A Quote by Bruce Catton

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

Bruce Catton

Quote Topics

Acute Almost Cause Certain Combination Incompetence Indifference Malevolence Most Much Suffering

Quote Author

Bruce Catton
American - Historian
October 9, 1899 - August 28, 1978

There is so much indifference in the face of suffering. May we overcome indifference with concrete acts of charity.

Pope Francis

Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence

Arthur C. Clarke

Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though things are rarely equal.

Nomy Arpaly

On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq, [Bush's] assumptions and policies have been wrong. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw.

Fareed Zakaria

Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.

Kay Redfield Jamison

You ask if there is no doctrine of sorrow in my philosophy. Of acute sorrow I suppose that I know comparatively little. My saddestand most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets. The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference. I am of kin to the sod, and partake of its dull patience,--in winter expecting the sun of spring.

Henry David Thoreau

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Albert Camus

Suffering is none the less acute and much more lasting when it is put into words.

Evelyn Waugh

We read so much about incompetence and corruption in all sorts of places. I'm not just thinking of the United Kingdom and the United States. Almost everywhere there seems to me to be an increase in incompetence and general dishonesty. This is what I mean about democracy - you feel that you've got the ability to arrange things and influence matters and it's not quite so easy as that, I'm afraid.

Colin Dexter

Whenever we feel that we are definitely right, so much so that we refuse to open up to anything or anybody else, right there we are wrong. It becomes wrong view. When suffering arises, where does it arise from? The cause is wrong view, the fruit of that being suffering. If it was right view it wouldn't cause suffering.

Ajahn Chah

Rebellion has its roots in government's indifference and incompetence.

Mike Barnicle

The principal cause of suffering is craving. Once craving is eliminated, much suffering will be eliminated. Still more suffering will be eliminated once ignorance is eliminated. Both craving and ignorance are equally powerful defilements that cause suffering.

Henepola Gunaratana

I always say now it's the indifference that kills patients in the field and different populations. We have to break our indifference towards the suffering of people elsewhere.

Joanne Liu

Faith drives a wedge between ethics and suffering. Where certain actions cause no suffering at all, religious dogmatists still maintain that they are evil and worthy of punishment. . . . And yet, where suffering and death are found in abundance their causes are often deemed to be good. . . . This inversion of priorities not only victimizes innocent people and squanders scarce resources; it completely falsifies our ethics.

Sam Harris

Buddhism teaches us not to try to run away from suffering. You have to confront suffering. You have to look deeply into the nature of suffering in order to recognize its cause, the making of the suffering.