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Quotes about passive
A collection of quotes on the topic of passive, activation, activity, other.
Quotes about passive

Source: Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, The Common Good (1998)

Source: Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Variant translation: A loss of courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days...
Harvard University address (1978)

Source: Election address; letter to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Marlborough (8 March 1880), quoted in The Times (9 March 1880), p. 8

“… I'm terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity.”
Source: A Writer's Diary

“To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.”
Source: The Waves

Source: Wozu noch Philosophie? [Why still philosophy?] (1963), p. 9

1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926)

Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 18-19

Happy life! happy state! and happy the soul which has attained to it!
Explanation of Stanza 28 part 8
Spiritual Canticle of The Soul and The Bridegroom, Notes to the Stanzas
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 345.

Source: “ 25:13 Our Only Hope Will Come Through Rebellion http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOlg_2qAbUA” (2014)

perhaps a passive magnetism as well, but at least an active is there
Ulrichs in autobiographical manuscript of 1861, cited in Hubert Kennedy (1988), Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson. p. 44; As cited in: Kennedy (1997, 3)

Interview: Seven Magazine in the London Telegraph (6 January 2008)

Address to the Nation on the United States Air Strike Against Libya http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/41486g.htm (14 April 1986)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Ulrichs in autobiographical manuscript of 1861, cited in Hubert Kennedy (1988), Ulrichs: The Life and Works of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Pioneer of the Modern Gay Movement. Boston: Alyson. p. 44; As cited in: Kennedy (1997, 4)

"Repentance and Impenitence" p. 368
Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878)

Breton's quote in the Introduction to the exhibition of Gorky's first show, Julien Levy Gallery, March 1945; as quoted in Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof, ed. by Matthew Spender, Ridinghouse, London, 2009, pp. 257-258
after 1930

Letter to Virgil Finlay (25 September 1936), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 310
Non-Fiction, Letters

Essay "Lewis Carroll" (1939); reprinted in The Moment, and Other Essays (1948)

Kōnosuke Matsushita in: The Mirror, (1989), Vol. 25, p. 18

Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques (published 1782)

“Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production.”
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Class Warfare, 1995
Context: Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control -- "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.

Section 3 : Work Democracy versus Politics. The Natural Social Forces for the Mastery of the Emotional Plague;
Variant translation: Under the influence of politicos, the masses blame the powers that be for wars. In the first world war it was the munition magnates, in the second the Psychopath General. This is shifting the responsibility. The blame for the war belongs only and alone to the same masses of people who have all the means of preventing wars. The same masses of people who — partly through indolent passivity, partly through their active behavior — make possible the catastrophes from which they themselves suffer most horribly. To emphasize this fault of the masses, to give them the full responsibility, means taking them seriously. On the other hand, to pity the masses as a poor victim means treating them like a helpless child. The first is the attitude of the genuine fighter for freedom, the latter is the attitude of the politico.
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), Ch. 10 : Work Democracy
Context: Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for war falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anybody else. To stress this guilt on the part of masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom-fighters; the latter the attitude held by the power-thirsty politicians.

2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: In today's wars, many more civilians are killed than soldiers; the seeds of future conflict are sown, economies are wrecked, civil societies torn asunder, refugees amassed, children scarred.
I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war. What I do know is that meeting these challenges will require the same vision, hard work, and persistence of those men and women who acted so boldly decades ago. And it will require us to think in new ways about the notions of just war and the imperatives of a just peace.
We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations — acting individually or in concert — will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.
I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King Jr. said in this same ceremony years ago: "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones." As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King's life work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there's nothing weak — nothing passive — nothing naïve — in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.
But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism — it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

“Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud.”
Anti-Goeze (1778), as quoted in God Is Not Great (2007), by Christopher Hitchens , Ch. 19
Context: The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. Possession makes one passive, indolent, and proud. If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say: Father, I will take this one—the pure Truth is for You alone.

“The same is true of the passive qualities, patience under suffering, even pleasure in ill usage.”
Source: The Beloved Returns (1939), Ch. 7
Context: Cruelty is one of the chief ingredients of love, and divided about equally between the sexes: cruelty of lust, ingratitude, callousness, maltreatment, domination. The same is true of the passive qualities, patience under suffering, even pleasure in ill usage.

Preface to the First Edition, Capital Volume 1, Peinguin Classics edition 1976.
Das Kapital (Buch I) (1867)

“The student is to read history actively not passively.”
Source: Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“Passivity may be the easy course, but it is hardly the honorable one.”

“Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive.”
As quoted in Seven Words to the Cross (1979) by Ellsworth Kalas, page 93
Context: Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

Source: Medea and Other Plays: Medea / Alcestis / The Children of Heracles / Hippolytus


1950s, Three Ways of Meeting Oppression (1958)
Context: To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. The oppressed must never allow the conscience of the oppressor to slumber. Religion reminds every man that he is his brother's keeper. To accept injustice or segregation passively is to say to the oppressor that his actions are morally right. It is a way of allowing his conscience to fall asleep. At this moment the oppressed fails to be his brother's keeper. So acquiescence-while often the easier way-is not the moral way. It is the way of the coward.
Source: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

Source: Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America

“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”
Source: "Berlin Diary" (1930) from Goodbye to Berlin (1939)
Source: The Sadeian Woman: And the Ideology of Pornography

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.”

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 60, note 92

You Can't Be Neutral on A Moving Train (1994) Ch. 4: "My Name is Freedom": Albany, Georgia

Part 6 “Aleph Null”, Chapter 4 (p. 226)
Against Infinity (1983)

In page=106
Science and National Consciousness in Bengal: 1870-1930
Source: On the Contrary (1964), Ch. 7
n.p.
1950 - 1971, Painting a Portrait of the President', Elaine de Kooning (1964)
Attributed to Michael E. Gerber in: American Farriers' Journal, 1998, p. 61

And the New World Order is like "Act like a jellyfish coward and giggle at all reality", and they're like "Yes, yes!"
"Alex Jones: I'm So Trendy Rant!" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBA-sa97UYg March 2012.
2012

Source: Personal Knowledge (1958), p. vii-viii
As quoted in "Age of unreason" by Jeannette Baxter in The Guardian (22 June 2004)

“Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.”
Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (1977). New York: Random House. ISBN 0394482271. (1978 ed, ISBN 039472612X.), p 70. (possibly also published as Going Too Far: The Personal Documents of a Feminist) ("there is no 'too far,'" id., p. 8, "Introduction: Rights of Passage")

“Passive resistance and boycotting are now prominent features of every great national movement.”
Individual Liberty (1926), Passive Resistance
Source: SCUM MANIFESTO (1967), p. 8 ("dragqueen", "dragqueens", & hyphens (not en- or em-dashes) so in original).

Thompson (1991) Play, from The American Replacement of Nature.

"Speech delivered by Osagyefo the President at the Laying of the Foundation Stone of Ghana's Atomic Reactor at Kwabenya on 25th November, 1964". As quoted ny E. A. Haizel in Education in Ghana, 1951 – 1966, in Arhin (1992), The Life and Work of Kwame Nkrumah.
In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jter3YhFBZFYo8vtq/look-for-the-next-tech-gold-rush#ikKBYevf2aL2pBwsS on LessWrong, July 2014
Source: Light (2002), Chapter 17 “The Lost Entradas” (p. 181)

Benjamin Watson Interview, Part Two http://turningpointfriends.org/benjamin-watson-interview-part-two/

Source: Why We Fail as Christians (1919), p. 72-73

Letter to his brother (30 January 1832), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 20.
1830s

A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831)
Source: The practice of social work. (1995), p. 24

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013