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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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hate
love
philosophy
inspirational
opposite
indifference
activism
apathy
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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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evolution
suffering
fear
science
indifference
design
starvation
disease
purpose
natural-selection
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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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love
indifference
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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love
misattributed-elie-wiesel
indifference
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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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violence
silence
social-justice
change
indifference
good-people
vitriol
social-movements
repentance
generations
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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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war
exasperation
smallness
public
personal
indifference
nationality
peace
desperation
despair
eyes
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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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life
indifference
desire
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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
neutrality
indifference
passivity
justice
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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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myth
responsibility
morality
reason
fear
love
truth
atheist-argument
christianity-is-immoral
christopher-hitchens
compulsory
divine-dictatorship
eternal-punishment
great-atheist-argument
hitchens
hitchslap
homo-sapiens
immoral-christianity
love-your-neighbor
supreme-being
dawkins
indifference
human-sacrifice
eternal-father
totalitarianism
debate
dictatorship
richard-dawkins
wishful-thinking
belief
evidence
ethics
atheism
health
intellect
atheist
redemption
crime
guilt
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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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life
indifference
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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sadness
love
indifference
crying
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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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love
indifference
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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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good
auschewitz
south-sudan
sentiment
indifference
apathy
tolerance
west
genocide
rwanda
sudan
holocaust
hitler
hollow
talk
evil
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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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solitude
indifference
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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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compassion
change
stewardship
tolstoy
indifference
rationalization
starvation
conviction
hunger
conscience
power
guilt
hell
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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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prejudice
empathy
indifference
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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people
dagny-taggart
boring
dull
indifference
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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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vigilance
marshall-mcluhan
attention
indifference
media
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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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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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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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tú
un-hombre-que-duerme
you
indifference
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Georges Perec |
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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 |