That which is everybody's business is nobody's business.
While most nations seemed to agree that something had to be done, every nation seemed to have a reason why some other nation should do it. So we sat, waiting for a promise to be kept, reduced to the role of accountants keeping track of how many were being killed.
It comes down to this: If not you, then who?
Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses.
The Constitution is worth saving, the rule of law is worth saving, democracy is worth saving, but these things can and will be lost if everyone waits around for someone else.
One never dives into the water to save a drowning man more eagerly than when there are others present who dare not take the risk.
A conference is a gathering of people who singly can do nothing, but together can decide that nothing can be done.
Germany was a parliamentary democracy with many, many humane and decent people who kept writing in their journals - I've read these journals, these memoirs - "Surely our leaders will stop this nonsense. Surely someone will take on these thugs. Surely the pendulum will swing back." Everyone was sitting at home going, "Well, they haven't come for me. This is crazy, but surely someone's going to take care of it." We all have to take care of it.
We have this attitude in America of, 'Someone else is going to fix the problem.' That's what the majority of Americans have. Or, 'I'm just going to go online and sign this petition, and that will take care of it.' That's doesn't do it.
It's a bit scary to see my book come true: the recent (if minor) LA earthquakes, Hurricane Sandy, the Boston bomber, and so on - much of it stoppable, I think, and yet I, too, am also guilty of passivity.
Everybody wants to do something to help, but nobody wants to be first.
So it is the fear, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice of onlookers that permit evil behavior to persist.
A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.
Collective states are constitutionally incapable of reliably producing anything but corpses.
I talk to fashion designers and say I want some money to save the rainforest, and they say, 'Oh, I agree with you completely Vivienne. Yes, climate change, it's definitely happening,' but they don't feel that they can do anything about it; they don't even think 'Well let's stop it!'
The inertia of humans is so huge that you can't really do anything meaningful.
