Now, you receive all your ideas; therefore you receive your wish, you wish therefore necessarily. The word "liberty" does not therefore belong in any way to your will. . . . The will, therefore, is not a faculty that one can call free. A free will is an expression absolutely void of sense, and what the scholastics have called will of indifference, that is to say willing without cause, is a chimera unworthy of being combated.
Indifference is the invisible giant of the world.
A person is praiseworthy for a right action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, good will, that is, concern for the right and the good, not necessarily under the description "right" or "good". A person is blameworthy for a wrong action to the extent that her action manifests, and is rationalized by, ill will - concern for the wrong and bad, also de re - or moral indifference - lack or deficiency of good will.
I remember that my mother once told me that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
Global poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.
To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!
I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature.
To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.
The solidarity which binds all men together as members of a common family makes it impossible for wealthy nations to look with indifference upon the hunger, misery and poverty of other nations whose citizens are unable to enjoy even elementary human rights. The nations of the world are becoming more and more dependent on one another and it will not be possible to preserve a lasting peace so long as glaring economic and social imbalances persist.
Why is there this criminal indifference to the lostness of men? Our condemnation is that we know how to live better than we are living.
Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism [sic] and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference.
Indifference breeds animosity.
Your life of indifference to the risen Christ and of halfhearted attention now and then to a few of his commandments will appear on that day as supremely blameworthy and infinitely foolish, and you will. . . weep that you did not change. ”8
The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference.
I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. Words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange. And the day too has its own deep indifference to anything that is said.
Pity is not enough better than indifference to benefit materially either agent or recipient.
The result can be quite new - perhaps a tendency to judge that something we've never conceived of is possible, or to feel sympathy for a trait or a type of person whom we've regarded with indifference or even hostility.
The wheel of fortune [. . . ] tells us that we all only want victory. We all want to triumph. But we all have to learn to endure what comes. We have to learn to treat misfortune and great fortune with indifference. That is wisdom.
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.
The settled man can cope with love and hate from others, but never with their indifference.