Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Stéphane Hessel

Quote by Stéphane Hessel

“La pire des attitudes est l'indifférence, dire « je n'y peux rien, je me débrouille ». En vous comportant ainsi, vous perdez l'une des composantes essentielles qui fait l'humain. Une des composantes indispensables : la faculté d'indignation qui en est la conséquence.”

Quote by Stéphane Hessel

Book:Indignez-vous !
Create image

Work

Indignez-vous !

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Stéphane Hessel

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Stéphane Hessel. more

You May Also Like

“Look up photographs of what we now consider this country's -- any country's -- most morally diseased moments. [...] Ignore, for a moment, the people engaged most directly in the violence. Look instead at the faces of those who watch from the sidelines. Often, what you'll find is not an expression of proud support or the shock and horror all these people will claim to have felt much later, after the verdict is in. Rather, you'll see a childish little smirk. It's the smirk of someone who has come to realize the ugliness of the enterprise they have passively aligned with but cannot muster the courage to abandon now.”

SocietyProtestGenocideApathyPalestine
Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
Create image

“In the present-day American scene 5 per cent participation is a tremendous demonstration of democracy. This fact is also a tragic commentary on the unbelievable degree of apathy and disinterest on the part of American people. Unless the American people are aroused to a higher degree of participation, democracy will die at its roots — the withering disease of apathy in the roots of democracy will eventually cause its death.”

DemocracyVotingApathyParticipationElectionsDisinterest
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“Alas! the very attempt could not fail to encounter the ridicule of the mob, the obloquy of the sensual, and the sneers of the unfeeling. The advocate of mercy would incur the reproach of misanthropy, and be traduced as a wild unsocial animal, who had formed a nefarious design to curtail the comforts of human life (7).—Good God! and is compassion then so great a crime? Is it so heinous an offence against society, to respect in other animals that principle of life which they have received, no less than man himself, at the hand of Nature? O, mother of every living thing! O, thou eternal fountain of beneficence; shall I then be persecuted as a monster, for having listened to thy sacred voice? to that voice of mercy which speaks from the bottom of my heart; while other men, with impunity, torment and massacre the unoffending animals, while they fill the air with the cries of innocence, and deluge thy maternal bosom with the blood of the most amiable of thy creatures.”

CompassionEmpathyKillingIndifferenceSympathyAnimalsApathyRidiculeVegetarianismDerision
Book:The Cry of Nature; Or, an Appeal to Mercy and to Justice, on Behalf of the Persecuted Animals
Create image