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.
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants-while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.
I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person's life. God is in everyone's life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else - God is in this person's life. You can - you must - try to seek God in every human life.
Once you start describing nothingness, you end up with somethingness.
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
I was a Muslim once, remember, and it was when I was most devout that I was most full of hate.
They are more human and more brotherly towards one another, it seems to me, than we are. But perhaps that is merely because they feel themselves to be more unfortunate than us.
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