Quotes about passive
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Richard Evelyn Byrd photo

“The right things lead to rational behavior — such as the substitution of reason for force — and so to freedom. The wrong things lead to brute force and slavery.
But the peace I describe is not passive. It must be won.”

Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888–1957) Medal of Honor recipient and United States Navy officer

Source: Alone (1938), Ch. 6
Context: The things that mankind has tested and found right make for harmony and progress — or peace; and the things it has found wrong hinder progress and make for discord. The right things lead to rational behavior — such as the substitution of reason for force — and so to freedom. The wrong things lead to brute force and slavery.
But the peace I describe is not passive. It must be won. Real peace comes from struggle that involves such things as effort, discipline, enthusiasm. This is also the way to strength. An inactive peace may lead to sensuality and flabbiness, which are discordant. It is often necessary to fight to lessen discord. This is the paradox.

George F. Kennan photo

“Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

“American Addictions” in New Oxford Review (June 1993)
Context: Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment.

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 7
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)
Context: The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a lustre in its sky,
Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been!
Thus let thy power, which like the truth
Of nature on my passive youth
Descended, to my onward life supply
Its calm, to one who worships thee,
And every form containing thee,
Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind
To fear himself, and love all human kind.

Robert M. La Follette Sr. photo

“America is not made, but is in the making…Mere passive citizenship is not enough. Men must be aggressive for what is right if government is to be saved from those who are aggressive for what is wrong.”

Robert M. La Follette Sr. (1855–1925) American politician

"The Perils of Passive Citizenship", Speech in Washington, D.C. http://www.speeches-usa.com/Transcripts/robert_lafollete-perils.html (August 11, 1924)

David Ben-Gurion photo

“They are more than a formal precept which can be construed as passive or negative: not to deprive, not to rob, not to oppress, not to hurt.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Rebirth and Destiny of Israel (1954), p. 419.
Context: We have rebelled against all controls and religions, all laws and judgments which the mighty sought to foist upon us. We kept to our dedication and our missions. By these will the State be judged, by the moral character it imparts to its citizens, by the human values determining its inner and outward relations, and by its fidelity, in thought and act, to the supreme behest: "and thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Here is crystallized the eternal law of Judaism, and all the written ethics in the world can say no more. The State will be worthy of its name only if its systems, social and economic, political and legal, are based upon these imperishable words. They are more than a formal precept which can be construed as passive or negative: not to deprive, not to rob, not to oppress, not to hurt.

William Ellery Channing photo

“I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Spiritual Freedom http://www.americanunitarian.org/spiritualfreedom.htm (1830)
Context: I call that mind free, which masters the senses, which protects itself against animal appetites, which contemns pleasure and pain in comparison to its own energy, which penetrates beneath the body and recognises its own reality and greatness, which passes life, not in asking what it shall eat or drink, but in hungering, thirsting, and seeking after righteousness.
I call that mind free, which escapes the bondage of matter, which, instead of stopping at the material universe and making it a prison wall, passes beyond it to its Author, and finds in the radiant signatures which everywhere bears of the Infinite Spirit, helps to its own spiritual enlightenment.
I call that mind free, which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, which opens itself to light whencesoever it may come, which receives new truth as an angel from heaven.
I call that mind free, which sets no bounds to its love, which is not imprisoned in itself or in a sect, which recognises in all human beings the image of God and the rights of his children, which delights in virtue and sympathizes with suffering wherever they are seen, which conquers pride, anger, and sloth, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind.

Práxedis Guerrero photo

“True evolution that will improve of the lives of Mexicans, rather than their parasites, will come with the Revolution. The two complement each other, and the former cannot coexist with the anachronisms and subterfuges that the redeemers of passivity employ today. To evolve we must be free, and we cannot have freedom if we are not rebels, because no tyrant whatsoever has respected passive people. Never has a flock of sheep instilled the majesty of its harmless number upon the wolf that craftily devours them, caring for no right other than that of his teeth. We must arm ourselves, not using the useless vote that will always be worth only as much as a tyrant wants, but rather with effective and less naive weapons whose utilization will bring us ascendant evolution instead of the regressive one praised by pacifist activists. Passivity, never! Rebellion—now and always.”

Práxedis Guerrero (1882–1910) Mexican journalist and anarchist revolutionary

Passivity and Rebellion (29 de Agosto 1909), Punto Rojo, N° 3, , translated by Javier Sethness-Castro. http://blackrosefed.org/i-am-action-praxedis-guerrero/
Context: The quiescent ones raise an outcry calling themselves apostles of evolution, condemning everything that has any hint of rebelliousness; they appeal to fear and make pathetic patriotic calls; they resort to ignorance and go so far as to advise the people to let themselves be murdered and insulted during the next round of elections, to again and again peacefully exercise their right to vote, so that the tyrants mock them and assassinate them over and over. No mention of leaving the fetid corner, which they propose to improve by adding more and more filth, more and more cowardice.... True evolution that will improve of the lives of Mexicans, rather than their parasites, will come with the Revolution. The two complement each other, and the former cannot coexist with the anachronisms and subterfuges that the redeemers of passivity employ today. To evolve we must be free, and we cannot have freedom if we are not rebels, because no tyrant whatsoever has respected passive people. Never has a flock of sheep instilled the majesty of its harmless number upon the wolf that craftily devours them, caring for no right other than that of his teeth. We must arm ourselves, not using the useless vote that will always be worth only as much as a tyrant wants, but rather with effective and less naive weapons whose utilization will bring us ascendant evolution instead of the regressive one praised by pacifist activists. Passivity, never! Rebellion—now and always.

Jacques Ellul photo

“Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.”

Vintage, p. 61
Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1965)
Context: Having analyzed these traits, we can now advance a definition of propaganda — not an exhaustive definition, unique and exclusive of all others, but at least a partial one: Propaganda is a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, psychologically unified through psychological manipulations and incorporated in an organization.

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"O Russet Witch!"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
Context: The years between thirty-five and sixty-five revolve before the passive mind as one unexplained, confusing merry-go-round. True, they are a merry-go-round of ill-gaited and wind-broken horses, painted first in pastel colors, then in dull grays and browns, but perplexing and intolerably dizzy the thing is, as never were the merry-go-rounds of childhood or adolescence; as never, surely, were the certain-coursed, dynamic roller-coasters of youth. For most men and women these thirty years are taken up with a gradual withdrawal from life, a retreat first from a front with many shelters, those myriad amusements and curiosities of youth, to a line with less, when we peel down our ambitions to one ambition, our recreations to one recreation, our friends to a few to whom we are anaesthetic; ending up at last in a solitary, desolate strong point that is not strong, where the shells now whistle abominably, now are but half-heard as, by turns frightened and tired, we sit waiting for death.

Robert Grosseteste photo

“Nor is primitive matter productive of motion, because it is itself passive.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

De Luce seu de Inchoatione Formarum (c. 1215-1220)
Context: One cause, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. I do not rule out several efficient causes of which one is nearer and another more remote in the same order. Thus when I say simply 'animal', I do not exclude another substance or particular substance. Hence motion, in so far as it is one, is productive of only one effect. But motion is present in every body from an intrinsic principle which is called natural. Therefore an efficient cause simply proportional to the motion is present in all bodies. But nothing is present in common in every body except primitive matter and primitive form and magnitude, which necessarily follows from these two, and whatever is entailed by magnitude as such, as position and shape. But simply through magnitude a body does not receive motion, as is clear enough when Aristotle shows that everything that moves is divisible, not, therefore, simply because of magnitude or something entailed by magnitude is a body productive of motion. Nor is primitive matter productive of motion, because it is itself passive. It is therefore necessary that motion follow simply from the primitive form as from an efficient cause.

John C. Maxwell photo

“Optimism is a passive virtue, hope is an active one.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

Book Sometimes you win Sometimes you Learn

Pelé photo
Antonie Pannekoek photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Luis Valdez photo
Helena Roerich photo
Chris Martin photo
Jack Vance photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo

“Part of it, which perhaps you and most other observers are not aware, is that I have enough passive income, and enough dispassion for conventional status signaling, that my marginal utility of money is pretty low compared to my disutility for doing busywork.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

To put it in perspective, I quit my last regular job in 2002, and stopped doing consulting for that company as well (at $100/hour) a year later when they merged with Microsoft and told me I had to do a bunch of paperwork and be hired by Microsoft's "independent consulting company" in order to continue.
In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Jter3YhFBZFYo8vtq/look-for-the-next-tech-gold-rush#ikKBYevf2aL2pBwsS on LessWrong, July 2014

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Robert Greene photo
Teal Swan photo
Salvador Dalí photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“Women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

Alledgedly written in 'The Psychical Consequences of the Anatomic Distinction Between the Sexes', but Freud neither says this nor argues this exact sentiment. Possible originates from Donna Stewart https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/pn.36.14.0009
Misattributed

Noam Chomsky photo
Maryam Rajavi photo

“In committing these crimes, the mullahs are testing Western governments. In such circumstances, a lack of resolve or a passive attitude by Western governments will intensify the regime’s terrorist actions.”

Maryam Rajavi (1953) Iranian politician

Maryam Rajavi as quoted in The Washington Times https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/sep/24/iranian-resistence-calls-european-action-against-r/ (24 September 2018)

Germaine Greer photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Lou Dobbs photo
Robert Walpole photo
John Dewey photo
Frithjof Schuon photo
Guy P. Harrison photo
Jack Vance photo
Greta Thunberg photo
Rita Levi-Montalcini photo
Witness Lee photo

“Patience is not passivity; it is aggressiveness without anxiety.”

Witness Lee (1905–1997) Chinese Christian preacher

Character, of Witness Lee - By Living Stream Ministry, ISBN 978-0-87083-322-9

Susan Cain photo

“Longing is momentum in disguise: It's active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxvi

John Crist (comedian) photo

“I think Christian comedy has gotten a bad rap in the past because it's very passive, and it's not honest. It's like knock-knock jokes type humor. What we're bringing to the table is another level of honesty, and maybe transparency that I think does make some people uncomfortable.”

John Crist (comedian) (1984) American comedian

[Paulson, Dave, John Crist: A Christian comedian who's gently poking fun at faith, https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/2019/04/11/john-crist-christian-comedian-nashville-comedy-festival-ryman-auditorium/3215394002/, 6 September 2019, The Tennessean, April 11, 2019, en]

André Breton photo