Apathy In America

Apathy has been around since the beginning of time. It is never acknowledged by those who practice it and there is always an excuse when someone has been accused of it. Is it human nature for people to let their apathy overcome and/or overwhelm their duty as citizens? No, it is not. Apathy is a state of mind for those who lack a sense of responsibility. Apathy is a crutch to lean on. Apathy is a choice made by people who are ignorant of the dangers surrounding them. Apathy is practiced by those who have insulated themselves in their own little cocoon, their own little corner of the world where they have a false sense of safety and stability. They care only about their own self-interests and pursuing their own agenda, not realizing that by ignoring the events around them they are in danger of losing everything they value.

Apathy breeds more apathy, which leads to overwhelming consequences, which leads to peaceful revolution, which leads to civil unrest, which leads to armed revolution, which leads to the destruction of society, which leads to anarchy and the eventual destruction of a country. The result is always chaos, chaos that is usually overcome by someone willing to use force to control the violence. This force is usually more violent than the violence it is trying to control. The subsequent control is always dictatorial in nature and only a select few will benefit from it.

The same warnings concerning the consequences of apathy have been heralded by knowledgeable people over and over and over again, generation after generation. Sadly, these warnings are ignored. Once the consequences have taken root it is all too often impossible to reverse the situation, at which time all the apathetic people will demand that something be done about it.

We, the American people, have almost reached the point of no return. We have ignored the transgressions of our government, a government composed of men and women who have lost sight of their responsibilities. We have ignored our obligations to confront and correct these trangressions. Look around. Get your heads out of the sand and open your eyes. What do you see? Do you see the consequences of your apathy? Do you see what you have allowed your government to do, what you have enabled these politicians to accomplish and the destruction that is just around the corner? Do you see the deterioration of your society and its values?

I have listed below some notable quotes concerning apathy, quotes from people who fully realize the nature and subsequent consequences of such apathy. These quotes should instill a sense of responsibility in all those whose apathy has blinded them to reality. You will read some of these quotes and think that they have nothing to do with apathy. Look closer and you will see the connection. Read between the lines and you will understand what they are telling you. Many of you are actively involved in fighting this apathy, not afraid to stand up and criticize and condemn your government for the incorrect path it has taken, not afraid to confront the wrongs of every day life. You have my respect and sincere gratitude. Many of you will be unwilling to do your patriotic duty and become involved in the resurrection of your government and your country, to become involved in any other types of injustices and inequities you observe. You will be incapable of throwing off the shackles of apathy.

"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature… If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces." James Garfield

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests. " Patrick Henry

"I am concerned for the security of our great nation, not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." General Douglas MacArthur.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
Thomas Jefferson

"If there be a principle that ought not to be questioned within the United States, it is that every man has a right to abolish an old government and establish a new one. This principle is not only recorded in every public archive, written in every American heart, and sealed with the blood of American martyrs, but is the only lawful tenure by which the united States hold their existence as a nation." James Madison

"It would be a dangerous delusion if we did not fear for the safety of our rights, but entrusted these rights to the men we elect to public office." Thomas Jefferson

"A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill

"The typical American of today has lost all the love of liberty, that his forefathers had, and all their disgust of emotion, and pride in self-reliance. He is led no longer by Davy Crocketts; he is led by cheer leaders, press agents, word mongers, uplifters." H. L. Mencken

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our country men." Samuel Adams

"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." Edward Everett Hale

"A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday does not know where it is today." Robert E. Lee

"Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed—first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf." Gerry Spence

"Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you." Benjamin Franklin

"If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made not for the public good so much as for the selfish or local purposes;…Corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded." Noah Webster

"The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing." Teddy Roosevelt

"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." George Washington

"When the principles that run against your deepest convictions begin to win the day, then the battle is your calling, and peace has become sin. You must at the price of dearest peace lay your convictions bare before friend and enemy with all the fire of your faith." Abraham Kuyper

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. Thomas Jefferson

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward." Amelia Earhart

The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first, the love of soft living and the get rich quick theory of life. Teddy Roosevelt

"When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail." Pearl S. Buck

"Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God." Benjamin Franklin

"Whenever legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience." John Locke

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." Adolf Hitler

"The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy . . . Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone." Thomas Jefferson

"The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance." Thomas Paine

"Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude, and perseverance. Let us remember that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom.' It is a very serious consideration...that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event." Samuel Adams

"It is not the function of our government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error." Justice Robert H. Jackson

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts -- not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." Abraham Lincoln

"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." James Baldwin

"The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was every invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin .. Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and with a flick of a pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again .. Take this great power away from them and all great fortunes like mine will disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in .. But if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit." Sir Josiah Stamp, President, Bank of England, 1920's.

"Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened." Billy Graham

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested in its profits or so dependent on its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous advantages... will bear its burden without complaint, and perhaps without suspecting the system is inimical to their best interests." Rothchilds

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." Mark Twain

"Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on." Michael Parenti

"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands." Eric Alterman

"If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves." Howard Zinn

"What would have happened if millions of American and British people, struggling with coupons and lines at the gas stations, had learned that in 1942 Standard Oil of New Jersey [part of the Rockefeller empire] managers shipped the enemy's fuel through neutral Switzerland and that the enemy was shipping Allied fuel? Suppose the public had discovered that the Chase Bank in Nazi-occupied Paris after Pearl Harbor was doing millions of dollars' worth of business with the enemy with the full knowledge of the head office in Manhattan [the Rockefeller family among others?] Or that Ford trucks were being built for the German occupation troops in France with authorization from Dearborn, Michigan? Or that Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of the international American telephone conglomerate ITT, flew from New York to Madrid to Berne during the war to help improve Hitler's communications systems and improve the robot bombs that devastated London? Or that ITT built the FockeWulfs that dropped bombs on British and American troops? Or that crucial balI bearings were shipped to Nazi-associated customers in Latin America with the collusion of the vice-chairman of the U.S. War Production Board in partnership with Goering's cousin in Philadelphia when American forces were desperately short of them? Or that such arrangements were known about in Washington and either sanctioned or deliberately ignored?" - Charles Higham, researcher, about U.S.-Nazi collaboration during WWII

"Every country gets the government it deserves." Benjamin Disraeli

Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove. Thomas Jefferson

The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe. Abraham Lincoln

"Despite these warnings, Woodrow Wilson signed the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. A few years later he wrote: I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." Woodrow Wilson

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. I feel, at this moment, more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless." Abraham Lincoln

"These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people, and now that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel." Abraham Lincoln

"Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward and the meek who see the world's great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak." Ralph Chaplin

"It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government. But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer. Neither is resignation. Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment." Elie Wiesel

"That only a few, under any circumstances, protest against the injustice of long-established laws and customs, does not disprove the fact of the oppressions, while the satisfaction of the many, if real only proves their apathy and deeper degradation." Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." Mohandas Gandhi

"The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." Plato

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." Robert M. Hutchins

"Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all -- the apathy of human beings." Helen Keller

"Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens." Arthur Gordon

"Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation." Conor Cruise O'Brien

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems." Mohandas Gandhi

"So much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating effect." Eleanor Roosevelt

"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction." William Osler

"Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand." Bodie Thoene

"The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy." Charles de Montesquieu

"Apathy is a sort of living oblivion." Horace Greeley

"I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate - it's apathy. It's not giving a damn."
Leo Buscaglia

"When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action." Paul Wellstone

"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become prey to the active. The conditions upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." John Philpot Curran

"The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded." Charles-Louis De Secondat

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." Justice William O. Douglas

"What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." David Hume

"Habit is the denial of creativity and the negation of freedom; a self-imposed straitjacket of which the wearer is unaware." Arthur Koestler

"Some of the problems of governance in the United States today stem from an excess of democracy . . . The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups." Samuel Huntington

"I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations." Mary Wortley Montagu

"When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out."
Reverend Martin Niemoeller

"The things you refuse to meet today always come back at you later on, usually under circumstances which make the decision twice as difficult as it originally was." Eleanor Roosevelt

"There are…certain freedoms that are like circuses. Their very existence, so long as they are individual and enjoyed chiefly individually as by spectators, diverts men's mind from the loss of other, more fundamental, social and economic and political rights." Robert Nisbet

"As I watch government at all levels daily eat away at our freedom, I keep thinking how prosperity and government largesse have combined to make most of us fat and lazy and indifferent to, or actually in favor of, the limits being placed on that freedom." Lyn Nofziger

"The ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle, home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics, he feels himself master of his fate. But otherwise he simply lies down and lets things happen to him." George Orwell

"The short memories of the American voters is what keeps our politicians in office." Will Rogers

"But if you say, you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then you are not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then you are unworthy of the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant." Thomas Paine

"He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers." Charles Peguy

"Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right." Joseph Sobran

"When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered." Dorothy Thompson

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." Bishop Desmond Tutu

"Anyone who tells you that "It Can't Happen Here" is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no 'house rule' that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos." Mike Vanderboegh

"So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men." Voltaire

"No country upon earth ever had it more in its power to attain these blessings than United America. Wondrously strange, then, and much to be regretted indeed would it be, were we to neglect the means and to depart from the road which Providence has pointed us to so plainly; I cannot believe it will ever come to pass." George Washington

"Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension." John Dos Passos

"Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really.... Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenseless most of all. Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced." Jake Thoene

"Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms." Anton Chekhov

"Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice." Rollo May

"By far the most dangerous foe we have to fight is apathy - indifference from whatever cause, not from a lack of knowledge, but from carelessness, from absorption in other pursuits, from a contempt bred of self satisfaction" William Osler

"There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction." John F. Kennedy

"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them." Noam Chomsky

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." Albert Einstein

"Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being." Rod Serling

"Every great sin ought to rouse a great anger. Mob law is better than no law at all. A community which rises in its wrath to punish with misdirected anger a great wrong is in a healthier moral condition than a community which looks upon its perpetration with apathy and unconcern." Lyman Abbott

"These are the days when men of all social disciplines and all political faiths seek the comfortable and the accepted; when the man of controversy is looked upon as a disturbing influence; when originality is taken to be a mark of instability; and when, in minor modification of the original parable, the bland lead the bland." John Kenneth Galbraith

"For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are." Niccolo Machiavelli

"The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic." James Thurber

"Apathy can be overcome by enthusiasm, and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: first, an ideal, with takes the imagination by storm, and second, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice." Arnold Toynbee

"Indifference creates an artificial peace." Mason Cooley

"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life but that it bothers him less and less." Vaclav Havel

"Everything proceeds as if of its own accord, and this can all too easily tempt us to relax and let things take their course without troubling over details. Such indifference is the root of all evil." I Ching

"Laws can embody standards; governments can enforce laws--but the final task is not a task for government. It is a task for each and every one of us. Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted--when we tolerate what we know to be wrong--when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened--when we fail to speak up and speak out--we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice." Robert F. Kennedy