complacency

The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do
evil, but because of those
who look on and do nothing.

Albert Einstein

The tragedy of life is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency; not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little; not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities. Benjamin E. Mays

We face fear many times a day, in many ways, and usually we turn away from it. It often hides itself behind laziness and complacency, which are its shadows and aliases. We accept the things-as-they-are world in which we are comfortable. Rick Tumlinson The greatest obstacle to those who hope to reform American education is complacency. Diane Ravitch

When you're used to having nothing, nothing becomes your everything, and you never really want for anything. But it's a double-edged sword, because there's the danger of becoming complacent, becoming too happy with that nothing, because you've never known anything better. Complacency is the death of dreams, and freedom. Isaac Hooke Atlas

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy. Wynton Marsalis

I will not allow yesterday's success to lull me into today's
complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.

Og Mandino

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The worst monsters are the ones that don't look like monsters,
because they fool you into complacency with their beauty.

Whitney Bianca
I Know What Love Is

Avoid the tyranny of the reasonable voice. . . it will guarantee
a complacency of never trying anything adventurous.

J. Michael Straczynski

There is too much bad news to justify complacency.
There is too much good news to justify despair.

Donella Meadows

I think that one of the biggest flaws of humankind is that
we become complacent with our lives.

Daniel Willey

The unexpected action of deep listening can create a space of
transformation capable of shattering complacency and despair.

Terry Tempest Williams
When Women Were Birds

Friction is necessary. Ease of life leads to complacency and the atrophy
of the human will and spirit. Within our struggles lives our strength, within
our trials lives our triumphs. Friction creates a platform for change,
generates heat and or fervor and creates a motivational charge that
gives us an opportunity to be better.

Jason Versey
A Walk with Prudence

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader). All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another. Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

To be gritty is to resist complacency.

Angela Duckworth
Grit

Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in
matters that affect the entire human family?

Carl Sagan
Cosmos

It is not the repeated mistakes, the long succession of petty
betrayals--though, God knows, they would give cause
enough for anxiety and self-contempt--but the huge elementary
mistake, the betrayal of that within me which is greater than I--
in complacent adjustment to alien demands.

Dag Hammarskjöld
Markings

When you've lived as long as I have, you tend to think you've heard
everything, that there's nothing left that can shock you anymore. You
grow a little complacent about your so-called knowledge of the world,
and then, every once in a while, something comes along that jolts you
out of your smug cocoon of superiority, that reminds you all over again
that you don't understand the first thing about life.

Paul Auster
The Brooklyn Follies

Before we go further we should define what optimism is. Real optimists
don’t believe that everything will be great. That’s complacency. Optimism
is a belief that the odds of a good outcome are in your favor over time,
even when there will be setbacks along the way.

Morgan Housel
The Psychology of Money

There's a huge dichotomy between people who grow up with alienation,
which, for me, was invaluable, and people who grow up so completely
privileged that it breeds this complacency and lack of desire
to question or challenge or do anything significant.

Glenn Greenwald

Our society makes plenty of room for complacency or laziness;
we’re rarely surrounded by accountability.

Rachel Hollis
Girl, Wash Your Face

When you become complacent with someone lying, whether it
is a close friend, the media, or your government, then you have
essentially given them permission to continue to do so and
most often at your expense.

Gary Hopkins

The newspaper headlines may shout about global warming, extinctions
of living species, the devastation of rain forests, and other worldwide
catastrophes, but Americans evince a striking complacency when it
comes to their everyday environment and the growing calamity
that it represents.

James Howard Kunstler

And I think we got it all wrong. Growing up isn’t so much about gaining
wisdom as it is collecting a list of things we've lost interest in. The
passions that once burned brightly dim with the years, not because
they’re less important, but because familiarity breeds
contentment—or perhaps complacency.

Aura Biru
We Are Everyone

People are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and so
willing to deceive themselves, that they are rescued with
difficulty from this pest. If they wish to defend themselves
they run the risk of becoming contemptible.

Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince

To permit ignorance is to empower it. To do nothing as our
leaders proclaim absurdities is a crime of complacency. As is
letting our schools and churches teach
outright untruths to our children.

Dan Brown
Origin

Mediocrity is a pit that swallows people who have rested
on seats of complacency for too long.

Israelmore Ayivor
101 Keys To Everyday Passion