[Ads-l] Quote: The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Wilhelm Stekel

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I was asked to  explore the saying in the subject line. The Yale Book
of Quotations (and other references) list an instance ascribed to Elie
Wiesel in 1986. (The saying is only part of the full Wiesel quotation
which is rather elaborate.)

Wikiquote ascribes a close variant "Hate is not the opposite of love;
apathy is" to U.S. psychologist Rollo May with a 1969 citation.

The QI website now has an article:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/05/21/indifference/

The Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Stekel wrote an instance in German
that was translated into English and published in 1921:

The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference; the opposite of
feeling can only be the absence of feeling.

Der Gegensatz von Liebe ist nicht Haß, sondern Gleichgültigkeit; der
Gegensatz eines Gefühls kann nur die Gefühllosigkeit sein.

I found the German version above in a different book by Stekel
published in 1921. Presumably there is an earlier version in German,
but I have not found the book scans yet.

Garson

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