A Quote by Alexis de Tocqueville

It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Quote Topics

Almost Anarchy Apathy Despotism Either Far Give Important More Resist Rise Than

Quote Author

Alexis de Tocqueville
French - Historian
July 29, 1805 - April 16, 1859

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 Webster

Error is better than apathy. Error can be corrected in time to change the outcome. Apathy is seldom corrected until it is too late.

G. Edward Griffin

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

Rod Serling

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

Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.-

Gary Yourofsky

My generation's apathy. I'm disgusted with it. I'm disgusted with my own apathy too, for being spineless and not always standing up against racism, sexism and all those other -isms the counterculture has been whining about for years.

Kurt Cobain

Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

Milan Kundera

Liberty begets anarchy, anarchy leads to despotism, and despotism brings about liberty once again. Millions of human beings have perished without being able to make any of these systems triumph.

Honore de Balzac

I was faced more with apathy than opposition.

Adrian Cronauer

Electoral turnout is falling among the young, and political apathy is on the rise.

Mo Ibrahim

The thing that kills me is all these bands that use huge words in their lyrics, 'I'm swimming in a vortex of apathy.' I'm like, 'What?' I don't walk up to a friend and go 'That's a stylin' looking vortex of apathy you've got there pal. I was swimming up a river of deceit myself.'

Devin Townsend

There is within the hearts of people a deep desire for peace on earth, and they would speak for peace if they were not bound by apathy, by ignorance, by fear. It is the job of the peacemakers to inspire them from their apathy, to dispel their ignorance with truth, to allay their fear with faith that God's laws work - and work for good.

Peace Pilgrim

Someplace between apathy and anarchy is the stance of the thinking human being; he does embrace a cause, he does take a position, and can't allow it to become business as usual. Humanity is our business.

Rod Serling

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.