Jean Shepherd Quotes

The Vice President is like a man in a cataleptic state. He cannot speak. He cannot move.

Apathy is the self-defense of the powerless.

You find yourself in the world, without any power, immovable as a rock, stupid, so to speak, as a log of wood.

The absent are like children, helpless to defend themselves.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

When I see that things are not going the way they should be, I just clam up.

I know this sounds ridiculous, but I'm not much of a fighter.

We're defenseless, I know we play defense, but we're defenseless when we're not looking at the guy who's blocking us or when the guy's come out and cut out our knees from underneath us.

When one does nothing, one believes oneself responsible for everything.

She was lying like a loaf of bread. I said, baby, baby, baby, are you dead?

Her face lay still on the air under his face.

To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.

The only time anyone has ever gotten into serious trouble was when he decided he could do nothing about something.

Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised.

Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.

It is a mistake to imagine, that the violent passions only, such as ambition and love, can triumph over the rest. Idleness, languid as it is, often masters them all; she influences all our designs and actions, and insensibly consumes and destroys both passions and virtues.

No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

All are / naked, none is safe.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

When are you at your most defenseless?

Children die every day because millions of us tell ourselves that caring is just as good as doing.

I agree: Americans can be very apathetic. We're not proactive. We sit and watch TV.

Indifference and inaction must always pay a penalty.

Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction.