40 Quotes About Overcoming Apathy

In a world often overwhelmed by noise and distraction, apathy can creep in quietly, robbing us of motivation and the drive to pursue our passions. Overcoming this silent barrier is crucial for those seeking to lead a more purposeful and fulfilling life. In this blog post, we've gathered a curated collection of the top 40 quotes about overcoming apathy that promises to inspire, ignite action, and renew your sense of purpose. Whether you're struggling with stagnation or simply seeking a little extra push, these quotes can serve as a beacon of hope and a reminder that change is always within reach. Dive into these powerful words and rediscover the momentum to reclaim your zest for life.

1. “I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.” - Samuel Johnson

2. “Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.” - Thomas Jefferson

3. “They wrote to me and said something about it, and I said that if it doesn't involve any work, I'll do it. (On being named Minnesota's first Poet Laureate)” - Robert Bly

4. “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.” - Winston Churchill

5. “American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver's license age than at voting age.” - Marshall McLuhan

6. “...the opposite of love is not hate -- it's apathy. It's not giving a damn. If somebody hates me, they must "feel" something ... or they couldn't possibly hate. Therefore, there's some way in which I can get to them.” - Leo F. Buscaglia

7. “All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.” - Noam Chomsky

8. “Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.” - Anne Michaels

9. “Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or uncles, and only leave the house to go to the movies or to the nearest bar. "How're you making it?" on may ask, running into them along the block, or in the bar. "Oh, I'm TV-ing it"; with the saddest, sweetest, most shamefaced of smiles, and from a great distance. This distance one is compelled to respect; anyone who has traveled so far will not easily be dragged again into the world. There are further retreats, of course, than the TV screen or the bar. There are those who are simply sitting on their stoops, "stoned," animated for a moment only, and hideously, by the approach of someone who may lend them the money for a "fix." Or by the approach of someone from whom they can purchase it, one of the shrewd ones, on the way to prison or just coming out.” - James Baldwin

10. “What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.” - Christopher Hitchens

11. “It was nice of her to want to believe the best about me. People tend to do that with the strangers they're fucking. If she wanted to think that apathy and independence were the same thing, good for her. Maybe she was right.” - Paul Neilan

12. “Hating requires caring. In which case, I couldn't possibly hate you.” - Alyson Noel

13. “It's a disease. Nobody thinks or feels or cares any more; nobody gets excited or believes in anything except their own comfortable little God damn mediocrity.” - Richard Yates

14. “A lot of you cared, just not enough.” - Jay Asher

15. “Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.” - Terry Eagleton

16. “I would like at this moment to announce that I will be retiring from this program in two weeks' time because of poor ratings. Since this show is the only thing I had going for me in my life, I've decided to kill myself. I'm going to blow my brains out right on this program a week from today. So tune in next Tuesday. That should give the public relations people a week to promote the show. You ought to get a hell of a rating out of that. 50 share, easy.” - Paddy Chayefsky

17. “His vital signs were taken, an electrocardiogram... which revealed occasional ventricular premature contractions. An intern took his history... and then he was promptly... simply... forgotten to death.” - Paddy Chayefsky

18. “I would rather a romantic relationship turn into contempt than turn into apathy. The passion in the extremities make it appear as though it once meant something. We grow from hot or cold, but lukewarm is the biggest insult.” - Criss Jami

19. “You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains.” - Imre Kertesz

20. “Even extreme grief may ultimately ventitself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy” - Joseph Conrad

21. “It's an apathy so absolute that it's like a hole you might fall in.” - Lionel Shriver

22. “You can present the material, but you can't make me care.” - Bill Watterson

23. “Scientists talk about dark matter, the invisible, mysterious substance that occupies the space between stars. Dark matter makes up 99.99 percent of the universe, and they don't know what it is. Well I do. It's apathy. That's the truth of it; pile together everything we know and care about in the universe and it will still be nothing more than a tiny speck in the middle of a vast black ocean of Who Gives a Fuck.” - David Wong

24. “Nor did he give a damn for the world either, or the universe, or heaven or hell. But he liked women.” - John Fante

25. “Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.” - Irvine Welsh

26. “It was the face of a human being who’d been constructed exclusively of wounds. Not time or history or ambition, nothing but wounds. The face of a person who could probably kill someone without feeling anything whatsoever.” - Ryu Murakami

27. “I’d never actually talked to a deaf person before but I’d been swimming and gotten water stuck in my ears lots of times, felt that underwater silence as I shook my head and watched people’s mouths moving without hearing the words, so I knew what it was like for her. I could empathize.” - Paul Neilan

28. “Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.” - Susan Sontag

29. “She was surprised at how deflating his presence was.” - Tom McNeal

30. “Apathetic people sit back and wait for things to get better before they move. Radical people make things get better, by how they move.” - Shannon L. Alder

31. “Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy.” - Hazen Pingree

32. “Never complain about what you permit to be.” - Orrin Woodward

33. “The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.” - William Lloyd Garrison

34. “It is the apathetic person that sees the cause while the charitable person sees the need.” - Shannon L. Alder

35. “...you want things to remain the same, which they never can, and so you’re wounded by your own feelings & resentful others don’t seem to care...” - John Geddes

36. “To be apathetic is literally to be without passion.” - Erwin Raphael McManus

37. “Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness.” - Isaac Marion

38. “There's so much I should say, so many things I should tell him, but in the end I tell him nothing.I cut a line and my losses, and I light a cigarette.” - Clint Catalyst

39. “So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you.” - Franz Kafka

40. “Things will happen that you can’t prevent, things will fall apart that you can’t hold together, but ultimately you’re shaping yourself and that final product speaks volumes about who you really are, not what people see you as or what you want to be.” - Erik Tomblin