"I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy"
About this Quote
Coming from an actor with Rickman’s cultivated precision, the phrase reads less like celebrity punditry and more like a performer’s diagnosis of audience energy. He’s noticing the room. “Apathy” isn’t ignorance; it’s fatigue, a sense that nothing changes no matter who speaks. The subtext is a critique of civic passivity that feels distinctly British in its restraint: no rage, no melodrama, just a clipped, disappointed register that implies, You should know better than this.
The intent, then, isn’t to win an argument but to puncture a complacency he sees calcifying into normalcy. It’s also a subtle rebuke to the culture of ironic detachment: if everything becomes a joke, nothing becomes urgent. In the late-20th/early-21st-century British context Rickman lived through - widening inequality, culture-war churn, scandals that erode trust, austerity-era resignation - “apathy” can be read as the true crisis, the condition that lets the “worrying things” keep happening unchallenged.
It works because it’s plainspoken but morally loaded: he’s not asking for outrage, he’s asking for attention.
Quote Details
| Topic | Deep |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rickman, Alan. (n.d.). I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-worrying-things-are-going-on-in-england--63398/
Chicago Style
Rickman, Alan. "I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-worrying-things-are-going-on-in-england--63398/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I think worrying things are going on in England - a real apathy." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-think-worrying-things-are-going-on-in-england--63398/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.





