Complacency Quotes

But evil does not die, just as history does not end. Like a weed, evil can be cut back but never entirely uprooted. It waits for its chance to spread through the cracks in our vigilance. It can take root in the fertile soil of our complacency, or even the rocky rubble of the fallen Berlin Wall. ~ Garry Kasparov

Comfort leads to complacency, and complacency kills. For this reason, I believe that we all should be a little uncoomfortable in our jobs. ~ Stephen R. Lorenz

Men set themselves a goal, and having attained it, are satisfied and grow paunches. In their complacency they forget that their only future is now death. ~ Edgard Varese

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. ~ Noam Chomsky

As millions use social media as a primary source of information, the risk of falling victim to being misinformed is high. Readers who quickly scan newsfeeds tend to only read (and share information about) a headline: focusing on "the hook." Whether due to complacency or lack of time, few explore the content. This allows bogus media outlets to descend on the unsuspecting (and unprepared) seekers of instant information, creating false stories with dazzling one-liners, secure in the knowledge that there will be little effort to pursue confirmation or research an entire story. ~ Carlos Wallace

If you're playing a good guy, you show some darkness. If you're playing a dark guy, you show something different, like humor, that will mix it up and hopefully surpass the audience's expectations. What I'm battling all the time is complacency in the audience. I try to bring a little mystery to what might happen because that engages people more. ~ Campbell Scott

Pain frees you from complacency.
Tears free you from sorrow.
Weaknesses free you from pride.
Adversity frees from boredom.
Challenges free you from monotony. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

He had not even the self-complacency that enables stupid people to accept their mediocrity with unction; he had on the contrary an engaging modesty. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Uncertainty is everywhere. But I am living in the midst of the uncertainty and risk, amid things that can and do bring physical destruction, because I am running from things that can destroy my soul, complacency, comfort and ignorance. I am much more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy. ~ Katie J. Davis

A step towards complacency is a step towards mediocrity;
a step towards diligence is a step towards brilliance. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

There is no doubt that the biblical concept of the Kingdom calls for a ministry to the suffering, the imprisoned, the oppressed, the hungry and whomever is dehumanized by an unjust society. In abstract, almost all of us can affirm this with enthusiasm. When it is the vocation, however, of one of our number to make this Gospel imperative, a matter demanding and requiring us to change our comfortable ways, then many of us fall away. The prophet has never been popular among his other contemporaries. He has been stoned, beheaded, crucified and shot. If not killed, we have been all too ready to vilify him or her in the name of God, little realizing that it may well be God who sent the prophet to challenge our complacency. ~ Urban T. Holmes III

I've felt sometimes like I'd be less trouble if I'd just sit back and be quiet. But dreams are too important. We can't just let our dreams dry up and die, because then our hearts would break. ~ Brittney Ryan

The very fact that the planet is probably unsustainable with all that we've done to it and are doing to it, it's an appalling piece of evidence. It shows our complacency, our lack of passion or inclination to be authentic and really understand our true values. It's consistently depressing, but nevertheless, we carry on. ~ Annie Lennox

With headlines like "Marry Now or Never," the specter of marriage loomed. It was a constant fear, a threat, a reminder. But Sylvia wasn't baited by those pretty tales of line and hook: the bride-white cake, the prime rib and steak, marriage- that bleak fable- with Husband cast as warden, the future dead clear and blighted. ~ Elizabeth Winder

Smoothly he asked Winslow if he had been to any Christmas parties.
"Certainly not, my dear Orbell."
"Have you really neglected everyone?"
"I gave up going to my colleagues' wives' parties before you were born, my dear young man," Winslow said.
He added: "I have no small talk."
He made the remark with complacency, as though he had an abnormal amount of great talk. ~ C.P. Snow

I think that one of the biggest flaws of
mankind is that we become complacent with our lives. ~ Daniel Willey

It strikes her that, until these last weeks, she has lived in an impossibly small universe, willfully blinded to the vastness of existence outside of her chosen life. And perhaps, she thinks, that is how everyone lives. Perhaps it is exactly these blinders that the complacency and comfort of our days depends upon: we survive by shutting out the endless questions of what else might be. ~ Matthew Flaming

By going from the bottom-up again, we see where successes work, and you can also see where the status quo can be the biggest obstacle or roadblock to success. The kind of entrepreneurs in whom we need to invest are the kind who are willing to fight that status quo, bureaucracy, complacency, and corruption. ~ Jacqueline Novogratz

Without knowing it he drew a very pleasant picture of an affectionate, happy family who lived unpretentiously in circumstances of moderate affluence at peace with themselves and the world and undisturbed by any fear that anything might happen to affect their security. The life he described lacked neither grace nor dignity; it was healthy and normal, and through its intellectual interests not entirely material; the persons who led it were simple and honest, neither ambitious nor envious, prepared to do their duty by the state and by their neighbors according to their lights; and there was in them neither harm nor malice. If Lydia saw how much of their good nature, their kindliness, their unpleasing self-complacency depended on the long-established and well-ordered prosperity of the country that had given them birth; if she had an inkling that, like children building castles on the sea sand, they might at any moment be swept away by a tidal wave, she allowed no sign of it to appear on her face. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all. ~ Mike Patton

Reading is a form of madness, and when you think it is necessary to you, you must relinquish your place among the living and enter the land of shades, feeling all the emotions you imagine the shades must feel; among them envy- for the living are outside, in constant motion- and it's paradoxical but necessary other, complacency, for the world is not worth taking notice of. ~ Ira Singh

Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long. ~ Ron Paul

The tragedy of ignorance is its complacency. ~ Robert Quillen

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the self-sat-isfied man. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Finding ways to appreciate advances without embracing complacency is a delicate task. It involves being hopeful and motivated and keeping eyes on the prize ahead. Saying that everything is fine or that it will never get any better are ways of going nowhere or of making it impossible to go anywhere. Either approach implies that there is no road out or that, if there is, you don't need to or can't go down it. You can. We have. ~ Rebecca Solnit

So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind; Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily; Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness; Sometimes one is up and sometimes down. Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency. ~ Laozi

You see, each country has a colour, a smell, and also a contagious sickness. In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance."

"What about Rwanda?"

"Easy power and impunity. Here, there's total disorder. To someone who has a little money or powere, everything that seems forbidden elsewhere looks permissible and possible. All it takes is to dare it. Someone who's simply a liar in my country can be a fraud artist here, and the fraud artist gets to be a big-time thief. Chaos and most of all poverty give him powers he wouldn't have elsewhere. ~ Gil Courtemanche

Being in Christ is both gift and task, privilege and responsibility. Exaggerate the gift, and you risk antinomian complacency; exaggerate the responsibility, and you risk legalistic anxiety. ~ Kevin J. Vanhoozer

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

Don't let your success of today lay you into complacency for tomorrow. For that is the worst form of failure. ~ Og Mandino

All the decisive blows are struck left-handed. ~ Walter Benjamin

Many people love in themselves what they hate in others. ~ E.F. Schumacher

Our problem is not one of ignorance; it is one of complacency. We are too quick to accept the life we know and not quick enough to embrace the life we only imagine. We think that events must proceed as we dictate, and that no other voice will ever have meaning but ours ~ Terry Brooks

I agree that complacency hardly engenders an
immortal literature
but neither does
repetition. ~ Charles Bukowski

Elizabeth understood as she never had before. Everyone, all of them had lived secure in the belief that the earth was stable, unchanging, eternal.
Now no one could trust the ground beneath their feet.
Yes, the earthquake was the story of destruction, but not just of things. An earthquake destroyed security. It destroyed complacency. It changed the people who lived through it. ~ Christina Dodd

The other big lesson from Katrina is that it pays to be prepared. But it's also very difficult to stay prepared because the longer you go between events the more you'll see complacency. ~ Richard E. Besser

As soon as any one is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Escape the repetitive whirl wind that life can become through complacency. ~ Steven Redhead

Success can lead to complacency, and complacency is the greatest enemy of success. ~ Brian Tracy

He told me that I hadn't done anything yet. Hadn't lived yet. All you do is pass the time, he said. ~ Don DeLillo

From long familiarity, we know what honor is. It is what enables the individual to do right in the face of complacency and cowardice. It is what enables the soldier to die alone, the political prisoner to resist, the singer to sing her song, hardly appreciated, on a side street. ~ Mark Helprin

What a school of politeness is such a contemplation of the past! To take everything objectively, to be angry at nothing, to love nothing, to understand everything
makes one gentle and pliable. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Once the soul looked contemptuously upon the body, and then that contempt was the supreme thing: - the soul wished the body lean, monstrous, and famished. Thus it thought to escape from the body and the earth. But that soul was itself lean, monstrous, and famished; and cruelty was the delight of this soul! So my brothers, tell me: What does your body say about your soul? Is not your soul poverty and filth and miserable self-complacency? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

There are few things more pathetic than those who have lost their curiosity and sense of adventure, and who no longer care to learn. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe. ~ Malcolm X

Then humming thrice, he assumed a most ridiculous solemnity of aspect, and entered into a learned investigation of the nature of stink...The French were pleased with the putrid effluvia of animal food; and so were the Hottentots in Africa, and the Savages in Greenland; and that the Negroes on the coast of Senegal would not touch fish till it was rotten; strong presumptions in favour of what is generally called stink, as those nations are in a state of nature, undebauched by luxury, unseduced by whim and caprice: that he had reason to believe the stercoraceous flavour, condemned by prejudice as a stink, was, in fact, most agreeable to the organs of smelling; for, that every person who pretended to nauseate the smell of another's excretions, snuffed up his own with particular complacency... ~ Tobias Smollett

Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you ... out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally. ~ Bobby McFerrin

I'll be honest with you, the number one reason for all of my past break ups was too much complacency. I'm not perfect, but I just know I'm not cut out for mediocrity in any shape or form. Moreover, I think this has a lot to do with my life purpose as well. I believe I was not brought into this world to turn complacent women into passionate women, but rather to turn passionate women into goddesses. ~ Lebo Grand

It's not a very big step from contentment to complacency. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration. ~ Idries Shah

I would rather make fun of things, and I'm struggling against an inborn fatalism . . . The creative impulse is such a fragile thing, but we have to create now. We owe it to ourselves to do the work. I want to encourage you. If you aspire to write, put aside all the niceties and sureties about what art should be and write something that makes the scales fall from our eyes. Forget the tired axioms about showing and telling, about sense of place - any possible obstruction - and write to destroy complacency, to rattle people, to help people, first and foremost yourself. Lodge your ideas like glass shards in the minds of everyone who would have you believe there's no hope. And read, as often and as violently as you can. If you have friends, as I do, who tacitly believe that it's too much of a chore to read a book, just one fucking book, from start to finish, smash every LCD they own. This is an opportunity. There's too much at stake now to pretend that everything is okay. ~ Dan Piepenbring

All he knew was that sometimes a man had to be grateful for normality, that a story could end less dramatically, and not half as badly as it might have done; that there was merit in an averted crisis, and that in finding his nephew Sidney had, at last, done something quietly responsible, without fuss or fanfare. Perhaps the rest of his life should be like this? he thought. It would involve a concentration on things close to the heart; a dedicated care of friends and family; a quieter existence, one that depended on listening harder and loving better; never resting in complacency; acknowledging faults, doubts and insecurities; the balance between solitude and company, the wish to escape and the need to come home: a loving attention. ~ James Runcie

There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa
and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no one else's, but likely to be haugthily disagreed with by all those who believed in some other Africa ... Being thus all things to all authors, it follows, I suppose, that Africa must be all things to all readers.
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home. ~ Beryl Markham

We cannot pander or wait for consensus; the world is too big and complicated and rigged. We are saying the things that people don't like. ~ Lindy West

Half the ingratitude and complacency in the world down to how slowly and imperceptibly most good and bad things unfold. ~ Alain De Botton

It's the age-old tale of complacency, Shea." The tall warrior sighed deeply and stretched as he rose. "We may be standing on the brink of the greatest war in a thousand years, but no one wants to accept the fact. Everyone gets in the same rut - let a few take care of the gates to the city while the rest forget and go back to their homes. It becomes a habit - depending on a few to protect the rest. And then one day ... the few are not enough, and the enemy is within the city - right through the open gates ... ~ Terry Brooks

It is so difficult not to become vain about one's own good luck. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Then, just at the peak of complacency, when it was assumed that the climate of the world had changed forever, when the conductor of the philharmonic played Vivaldi's Four Seasons and left out an entire movement, and when to children of a young age stories of winter were told as if they were fairy tales, New York was hit by a cataclysmic freeze, and, once again, people huddled together to talk fearfully of the millennium. ~ Mark Helprin

In contexts of colonial oppression, intellectuals, especially those who advocate and work for justice, cannot be just-or mere- intellectuals, in the abstract sense; they cannot but be immersed in some form or another of activism, to learn from fellow activists through real-life experiences, to widen the horizons of their sources of inspiration, and to organically engage in effective, collective emancipatory processes, without the self-indulgence, complacency, or ivory-towerness that might otherwise blur their moral vision. In short, to be just intellectuals, committed to justice as the most ethical and durable foundation of peace. ~ Omar Barghouti

They hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD, 30 They would have none of my [Wisdom's] counsel And despised my every rebuke. 31 Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, And be filled to the full with their own fancies. 32 For the turning away of the simple will slay them, And the complacency of fools will destroy them; 33 But whoever listens to me will dwell safely, And will be secure, without fear of evil. ~ Anonymous

There is nothing spiritual about complacency. ~ Marianne Williamson

Life is for living not for been stuck in a rut of complacency where normality consists of the mundane. ~ Steven Redhead

The people of a city blessed with all the good things nature has can grow smug about who they are, can find complacency in livability polls, as if we did a lot to deserve it. ~ Robin Cody

There is one potential problem with automation: that it will be accompanied by complacency and ignorance. ~ Richard De Crespigny

The greater emotion with which we conceive a loved object to be affected toward us, the greater will be our complacency. ~ Baruch Spinoza

We're a complacent society, hard to get riled up in the first place, and then when we do, it's misdirected. ~ Bill Maher

Poor motivation and alertness cause complacency ~ V.S. Parani

My creativity isn't rooted in confidence. It grows from many things, no doubt, but chief among them is a deep, rebellious, and indeed almost hostile stance toward complacency- about anything. It feels like the enemy. And certainty? It closes doors. Ends discussions. Shuts other people out. ~ Robin Black

To be honest, we live in an exciting time where form is concerned. My sincerest hope is that more people will notice this and agree to play and invent - the only way to not succumb to the complacency and market-driven schlock of the present tense is to continually interrogate it from the inside out. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Complacency is the enemy of study. ~ Mao Zedong

Complacency is a blight that saps energy, dulls attitudes, and causes a a drain in the brain. The first symptom is satisfaction with things as they are. The second is rejection of things it as they might be. "Good enough" becomes days today's watchword and tomorrow standard. ~ Alex And Brett Harris

If there were no beginnings and if there were no endings, we would have the absence of inertia and the presence of stagnation. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Complacency is the last hurdle standing between any team and its potential greatness. ~ Pat Riley

One thing is certain: the arts keep you alive. They stimulate, encourage, challenge, and, most of all, guarantee a future free from boredom. They allow growth and even demand it in that time of life we call maturity but too often enter it with a childish faith that what we learned in youth is sustenance enough for the years when most men are mentally famished but won't admit it - or when they are apt to curb their hunger with the sops of complacency, security, and the assurance of death. ~ Vincent Price

If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. ~ Henry James

Love ... no such thing.
Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.
Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that's certain. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Complacency is the forerunner of mediocrity. You can never work too hard on attitudes, effort and technique. ~ Don Meyer

Experiments in the visual arts (the invention of new ways of seeing things), are made because, due to the way the apparatus that makes up the mind is made, old processes and patterns have continually to be broken up in order to make it possible to perceive the new aspects and arrangements of evolving consciousness. The great enemy of intelligence is complacency. ~ John Dos Passos

Fear & complacency allow power to accumulate & liberty & privacy to suffer ~ Rand Paul

Without revolution, civilization comes to halt, because with complacency arrives indifference, and with indifference comes the fall of civilization. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Complacency is a fool's weakness, diligence is a warrior's strength. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant." You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times." You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly. ~ Samuel Johnson

Complacency in the presence of miracles is like opening the door to your own tomb. ~ Rod Steiger

The tragedy of life is not found in failure but complacency. Not in you doing too much, but doing too little. Not in you living above your means, but below your capacity. It's not failure but aiming too low, that is life's greatest tragedy. ~ Benjamin E. Mays

Sometimes the enemy is not competition, but rather the comfort of repetition and complacency. ~ Anonymous

It is easy, of course, to fear happiness. There is often complacency in the acceptance of misery. We fear parting from our familiar roles. We fear the consequences of such a parting. We fear happiness because we fear failure. But we must overcome these fears. We must be brave. It is one thing to speculate about what might be. It is quite another to act in behalf of our dreams, to treat them as objectives that are achievable and worth achieving. It is one thing to run from unhappiness; it is another to take action to realize those qualities of dignity and well-being that are the true standards of the human spirit. ~ Tim O'Brien

The four ages of man, as far as Williamson was concerned, were confusion, anger, complacency, and grumpiness, but it was important to embrace them in the right order. The ~ John Connolly

On Australia Day 2010, as we enter this second decade of the 21st century, Australians can be optimistic about our future, but we cannot afford to mistake optimism for complacency. ~ Kevin Rudd

Pride is a very common failing, I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what would have others think of us. ~ Jane Austen

We think we want comfort in the I-don't-know times of life. But comfort isn't a solution to seek; rather, it's a by-product we'll reap when we stay close to the Lord. What if the comfort and certainties we crave today are a deadly recipe for complacency that will draw our hearts further and further away from God? ~ Lysa TerKeurst

One of the greatest foes of the Christian is religious complacency.. Orthodox Christianity has fallen to its present low estate from lack of spiritual desire. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God. ~ Aiden Wilson Tozer

Since [violence against women] is rooted in discrimination, impunity and complacency, we need to change attitudes and behavior - and we need to change laws and make sure they are enforced just like you are doing in Cuba. ~ Ban Ki-moon

ABCs of business decay, which are arrogance, bureaucracy and complacency. ~ Warren Buffett

Photography can be a deceitful, superficial medium that leads us into believing something even though we know it's not necessarily true. It lulls us into a false sense of complacency. ~ Alison Jackson

The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often
subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent. ~ George Eliot

If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that. ~ Nick Cave

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

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning… Hence, is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe – for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. ~ Thomas Merton

Hitler wrote: "Mind and soul ultimately return to the collective being of the world. If there is a God, then he gives us not only life but also consciousness and awareness. If I live my life according to my God-given insights, then I cannot go wrong, and even if I do, I know that I have acted in good faith."134 For many of my uncritically "tolerant" students, there would be nothing here with which theologically to disagree. For them too, the mere sincerity of being true to your inner self guarantees that you can't go wrong when you act in good faith. My introductory exercise sometimes succeeds in shocking students out of the lazy complacency of uncritical tolerance of any and all theologies.135 Sincerity does not count for much.136 ~ Paul R. Hinlicky

The young person isn't certain that love can be real; the middle-aged man is only discovering that it is; and the older person seems so sure of it. I was interested in the way that many of us go through the whole of our lives staying with someone just out of complacency, because leaving isn't easy. ~ Conor McPherson