Insensitive Quotes

Stereotype threat, then, is one way our national history seeps into our daily lives. That history leaves us with stereotypes about groups in our society that can be used to judge us as individuals when we're in situations where those stereotypes apply - in the seat next to a black person on an airplane or interacting with minority students, for example. The white person in that situation will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotype of whites as racially insensitive. And the black person, for his or her part, will not want to be seen in terms of the stereotypes about blacks as aggressive, or as too easily seeing prejudice, and so on. Fighting off these possible perceptions on a long airline flight - or more famously, perhaps, in a school cafeteria - could be more than either party wants to take on. They just want to have lunch or get to Cleveland. Avoidance becomes the simplest solution. ~ Claude M. Steele

Get your hands off me," she commanded faintly, grimacing. "People don't order Billy Bonnet around," he snapped at her. "What's you name?" he demanded forcefully. "You arrogant brute! Leave me alone. Can't you see I'm hurt and sick?" she panted breathlessly. "Don't pain me none," Billy retorted as if utterly insensitive. "Please, Mister Bonnet," Cal entreated softly. "Please, what?" Billy taunted, his mood becoming larkish. "Please take your filthy hands off my wife before I put a slug in your miserable hide," Lynx warned icily from behind him.

-Calinda, Billy, & Lynx ~ Janelle Taylor

I always say that my agenda is sufficiently gracious to leave more than ample room for the agenda of others. But if that's the case, why is it that such a big room only has space for one chair? ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

He was thoughtless, not because he was insensitive, but because I had just eaten his brain and his skull was empty. ~ Jarod Kintz

Why is this government so insensitive to the concerns of the middle-class people? ~ Gilles Duceppe

And while meanness is a function of the insensitive, grumpiness is merely a function of the dissatisfied. ~ Tom Robbins

Climate helps to shape the character of peoples, certainly no people more than the English. The uncertainty of their climate has helped to make the English, a long-suffering, phlegmatic, patient people rather insensitive to surprise, stoical against storms,. slightly incredulous at every appearance of the sun, touched by the lyrical gratitude of someone who expects nothing and suddenly receives more than he dreamed. ~ H.E. Bates

A northerner, insensitive in some ways and full of self-righteousness could gravely offend a southerner in a second. The northerner would be giving his general opinion, more than likely unasked for, and all unknowing challenging the southerner's every deeply held belief, not to mention, with sundry looks and expressions, suggesting that the southerner was possessed of numerous flaws of character and person. The southerner was bound to see offense in every suggestion, insult in every difference of opinion, and to act upon his stung pride. ~ Jane Smiley

An enormous round egg snatching and castrating the agile sperm;
monstorous and stuffed, the queen termite reigning over the servile
males; the praying mantis and the spider, gorged on love, crushing
their partners and gobbling them up; the dog in heat running through
back alleys, leaving perverse smells in her wake; the monkey showing
herself off brazenly, sneaking away with flirtatious hypocrisy. And
the most splendid wildcats, the tigress, lioness, and panther, lie
down slavishly under the male's imperial embrace, inert, impatient,
shrewd, stupid, insensitive, lewd, fierce, and humiliated ~ Simone De Beauvoir

And Eth couldn't help looking. It's been years since he's seen a beautiful naked woman in the flesh. I'd be worried about him if he hadn't looked."
"He's a minister!"
"It was a blessed event. You sure you don't want me to hang that robe up?"
"You're making a joke out of this."
"Absolutely not. Only an insensitive jerk would think something this traumatic was funny. Tell you what. I'll go downstairs right this minute and kill him before he gets away. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The primary culprit is assumed to be peer rejection: shunning, exclusion, shaming, taunting, mocking, bullying. The conclusion reached by some experts is that peer acceptance is absolutely necessary for a child's emotional health and well-being, and that there is nothing worse than not being liked by peers. It is assumed that peer rejection is an automatic sentence to lifelong self-doubt. Many parents today live in fear of their children's not having friends, not being esteemed by their peers.

This way of thinking fails to consider two fundamental questions: What renders a child so vulnerable in the first place? And why is this vulnerability increasing? It is absolutely true that children snub, ignore, shun, shame, taunt, and mock. Children have always done these things when not sufficiently supervised by the adults in charge. But it is attachment, not the insensitive behavior or language of peers, that creates vulnerability. The current focus on the impact of peer rejection and peer acceptance has completely overlooked the role of attachment.

If the child is attached primarily to the parents, it is parental acceptance that is vital to emotional health and well-being, and not being liked by parents is the devastating blow to self-esteem. The capacity of children to be inhumane has probably not changed, but, as research shows, the wounding of our children by one another is increasing. If many kids are damaged these days by the insensitivity of their pee ~ Gabor Mate

I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate. ~ Kenneth Cole

I just think that unless you have that cohesiveness in the family unit, the male character tends to become very dominant, repressive and insensitive. So much of this comes also from a lack of education. ~ Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Occasionally I've seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings. ~ Billy Graham

Art as activism. Like Banksy?"
"Man, Banksy's some white-ass bullshit. Sorry," he apologizes hastily, as though he might've offended my white-ass feelings.
[...]
"A'ight, so the dude flew out to Gaza to spray-paint a kitten on a house that'd been destroyed in an air strike. Like, the fuck? Talk about insensitive. Then our white savior has the audacity to call it art, to demand folks listen to his views on the atrocities of war, rather than the Palestinians who lived through it." He shakes his head, his hand tensing and untensing in mine. "Sorry. Shit drives me crazy sometimes. ~ Laura Steven

The first kill would be the hardest, but the next would be easier, and the one after that easier still, because it's true: Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing.
Cruelty isn't a personality trait. Cruelty is a habit.
He pushed that thought away. To call what he was doing cruel implied he had a choice. Choosing between your kind and another species wasn't cruel. It was necessary. Not easy, especially when you've lived the last four years of your life pretending to be no different from them, but necessary. ~ Rick Yancey

Besides, they say, when we eat something, what really happens is this. Our failing health starts fighting off the attacks of hunger, using the food as an ally. Gradually it begins to prevail, and, in this very process of winning back its normal strength, experiences the sense of enjoyment which we find so refreshing. Now, if health enjoys the actual battle, why wouldn't it also enjoy the victory? Or are we to suppose that when it has finally managed to regain its former vigour - the one thing that it has been fighting for all this time - it promptly falls into a coma, and fails to notice or take advantage of its success? As for the idea that one isn't conscious of health except through its opposite, they say that's quite untrue. Everyone's perfectly aware of feeling well, unless he's asleep or actually feeling ill. Even the most insensitive and apathetic sort of person will admit that it's delightful to be healthy - and what is delight, but a synonym for pleasure? ~ Thomas More

Arrgh, my dad's here to pick me up. How can he be so insensitive to intrigue? ~ John Allison

Once you say something, it stays said. I apologized to anyone who may have been hurt by what I said, and I really meant it. I am absolutely not interested in hurting anyone, or being mean or insensitive. ~ Henry Rollins

Here is a person who knows that in two weeks' time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affair if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rathre, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life an dcontributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself. ~ Alan W. Watts

The book designer strives for perfection; yet every perfect thing lives somewhere in the neighborhood of dullness and is frequently mistaken for it by the insensitive. ~ Jan Tschichold

The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

The result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien,
and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda ~ Alan W. Watts

All rock musicians are deaf ... Or insensitive to mellow sounds. ~ Marc Bolan

I pull his hand up to my chest. "It's okay. Some of my best friends are in the mob. It must be really tough with your husband in prison."
"You THINK?" He pulls away, as if I've been insensitive, picks up a stone and throws it at a crow walking around in the grass.
As the crow screeches bloody murder and takes flight, escaping unscathed, Joshua darts in front of me, hits Tiger in the nuts and calls him a bitch.
Pulling Joshua back to my right, I glare down at him asking- WHAT did you CALL HIM?
"A BITCH."
"He's not a bitch."
"YES HE IS."
Tiger, coming to the rescue, kneels and places his hand on Joshua's shoulder. "Sorry little buddy. I didn't mean to make you go all APE shit. You like those little flying RATS."
Joshua shakes his finger at him. "THEY'RE NOT RATS... YOU BITCH."
As I start to give Joshua a lecture, Tiger stands up and stops me. "It's okay," he said. "Believe it or not- he's not the first to call me a bitch." Taking Joshua's free hand, he walks on his other side, while Joshua glares up at him with distrust. "Bitch isn't a word that you should be using. Not at your AGE."
"That's right," I agreed. "When you get older, you can call your girlfriend a bitch, but only in bed."
Joshua giggles. ~ Giorge Leedy

It's funny because when Jason [Statham] was drowning I was filming with an iPhone. It may have been a bit insensitive but I just thought, "you know what, this was a magic moment". And I couldn't help him anyway because I didn't want to drown. ~ Sylvester Stallone

The will to power, the force of desire, appears as an insensitive urge to dominate. But several points in Nietzsche's work speak against such a reading. The "self" includes the desire above all for self-overcoming. It is our own limits we most seek to break. ~ Karmen MacKendrick

When I wrote Lean In, some people argued that I did not spend enough time writing about the difficulties women face when they don't have a partner. They were right. I didn't get it. I didn't get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home. I wrote a chapter titled "Make Your Partner a Real Partner" about the importance of couples splitting child care and housework 50/50. Now I see how insensitive and unhelpful this was to so many single moms who live with 100/0. My understanding and expectation of what a family looks like has shifted closer to reality. Since the early 1970s, the number of single mothers in the United States has nearly doubled. Today almost 30 percent of families with children are headed by a single parent - 84 percent of whom are women. I ~ Sheryl Sandberg

Idiot. Above her head was the only stable point in the cosmos, the only refuge from the damnation of the panta rei, and she guessed it was the Pendulum's business. A moment later the couple went off
he, trained on some textbook that had blunted his capacity for wonder, she, inert and insensitive to the thrill of the infinite, both oblivious of the awesomeness of their encounter
their first and last encounter
with the One, the Ein-Sof, the Ineffable. How could you fail to kneel down before this altar of certitude? ~ Umberto Eco

The rich eat life, the poor eat death; so what is the problem they ask? ~ Anthony Liccione

And empathy is narrow; it connects us to particular individuals, real or imagined, but is insensitive to numerical differences and statistical data. ~ Paul Bloom

The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people. ~ Pope Francis

When I think of it as happening to somebody else, it seems that the idea of me soaked to the skin, surrounded by countless driving streaks of silver, and moving through when I completely forget my material existence, and view myself from a purely objective standpoint, can I, as a figure in a painting, blend into the beautiful harmony of my natural surroundings. The moment, however, I feel annoyed because of the rain, or miserable because my legs are weary because of the rain, or miserable because my legs are weary with walking, then I have already ceased to be a character in a poem, or a figure in a painting, and I revert to the uncomprehending, insensitive man in the street I was before. I am then even blind to the elegance of the fleeting clouds; unable even to feel any bond of sympathy with a falling petal or the cry of a bird, much less appreciate the great beauty in the image of myself, completely alone, walking through the mountains in spring. ~ Soseki Natsume

Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over. ~ Arundhati Roy

What more is required than a kind of stupid, insensitive doggedness, as lover, as writer, together with a readiness to fail and fail again? ~ J.M. Coetzee

Although really society should not change, it should mutate. And, little by little, it is mutating ...
... Society is like the body of a chicken: the chicken's foot is hard and insensitive while the eye is very alive. And there are beings who embody the cells of the eyes and others who embody the cells of the feet, of the wings, or of the anus. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

My wife at times will say I'm stubborn, selfish, insensitive, vague, deaf at times, blah, blah, blah ... but she's never said I was boring! ~ Henry Cho

The Democrats, the left has this 30-year playbook of how to destroy conservatives by simply exposing the horrible, the mean-spirited, insensitive things they say, but that isn't going to work on Trump the way it works on conservatives, for a whole host of reasons. ~ Rush Limbaugh

I'm not insensitive to the jobs. I'm desperately concerned about those jobs. But you don't fix them by pandering to people and telling them you're going to shut the door. You have to grow jobs. ~ John F. Kerry

If I vibrate with vibrations other than yours, must you conclude that my flesh is insensitive? ~ Claude Cahun

I mean, I'm just tired of being wrong all the time just because I'm a guy. I mean how many times can everybody tell you that you're the oppressive, prejudiced enemy before you give up and become the enemy.
I mean a male, chauvinist pig isn't born, hes made, and more and more of them are being made by women. After long enough you just roll over and accept the fact that you're a sexist, bigoted, insensitive, crude, cretinist cretin. Women are right. You're wrong.
You get used to the idea.
You live down to expectations.
Even if the shoe doesn't fit, you'll shrink to fill it.
I mean, in a world without god aren't mothers the new god? The last sacred unassailable position. Isn't motherhood the last perfect magical miracle? But a miracle that isn't possible for men, and maybe men say they're glad not to give birth, all the pain and blood, but really that's just so much sour grapes. For sure, men can't do anything near as incredible. Upper body strength, abstract thought, phalluses - any advantage men appear to have are pretty token.
You can't even hammer a nail with a phallus.
Women are already born so far ahead ability - wise. The day a men can give birth, that's when we can start talking about equal rights. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

People who can hold onto humanity even at times when being a decent human may not be as easy as they want it to be, are the people worth knowing, Holding onto your humanity is not the same as saying "what I'm human,",, if you let your negative emotions allow you to think act or be closed cruel or insensitive to others feelings or illusions of controll, then you have lost your humanity. You will end up alone you are not worth knowing ~ Christina Estabrook

Glasgow was home-made ginger biscuits and Jennifer Lawson dead in the park. It was the sententious niceness of the Commander and the threatened abrasiveness of Laidlaw. It was Milligan, insensitive as a mobile slab of cement, and Mrs Lawson, witless with hurt. It was the right hand knocking you down and the left hand picking you up, while the mouth alternated apology and threat. ~ William McIlvanney

He was removed from jail and placed in a place for the insensitive and insane. ~ Johnny Cash

I will always miss the person I
thought U are. But not the selfish,
unkind, insensitive and heartless
person U turned out to be. ~ Lily Amis

The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the facility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a master but as an equal. ~ Edith Wharton

He'd come to appreciate that writers were just like everyone else, except when they were more so. It sometimes seemed that they'd been able to develop their gifts thanks to a lack of inhibition, an inner permission to feel and react, that made them seem self-absorbed and insensitive to the existence of anyone else. ~ Jonathan Galassi

All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is - marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity. ~ Joseph Conrad

A contentious, belligerent Christian isn't living according to the Spirit but according to the flesh. When we stubbornly insist on our own way and are insensitive to others, peace is not our goal. ~ Billy Graham

Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, foolish, a dope. Disagree with someone on the left, and he is more likely to think you selfish, a sell-out, insensitive, possibly evil. ~ J.R. Miller

Maria, lonely prostitute on a street of pain,
You, at least, hail me and speak to me
While a thousand others ignore my face.
You offer me an hour of love,
And your fees are not as costly as most.
You are the madonna of the lonely,
The first-born daughter in a world of pain.
You do not turn fat men aside,
Or trample on the stuttering, shy ones,
You are the meadow where desperate men
Can find a moment's comfort.

Men have paid more to their wives
To know a bit of peace
And could not walk away without the guilt
That masquerades as love.
You do not bind them, lovely Maria, you comfort them
And bid them return.
Your body is more Christian than the Bishop's
Whose gloved hand cannot feel the dropping of my blood.
Your passion is as genuine as most,
Your caring as real!

But you, Maria, sacred whore on the endless pavement of pain,
You, whose virginity each man may make his own
Without paying ought but your fee,
You who know nothing of virgin births and immaculate conceptions,
You who touch man's flesh and caress a stranger,
Who warm his bed to bring his aching skin alive,
You make more sense than stock markets and football games
Where sad men beg for virility.
You offer yourself for a fee--and who offers himself for less?

At times you are cruel and demanding--harsh and insensitive,
At times you are shrewd and dece ~ James Kavanaugh

Frequent risk-takers have had their fair shares of failures and successes, hence, being confident in reaching their goals, they will usually seem insensitive to whether or not they look foolish or cool to other people. ~ Criss Jami

Yeah, I'm insensitive. So is life. DEAL with it. ~ Neal Boortz

Writing engenders in us certain attitudes toward language. It encourages us to take words for granted. Writing has enabled us to store vast quantities of words indefinitely. This is advantageous on the one hand but dangerous on the other. The result is that we have developed a kind of false security where language is concerned, and our sensitivity to language has deteriorated. And we have become in proportion insensitive to silence. ~ N. Scott Momaday

Why did people assume that the beautiful among them needed nothing but their beauty to bring them happiness? That behind the beauty there was nothing but an empty shell, insensitive shell? ~ Mary Balogh

One of the new girls followed me in and said she thinks Toph is an insensitive douchebag motherhumping assclown, and that I shouldn't let him get to me. Which was sweet, but didn't really help. ~ Stephanie Perkins

This culture of waste has made us insensitive even to the waste and disposal of food, which is even more despicable when all over the world, unfortunately, many individuals and families are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. ~ Pope Francis

Every nutritious sexual recipe calls for at least a pinch of love, and the fucks that rate four-star rankings from both gourmets and health-food nuts used cupfuls. Not that sex should be regarded as therapeutic or to be taken for medicinal purposes - only a dullard would hang such a millstone around the nibbled neck of a lay - but to approach sex carelessly, shallowly, with detachment and without warmth is to dine night after night in erotic greasy spoons. In time, one's palate will become insensitive, one will suffer (without knowing it) emotional malnutrition, the skin of the soul will fester with scurvy, the teeth of the heart will decay. Neither duration nor proclamation of commitment is necessarily the measure - there are ephemeral explosions of passion between strangers that make more erotic sense than many lengthy marriages, there are one-night stands in Jersey City more glorious than six-months affairs in Paris - but finally there is a commitment, however brief; a purity, however threatened; a vulnerability, however concealed; a generosity of spirit, however marbled with need; an honest caring, however singed by lust, that must be present if couplings are to be salubrious and not slow poison. ~ Tom Robbins

Perhaps it only applies in the States, where emotional optimism is a constitutional duty ~ Julian Barnes

But centuries of time have not made me insensitive ~ Christopher Pike

Another interesting aspect of the gender war that most women forget is that their thoughts and judgments about men impact the way men behave around them. If you believe your thoughts reside exclusively in the privacy of your mind, think again. Your thoughts are palpable and resonate with others. If you judge someone as incompetent, insensitive, or stupid, they feel it. This includes men.
Some people are more skillful at noticing and naming this type of energy, but everyone is affected by it. Whether you like it or not, you have an impact on how people, especially men, behave around you. Your ideas, thoughts, and beliefs about people influence how they treat you. Perception is an act of creation. Thinking all men are generally stupid, untrustworthy, insensitive, or chauvinistic will actually push them to behave in those ways toward you. It's as though you are nudging them in that direction and then get to say, "See! Look - I'm right. All men do suck. ~ Marie Forleo

Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know, we become insensitive to many things of great importance. ~ Bertrand Russell

A WORD OF CAUTION The material in this chapter is "tough stuff." It should be read, studied, and prayed about when life is more or less routine. It should be stored up or hidden in our hearts (see Psalm 119:11) for the time of adversity when we must draw upon its truth. Above all, we need to be very sensitive about instructing someone else in the sovereignty of God and encouraging that person to trust God when he or she is in the midst of adversity or pain. It is much easier to trust in the sovereignty of God when it is the other person who is hurting. We need to be like Jesus, of whom it was said, "A bruised reed he will not break" (Matthew 12:20). Let us not be guilty of breaking a bruised reed (a heavy heart) by insensitive treatment of the heavy doctrine of the sovereignty of God. ~ Jerry Bridges

Let everything that's been planned come true. Let them believe. And let them have a laugh at their passions. Because what they call passion actually is not some emotional energy, but just the friction between their souls and the outside world. And most important, let them believe in themselves. Let them be helpless like children, because weakness is a great thing, and strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being. Because what has hardened will never win. ~ Andrei Tarkovsky

The public is totally illiterate in America. It can't read at all. It's absolutely insensitive to words. ~ James Purdy

Daphne," he said with controlled gentleness, "what is wrong?"
She sat down opposite him and placed a hand on his cheek. "I'm so insensitive," she whispered. "I should have known. I should never have said anything."
"Should have known what?" he ground out.
Her hand fell away. "That you can't - that you couldn't - "
"Can't what?"
She looked down at her lap, where her hands were attempting to wring each other to shreds. "Please don't make me say it," she said.
'This," Simon muttered, "has got to be why men avoid marriage. ~ Julia Quinn

In life's journey, you will meet all sorts of characters. Always remember, never shed a tear for the heartless, corrupt or insensitive. ~ Krystal

Today the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. Today the right to live and triumph is awarded on virtually the same basis as admission into an insane asylum: an inability to think, amorality, and nervous excitability. 176 ~ Fernando Pessoa

But Rachel, every time you hurt, I hurt. Particularly, when I'm the cause of it. I've been an
insensitive jerk. But I need you to know that you are all I can think about. That you give me freaking
butterflies in my stomach. That when we're together I feel like ... "
"Cloud walking." Rachel grinned. ~ A Meredith Walters

Even if every word was true, and from what you've said I think it is, it doesn't make it any less insensitive. ~ Jewel E. Ann

In the white man's world, language, too
and the way which the white man thinks of it
has undergone a process of change. The white man takes such things as words and literatures for granted, as indeed he must, for nothing in his world is so commonplace. On every side of him there are words by the millions, an unending succession of pamphlets and papers, letters and books, bills and bulletins, commentaries and conversations. He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in on him. He is sated and insensitive; his regard for language
for the Word itself
as an instrument of creation has diminished nearly to the point of no return. It may be that he will perish by the Word. ~ N. Scott Momaday

To be neutral does not mean to be indifferent or insensitive. You don't have to kill your feelings. It's enough to kill hatred within yourself. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Are those chocolate chip?' Cole reaches her first and claims one.
'Oh, my godness.' Nana sets the tray aside and coos the guy. 'Cole, dear, you have a boulder-size knot on your jaw.'
'River did it.' Cole smirks at the guy. 'And he insulted my mom. And my dad.'
'River Marks.' Nana shakes her head, as if her heart is acually breaking. 'How could you be so rough? And so insensitive!'
River glares at Cole before bowing his head. 'I'm sorry, Nana.'
'The human body is like a flower. Treat it well, and it will bloom.' She approaches the ring and extends two cookies. River and I accept with eager thanks. 'Let's be kind to each other and keep our punches away from the face and groin.' 'Yes, ma'am,' we say in unison. Then of course, we devour the offering as if we've never tasted sugar.
'Good, good.' She brushes the crumbs from her fingers. 'I'll leave you kids to your practice.' She kisses Ali, then Cole, and leaves.
'Are you a rose?' River sneers at Cole. 'Or a lilly?'
'Orchid. And your jealousy is showing.' Cole responds. ~ Gena Showalter

Once you have a major success with assertiveness, you learn that it's a much healthier path than being a doormat to the insensitive folks. You gain respect for yourself, have more time for your priorities, and develop authentic and healthier relationships. ~ Doreen Virtue

Wow! She's hot." Morrison commented while gaping lewdly at the body lying supine on the bed.
Insensitive asshole. I took a deep breath to calm my rising anger. "She's dead agent Morrison. I assure you she's very cold." I rebuked sharply. ~ P.A. Lupton

While large, impersonal orphanages provided children with minimal care and attention from an ever-changing series of nurses, children in loving foster families had available to them surrogate caregivers with whom they readily formed attachments. Children in foster care also demonstrated significantly less distress about the separation from their mothers, and they overcame their distress more readily when reunited with their own families. Therefore, it is not separation per se that is so devastating, but rather the extended stay in a strange, bleak or socially insensitive environment with little or no contact with the mother or other familiar figures. ~ Patricia K. Kerig

It's one of the ironies of human nature that the most sensitive people are generally insensitive to the feelings of others. ~ Ann Landers

Will "trigger warnings" simply be a way of establishing a new secular index, a cautionary list of books and other works dangerous not for religious reasons but because they may offend or upset certain groups or individuals or that contain material which can be viewed as insensitive or inappropriate? Would Grapes of Wrath be upsetting to someone with bad memories of rural poverty? Will the near future necessitate warning labels in front of all published material? Will future editions of The Best American Essays, for example, include a trigger warning in front of each selection so readers can avoid material that might upset them? And will trigger warnings in themselves eventually cause upsetting reactions, just the words and images sufficing to evoke unpleasant memories or anxious responses? ~ John Jeremiah Sullivan

But while ignorance can make you insensitive, familiarity can also numb. Entering the second half-century of an information age, our cumulative knowledge has changed the level of what appalls, what stuns, what shocks. ~ Anna Quindlen

Emer was troubled at how all interpretation now devolved in matters of race or gender or religion. There was no art anymore, even in children's stories. Why wasn't the crow female? Why was The Creator a He? Wasn't Bald Eagle insensitive to men with hair loss? This is how we spend our time now. ~ David Duchovny

She heard Thorne say something about freeze-dried cardboard and Iko accuse him of being insensitive to those without any taste buds at all. ~ Marissa Meyer

I became totally absorbed into this forest existence. It was an unparalleled period when aloneness was a way of life; a perfect opportunity, it might seem, for meditating on the meaning of existence and my role in it all. But I was far too busy learning about the chimpanzees'lives to worry about the meaning of my own. I had gone to Gombe to accomplish a specific goal, not to pursue my early preoccupation with philosophy and religion. Nevertheless, those months at Gombe helped to shape the person I am today-I would have been insensitive indeed if the wonder and the endless fascination of my new world had not had a major impact on my thinking. All the time I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature there is really little need for me to say much more; for those who have not, no words of mine can even describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected. The beauty was always there, but moments of true awareness were rare. They would come, unannounced; perhaps when I was watching the pale flush preceding dawn; or looking up through the rustling leaves of some giant forest tree into the greens and browns and the black shadows and the occasionally ensured bright fleck of blue sky; or when I stood, as darkness fell, with one hand on the still warm trun ~ Jane Goodall

Maybe I'm a little callous, a little insensitive, a little self-centered, but hey, that's how I roll. ~ Lindy Zart

When you see in places like Africa and parts of Asia abject poverty, hungry children and malnutrition around you, and you look at yourself as being people who have well being and comforts, I think it takes a very insensitive, tough person not to feel they need to do something. ~ Ratan Tata

That church . . . it reminds me of one in downtown Chicago. Do you remember? That beautiful one with the courtyard near the Drake."
Jeremy took a newspaper from a stack behind him and sat across from me. "I know the one you're talking about, but that church," he gestured out the window, "is older than America."
I sighed. "Of course it is. Did I really just try to compare British and American architecture? How insensitive of me. ~ Jessica Martinez

Wives of criminals, Massau later reflected, were indeed an interesting lot. There are those who, real panthers in madness, defend their men with claws out; there are the cold and insensitive ones, who wrestling step by step, discuss each argument and answer your questions with other questions; there are the stubborn ones who can pass the entire night in total silence against the light of the interrogation; there are still others, who, shaken and in distress, discover as you do that they have lived for years beside a monster. ~ David King

We can become so insensitive to the Spirit's prodding that we become too idle, too self absorbed and too busy with too many things that in the eyes of God, are worthless. ~ William Branks

And though creative writing as an intellectual exercise may be pursued with profit by anyone, writing as a profession is not a job for amateurs, dilettantes, part-time thinkers, 25-watt feelers, the lazy, the insensitive, or the imitative. It is for the creative, and creativity implies both talent and hard work. ~ Wallace Stegner

I have always felt comedy and tragedy are roommates. If you look up comedy and tragedy, you will find a very old picture of two masks. One mask is tragedy. It looks like it's crying. The other mask is comedy. It looks like it's laughing. Nowadays, we would say, 'How tasteless and insensitive. A comedy mask is laughing at a tragedy mask.' ~ Gilbert Gottfried

It has been demonstrated that a species of penicillium produces in culture a very powerful antibacterial substance which affects different bacteria in different degrees. Generally speaking it may be said that the least sensitive bacteria are the Gram-negative bacilli, and the most susceptible are the pyogenic cocci ... In addition to its possible use in the treatment of bacterial infections penicillin is certainly useful ... for its power of inhibiting unwanted microbes in bacterial cultures so that penicillin insensitive bacteria can readily be isolated. ~ Alexander Fleming

If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn anyone for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper roots for its causes than we have knowledge of. ~ Bram Stoker

so many issues and problems in a male dominated world derive from the aggressive, secretive and often insensitive masculine ego. ~ Andrew Morton

Even the most sensitive person can get used to even the most insensitive thing. ~ Rick Yancey

I can't imagine what someone would write that would infuriate me. Maybe if my loved one had died of some disease and someone was insensitive, that would piss me off. ~ Joel Stein

It is a characteristic of any decaying civilization that the great masses of the people are unconscious of the tragedy. Humanity in a crisis is generally insensitive to the gravity of the times in which it lives. Men do not want to believe their own times are wicked, partly because it involves too much self-accusation and principally because they have no standards outside of themselves by which to measure their times. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Confidence don't mean jack shit in the real world, sis," she once said. I feel myself finding the courage to trust those words more and more with every twist of the knife. Coincidentally, last Tuesday afternoon I was involuntarily exposed to the punch line of an old wise tale that goes something like: "There's beauty that can be found in everything." But why can't the insensitive cunt who said that ever find the courage to look in the mirror? Because poopycock, one might say. ~ Dave Matthes

The downfall of any great nation ... always comes at the hands of it's pompous and insensitive leaders. ~ Timothy Pina

Every decision I have made - from changing jobs, to changing partners, to changing homes - has been taken with trepidation. I have not ceased being fearful, but I have ceased to let fear control me. I have accepted fear as a part of life, specifically the fear of change, the fear of the unknown, and I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back, turn back, you'll die if you venture too far... In the past several years I have learned, in short, to trust myself. Not to eradicate fear but to go on in spite of fear. Not to become insensitive to distinguished critics but to follow my own writer's instinct. My job is not to paralyze myself by anticipating judgment but to do the best that I can and let judgment fall where it may. The difference between the woman who is writing this essay and the college girl sitting in her creative writing class in 1961 is mostly a matter of nerve and daring - the nerve to trust my own instincts and the daring to be a fool. No one ever found wisdom without being a fool. ~ Erica Jong

Not being offended is a way of saying, I have control over how I'm going to feel, and I choose to feel peaceful regardless of what I observe going on. When you feel offended, you're practicing judgment. You judge someone else to be stupid, insensitive, rude, arrogant, inconsiderate, or foolish, and then you find yourself upset and offended by their conduct. What you may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not define them. You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

The classical heritage as shaped by and filtered through Roman culture had two great flaws. First, it prevented the very rich oral cultures of the ancient Mediterranean from surviving from antiquity into later times. All that was left as creative forces were Greek philosophy and Roman law. These were very substantial cultures but they represented a great narrowing of what could be passed on from antiquity to later centuries...
"Second, another deficiency of classical culture was its lack of social conscience, its obliviousness to the slavery, poverty, disease, and everyday cruelty endured by more than half of the fifty million people who inhabited the empire. The classical heritage represented a narrow and insensitive social and political theory reinforcing a miserably class-ridden and technologically stagnant society. ~ Norman F. Cantor