The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead.
Interpretation
The indifference of society can evoke profound changes and awaken forgotten truths.
This quote suggests that when people become apathetic and disengaged from social issues, it creates an environment where even the most longstanding beliefs and values can be challenged or overturned. It metaphorically implies that such apathy is powerful enough to cause the very foundations of societyβthe 'statues'βto be shaken, prompting a revival of suppressed ideas or truths, akin to bringing the dead back to life.
In practice
In a speech about community engagement, one might say, 'As William Lloyd Garrison observed, the apathy of the people can lead to significant societal changes.'
Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us than are those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.
Surely, nothing can be more dangerous than the doctrine that the moral obligations of men change with the latitude and longitude of a place.
I do not believe that God has created us under this dire necessity to toil, like beasts, to sustain life. I believe it is his will that we should hold absolute mastery over time, so as to devote it mainly to intellectual and moral improvement, domestic enjoyment, and social intercourse.
If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.
Has not the experience of two centuries shown that gradualism in theory is perpetuity in practice? Is there an instance, in the history of the world, where slaves have been educated for freedom by their task-masters?
Let not those who say that the path of obedience is a dangerous one claim to believe in the living and true God. They deny his omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. It is his will that the bands of wickedness should be loosed, the heavy burdens of tyranny undone, the oppressed set free.
Past, present and future are not amenities of language. Time unfolds into the seamsof being. It passes through you, making and shaping.
Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.
I'm pretty, but not beautiful. _x000D_ I sin, but I'm not the devil. _x000D_ I'm good, but I'm not an angel.
We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.
Once someone asked me, "What do you want to be your epitaph?" So I said, "Paulo Coelho died when he was alive.
After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.
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