Q: What’s the difference between ignorance and apathy?
A: I don’t know, and I don’t care!

“Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies” or “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.”— Elie Wiesel

“Desire is half of life; indifference is half of death.” — Kahlil Gibran

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” — Albert Einstein

Of all the quotes cited, this one is my personal favorite:

“The malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous” – Winston Churchill

Whenever I read the newspapers about the Iranian ambition to possess the nuclear bomb, I wonder whether whether we as a civilization have learned anything from the mistakes of our misbegotten neutrality and collective indifference of the past.

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Notes:

Sayers’ comment reminds me a little bit of one of the great lines that often is incorrectly attributed to Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality,” however no such quote can be found in Dante’s Inferno. Actually, nobody really knows who originated this statement. But perhaps the most likely source for this quotation comes from Winston Churchill, who is purported to have said, ” The hottest part of hell is reserved for those, who at a time of grave moral crisis, steadfastly maintain their neutrality.”