“To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
“The act of greatest subversion … is the one of indifference.”
Source: Break-Out from the Crystal Palace (1974), p. 53
Context: The act of greatest subversion … is the one of indifference. A man, or a group, finds it unbearable that someone can be simply uninterested in his, or its, convictions. … There is a degree of complicity, or mutual respect, between the believer and the man who attacks his beliefs (the revolutionary), for the latter takes them seriously.
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John Carroll58
Australian professor and author 1944Related quotes
William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
"The One Un-American Act," Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952) http://ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/oif/foryoungpeople/theoneunamerican/oneunamerican.cfm <br class="br">Other speeches and writings
“Rest and laughter are the most spiritual and subversive acts of all. Laugh, rest, slow down.”
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Frederick Brotherton Meyer (1847–1929) English Baptist pastor and evangelist
The Way Into The Holiest (1893)
James Mill (1773–1836) Scottish historian, economist, political theorist and philosopher
The Westminster Review, vol. 6 (1826), p. 13
Context: This habit of forming opinions, and acting upon them without evidence, is one of the most immoral habits of the mind.... As our opinions are the fathers of our actions, to be indifferent about the evidence of our opinions is to be indifferent about the consequences of our actions. But the consequences of our actions are the good and evil of our fellow-creatures. The habit of the neglect of evidence, therefore, is the habit of disregarding the good and evil of our fellow-creatures.
Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician
In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, 1952), pp. 167-8
1950s
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Source: 1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
Context: The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well.
Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855) German mathematician and physical scientist
Letter to Farkas Bolyai (2 September 1808)
Context: It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment. [Wahrlich es ist nicht das Wissen, sondern das Lernen, nicht das Besitzen sondern das Erwerben, nicht das Da-Seyn, sondern das Hinkommen, was den grössten Genuss gewährt. ] When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again. The never-satisfied man is so strange; if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another. I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.
“Indifference of every kind is reprehensible, even indifference towards one’s self.”
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916) Austrian writer
Source: Aphorisms (1880/1893), p. 82.
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
US News & World Report (27 October 1986)