Neutrality Quotes

“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
― Dante Alighieri

“If you truly want to be respected by people you love, you must prove to them that you can survive without them.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Infinity Sign

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”
― Paulo Freire

“Black is modest and arrogant at the same time. Black is lazy and easy - but mysterious. But above all black says this: "I don’t bother you - don’t bother me".”
― Yohji Yamamoto

“You can't be neutral on a moving train.”
― Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Why should we cherish “objectivity”, as if ideas were innocent, as if they don’t serve one interest or another? Surely, we want to be objective if that means telling the truth as we see it, not concealing information that may be embarrassing to our point of view. But we don’t want to be objective if it means pretending that ideas don’t play a part in the social struggles of our time, that we don’t take sides in those struggles.

Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests – war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism – and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.”
― Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology

“What I used to say to people, when I was much more engagé myself, is that you can't be apolitical. It will come and get you. It's not that you shouldn't be neutral. It's that you won't be able to stay neutral.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“There are no conditions to which a man may not become accustomed, particularly if he sees that they are accepted by those about him.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this phsychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with.”
― Ian Fleming, From Russia with Love

“I don't represent anyone's opinion. Not even my own. I'm neutral.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, The New Land

“how I despise neutrality, only countries should be neutral since they’re abstract entities, people cannot be neutral, a friend of mine cannot caress my hand and kiss my enemy, laugh when they mock me, this is my true belief, maybe I’m wrong, neutral people are the most dangerous, they sell themselves to the highest bidder, betray us for a plate of lentils”
― João Reis, The Translator's Bride

“The state does not oppose the freedom of people to express their particular cultural attachments, but nor does it nurture such expression—rather [...] it responds with 'benign neglect' [....] The members of ethnic and national groups are protected against discrimination and prejudice, and they are free to maintain whatever part of their ethnic heritage or identity they wish, consistent with the rights of others. But their efforts are purely private, and it is not the place of public agencies to attach legal identities or disabilities to cultural membership or ethnic identity. This separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.”
― Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights

“I prefer open hostility to the poisonous silence of supposed neutrality or the empty lip service of performative solidarity.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“How wonderful it will be if the universe really contains other intelligences and other societies! Bystanders have the clearest view. Someone truly neutral will then be able to comment on whether we're the heroes or villains of history.”
― Liu Cixin, The Three-Body Problem

“All this disappointment was, I felt, intensified by the terrible movements in our world. There has never been a worse time to be a bystander, to be the person who says, That was taken out of context, or, There are always two sides, or, We don't yet know the whole story.”
― Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

“Neutrality always swallows all things mighty. The path of least resistance ensures all forks in the road are made comfortable descents into a mediocre valley of oblivion, an oblivion where nothing of note happens, where the audacity of uncomfortable choice is checked by the rank vanilla stank of stagnant stasis. In God's heaven, taking a hard stance is the heinous act of a heretic. Abandon all autonomy ye who enter here. Days of remembrance are reserved only for those who take a stand.”
― Lil Low-Cu$$'t, The Swarm

“When a young employee at the Anne Fank House tried to wear his yarmulke to work, his employers told him to hide it under a baseball cap. The museum's gal was "neutrality," one spokesperson explained to the British newspaper Daily Mail, and a live Jew in a yarmulke might "interfere" with the museum's "independent position." The museum finally relented after deliberated for four months, which seems like a rather long time for the Anne Frank House to ponder whether it was a good idea to force a Jew into hiding.”
― Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

“A century and more ago Sweden, worn and consumed by its many wars and conflicts with neighboring peoples, had been compelled to face its own condition and to decide whether it would allow itself to be destroyed by the burdens of war, laid upon the people by military leaders whose career was war, or, on the contrary, deny the leaders and build a life of peace, based upon an unchangeable policy of neutrality in all times of war. They chose peace, and in the decades since that fundamental decision, which every Nation must make sooner or later if its people are to survive, Sweden has grown steadily in wisdom and prosperity. Neither wisdom nor permanent prosperity is possible for a nation in the constant turmoil of war.”
― Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds

“We can't deny the ubiquity of faith. If we write in such a way as to prejudge such belief as in some way deluded or false, then are we not guilty of elitism, of imposing our world-view on the masses?”
― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

“নিরপেক্ষতার একটা মাপকাঠি হল সর্বনাম, খেয়াল করুন কেউ সেটি কিভাবে ব্যবহার করছে।”
― Aishik Rehman

“Tamlin hadn't flinched- not a muscle. What horrors had he witnessed in his long life if this hadn't broken that distant expression, that control?”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“The ultimate blasphemy is neglecting the gift of thought that we have all been granted. Convictions are the biggest threat to knowledge. Do not be convinced by anything. When you make up your mind about something, every door closes. Exploring and questioning the outside and inside world is a service you must commit to and practice every day. Remaining neutral is the strongest superpower anyone can have. That is the Janthopoyism way.”
― Jared Woods, Janthopoyism Bible

“neutrality in a time of war is seen by both sides as nothing more than an act of aggression”
― J. Bree, The Crown of Oaths and Curses

“A ruler of peace,” I repeated with vicious annoyance. “You were not ruling under peaceful times, and a peaceful ruler—" I strained to find the words as my temper heated—"a peaceful ruler does not mean you do nothing.”
― Kailey Bright, Unity

“The mechanism of democratic representation is not really neutral. As Alain Badiou writes, “If democracy is a representation, it first of all represents the general system which sustains its form. In other words, the electoral democracy is only representative insofar as it is first the consensual representation of capitalism, which is today renamed ‘market economy.”
― Slavoj Žižek, Heaven in Disorder

“Elie Wiesel wrote: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
― Billy Porter, Unprotected: A Memoir

“Justice is not achieved by claiming the middle ground between oppressor and oppressed, but by standing where embodied love is likely to cost us something.”
― Jamie Arpin-Ricci

“Neutrality was a coward’s defense.”
― Elisabeth Wheatley, Daindreth's Assassin

“There’s no neutrality in a burning house. Silence may feel safe, but it still smells of smoke.”
― Lawrence Nault