120 Being Passive Quotes

Following is our list of being passive quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about not being passive.

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Famous Being Passive Quotes

Passivity is the same as defending injustice. — Deepak Chopra

All of us are subject to being passive to the social ills around us. It's a struggle not to become, by staying silent, an accomplice. — Mary Travers

I think it's interesting that the opposite of being active in yoga is not being passive. It's being receptive. — Cyndi Lee

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies)-just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden on the rest. — Kenneth Kaunda

The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to "be active", to "participate", to mask the Nothingness of what goes on. — Slavoj Žižek

Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all. — Arthur Adamov

At times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning. — Jenny Holzer

I'm terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity. — Virginia Woolf

Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. — Julian Assange

Be very very still and allow every new experience to take place in your life without any resistance whatsoever. You do not have to do anything, you simply have to be and let things happen. — Eileen Caddy

Sometimes,doing nothing is the best reaction. - Bob Woodward

Sometimes,doing nothing is the best reaction. — Bob Woodward

Inaction, letting be, neither creating nor destroying--that is my evil. And also the knower as one without desire. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The sage acts by doing nothing. — Lao Tzu

Short Being Passive Quotes

  • Active Evil is better than Passive Good. — William Blake
  • Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
  • To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease, and lightness. — Eckhart Tolle
  • Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction. — Bill Gates
  • The world is made up not only of good and evil, but also of those who do nothing. — Alexei Navalny
  • If you're not talking, you're not playing defense — Doc Rivers
  • Silence is argument carried out by other means. — Che Guevara

Being Passive Image Quotes

Being passive quote Patience is not passive, on the contrary it is concentrated strength.
Patience is not passive, on the contrary it is concentrated strength.

Being Passive Aggressive Quotes

What eleven- to thirteen-year-old boys fear is passivity of any kind. When they do act passively we can be fairly certain that it is an act of aggression designed to torment a parent or teacher. . . . Mischief at best, violence at worst is the boy's proclamation of masculinity. — Louise J. Kaplan

Most people are passive aggressive in this world. I have the idea that the human being is born with a kind of reservoir of aggression. We are inherently somewhat aggressive creatures and we either channel that in direct ways or we channel it in indirect ways and become passive aggressive. — Robert Greene

My mom is very good at being passive-aggressive, and my Dad is a total wiseass, so I think the mixture of the two of them is my comedy. But, I am definitely the first comedian in my family. — Amy Schumer

Being passive quote Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.

New Zealanders have conventions and pleasantries, but we are direct. We are encouraged to be transparent with our behavior and not to employ passive aggression. — Daniel Gillies

I know that I brought this all on myself. I know that I deserve this. I'd do anything not to be this way. I'd do anything to make it up to everyone. And to not have to see a psychiatrist, who explains to me about being "passive aggressive. — Stephen Chbosky

Not Being Passive Quotes

White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background. - Jan Tschichold

White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background. — Jan Tschichold

A team is not made up of isolated individuals. Always stay in the game. Don't be passive. Football is a team game. No one plays alone. Success depends on your whole team being a single unit. — Pele

That's what lordship is - Christ reigning as supreme authority over our life. Making Jesus Lord of our life is not something passive. It's not a state of being, it's a state of doing. Those whom Jesus recognizes as His own are those who do the will of His Father in heaven. — Keith Green

Being passive quote Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinkng. They want obedient workers, people
Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinkng. They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.

Good is towing the line, being behaved, being quiet, being passive, fitting in, being liked, and great is being messy, having a belly, speaking your mind, standing up for what you believe in, fighting for another paradigm, not letting people talk you out of what you know to be true. — Eve Ensler

I think it's a real gift to be faced with man's potential for extreme cruelty but also man's resilience and the fact that love really does conquer everything. It's the only answer to these kinds of atrocities and it's not a passive thing. — Lupita Nyong'o

To continue to condemn only brings condemnation, then, for self. This does not mean that self's activity should be passive, but rather being constant in prayer-knowing and taking, knowing and understanding that he that is faithful is not given a burden beyond that he is able to bear . . . — Edgar Cayce

Being passive quote Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its prese
Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love.

Patience is not passive; on the contrary, it is active; it is concentrated strength. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental. — Stephen Spender

Take action. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes but at the end of your days, you will be remembered for your gallop, not for your stumble. — Bradley Whitford

Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation. — William Safire

Passivity Quotes

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. — Noam Chomsky

Happiness is not mere pleasure, not the outcome of wealth. It is the result of active work rather than passive enjoyment of pleasure. — Robert Baden-Powell

The church of Jesus needs to wake up from the exile of passivity and embrace liminality and adventure or continue to remain a religious ghetto for culturally co-opted, fearful, middle-class folk. — Alan Hirsch

Being passive quote As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vu
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep. — Alexander Hamilton

In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air. — Charlotte Mason

I have no idea of submitting tamely to injustice inflicted either on me or on the slave. I will oppose it with all the moral powers with which I am endowed. I am no advocate of passivity. — Lucretia Mott

Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to keep going when the going is hard and slow - that is patience. The two most powerful warriors are patience and time. — Leo Tolstoy

Learning is more effective when it is an active rather than a passive process. — Kurt Lewin

Hair and shoes say it all. Everything in between is forgivable as long as you keep it simple. Trying to talk with your clothes is passive-aggress ive. — Rick Owens

A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance. — Hunter S. Thompson

Passivity Is Quotes

Between an uncontrolled escalation and passivity, there is a demanding road of responsibility that we must follow. — Dominique de Villepin

The man who is kind and who practices righteousness, who remains passive against the affairs of the world, who considers all creatures on earth as his own self, he attains the Immortal Being; the true God is ever with him. — Kabir

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope. — Corazon Aquino

What keeps a person passive and compliant is fear of repercussions, but once you let go of your attachment to things that don’t ultimately matter – money, career, physical safety – you can overcome that fear. — Glenn Greenwald

Would have. Could have. Should have. This is the language of condemnation underscored by the passivity of regret. It’s a dead language. The thing is, you can’t un-sin. You can only repent. — Steven Furtick

It isn't enough to think outside the box. Thinking is passive. Get used to acting outside the box. — Tim Ferriss

Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism. — Philip Zimbardo

Contrary to popular opinion, listening is not a passive activity. It is the most active thing you can do. — Chris Voss

Wealth is assets that earn while you sleep. — Naval Ravikant

All genuine learning is active, not passive. It involves the use of the mind, not just the memory. It is a process of discovery, in which the student is the main agent, not the teacher. — Mortimer Adler

Active And Passive Quotes

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between. — Sylvia Plath

A healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent, but active and critical. — Harold Laski

Passive righteousness tells us that God does not need our good works. Active righteousness tells us that our neighbor does. The aim and direction of good works are horizontal, not vertical. — Tullian Tchividjian

People – and I think this is particularly true of Americans – don’t like to be passive. They like to seize control. — Martha C. Nussbaum

The triangle pointing downward is a female symbol corresponding to the yoni and the upward pointing triangle is the male, the lingam ... When the two triangles are interlaced, it represents the union of the active and passive forces in nature; it represents the male and female elements. — Albert Mackey

Without knowledge and understanding, one tends to become a passive spectator rather than an active participant in the great decisions of our time. — Diane Ravitch

Hatred is active, and envy passive dislike; there is but one step from envy to hate. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Give us something else; give us something new; for Heaven's sake give us something bad, so long as we feel we are alive and active and not just passive admirers of tradition! — Carl Nielsen

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Opting for peace does not mean a passive acquiescence to evil or compromise of principle. It demands an active struggle against hatred, oppression and disunity, but not by using methods of violence. Building peace requires creative and courageous action — Pope John Paul II

Passive Voice Quotes

Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason. — Constance Hale

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister. — Sonia Sotomayor

Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified. — John Pilger

The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding. — Benjamin Lee Whorf

Objectivity is the subject subjugating the object. That is how you assert yourself. You make yourself the active voice and the object is the passive no-voice. — Emily Levine

We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice--that is, until we have stopped saying It got lost, and say, I lost it. — Sydney J. Harris

Mastery means responsibility, ability to respond in real time to the need of the moment. Intuitive or inspired living means not just passively hearing the voice, but acting on it. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

Live in the active voice, rather than passive. Think more about what you happen than what is happening to you. — William DeWitt Hyde

People Writing About Being Passive

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr.
quotes on courage, leadership and equality

1171 25085
Read quotes by Deepak Chopra

Deepak Chopra
quotes on meditation, healing and relationships

1431 9198
Read quotes by Mary Travers

Mary Travers
quotes on love, marriage and life

18 78
Read quotes by Cyndi Lee

Cyndi Lee

10 61
Read quotes by Kenneth Kaunda

Kenneth Kaunda
quotes on education

13 254
Read quotes by Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek
quotes on love

101 1260

More Being Passive Quotes

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female…In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness — Laura Mulvey

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism. — Langston Hughes

Thinking gets you nowhere. It may be a fine and noble aid in academic studies, but you can't think your way out of emotional difficulties. That takes something altogether different. You have to make yourself passive then, and just listen. Re-establish contact with a slice of eternity. — Etty Hillesum

Once we realize the extraordinary power we have to compose our lives, well move from passive, conditioned thinking to being co-creators of our fate. — Jason Silva

Bureaucratic solutions to problems of practice will always fail because effective teaching is not routine, students are not passive, and questions of practice are not simple, predictable, or standardized. Consequently, instructional decisions cannot be formulated on high then packaged and handed down to teachers. — Linda Darling-Hammond

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong. — Ronald Reagan

I think schools generally do an effective and terribly damaging job of teaching children to be infantile, dependent, intellectually dishonest, passive and disrespectful to their own developmental capacities. — Seymour Papert

I didn’t want a completely passive viewer. Art means too much to me. To be able to articulate something visually is really an important thing. I wanted to make work where the viewer wouldn’t walk away; he would giggle nervously, get pulled into history, into fiction, into something totally demeaning and possibly very beautiful — Kara Walker

As I grow older part of my emotional survival plan must be to actively seek inspiration instead of passively waiting for it to find me. — Bebe Moore Campbell

Life, it is true, can be grasped in all its confused futility merely by opening one's eyes and sitting passively, a spectator on the stands of history - but to understand the social processes and conflicts, the interplay between individual and group, even the physicality of human experience, we have need of small-scale models. — Will Self

Marriage ... is still the imperfect institution it must remain while women continue to be ill-educated, passive, and subservient. — Harriet Martineau

Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism. — Dorothy Thompson

To obtain financial freedom, one must be either a business owner, an investor, or both, generating passive income, particularly on a monthly basis. — Robert Kiyosaki

Take action. Every story you've ever connected with, every leader you've ever admired, every puny little thing that you've ever accomplished is the result of taking action. You have a choice. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. — Bradley Whitford

Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse. — Philip Zimbardo

You're an evolving and transforming person, right? And how do we capture that dynamics of sexuality in that complex sense? There may be times when someone feels oneself more overly masculine or maybe more feminine, or where the terms themselves become confused, where passivity and activity also don't maintain their usual meaning. — Judith Butler

Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others. — Janet Mock

It is because the public are a mass -- inert, obtuse, and passive -- that they need to be shaken up from time to time so that we can tell from their bear-like grunts where they are -- and also where they stand. They are pretty harmless, in spite of their numbers, because they are fighting against intelligence. — Alfred Jarry

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face. That is a rather startling thing to say, but it is our conclusion. — J. C. R. Licklider

The real is near, you do not have to seek it; and a man who seeks truth will never find it. Truth is in what is - and that is the beauty of it. But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle; and a man who struggles cannot understand. That is why we have to be still, observant, passively aware. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Note this, I beseech you: in active obedience we worship God by doing what pleases God, but by passive obedience we do as well worship God by being pleased with what God does. — Jeremiah Burroughs

To make oneself an object, to make oneself passive, is a very different thing from being a passive object. — Simone de Beauvoir

The defensive (or passive) investor will place chief emphasis on the avoidance of serious mistakes or losses. His second aim will be freedom from effort, annoyance, and the need for making frequent decisions. — Benjamin Graham

A very good case can be made, on moral as well as economic grounds, for a system in which the individual is required to stand on his own feet, not to lean on the state for handouts. Character, resourcefulness, capacity are formed and developed in struggle with obstacles, not in waiting passively for benefits from outside. — William Henry Chamberlin

The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon. — Maria Montessori

Many of the women who I've taught to climb have a better sense of balance than the men. I think it has to do with being a little more sensitive to it rather than relying on strenght. It's also a reflection of a passive attitude - balancing your way up the rock, rather than attacking it. — Lynn Hill

Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eye of its beholder turn the educated modern Western women into a harem slave. — Fatema Mernissi

You can't be neutral on a moving train. — Howard Zinn

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