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 society—the 'statues'—to 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.
The tyranny of relativism is the spiritual poverty of our time
The determination of the average man is not merely a matter of speculative curiosity; it may be of the most important service to the science of man and the social system. It ought necessarily to precede every other inquiry into social physics, since it is, as it were, the basis. The average man, indeed, is in a nation what the centre of gravity is in a body; it is by having that central point in view that we arrive at the apprehension of all the phenomena of equilibrium and motion.
…not a fighter… an adventurer. He doesn’t attack, he engages; He doesn’t defend, he expands; He doesn’t destroy, he transforms; He doesn’t reject, he explores; ….
As long as I live under the capitalistic system I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.
My space chums think my unique hookup with humanity could be evolution's awkward attempt to jump-start itself up again. They're thinking just maybe, going crazy could be the evolutionary process trying to hurry up mind expansion. Maybe my mind didn't snap. Maybe it was just trying to stretch itself into a new shape. The cerebral cortex trying to grow a thumb of sorts.
Excessive economic, social and cultural inequalities among peoples arouse tensions and conflicts, and are a danger to peace.
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