even if he can't accept her glassy wastes, her appeals to a day not of wrath but of final indifference...
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futility-of-war
indifference
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Thomas Pynchon |