Passivity Quotes

“I thought of the things that had happened to me over the years, and of how little I had made happen.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

“I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“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

“The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”
― Robert Greene, Mastery

“The path of peace is not a passive journey. It takes incredible strength not to open a can of 'whoop-ass', justifiably, when ones button is pushed.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“It is passivity that dulls feeling.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

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

“The writer is the duelist who never fights at the stated hour, who gathers up an insult, like another curious object, a collector's item, spreads it out on his desk later, and then engages in a duel with it verbally. Some people call it weakness. I call it postponement. What is weakness in the man becomes a quality in the writer. For he preserves, collects what will explode later in his work. That is why the writer is the loneliest man in the world; because he lives, fights, dies, is reborn always alone; all his roles are played behind a curtain. In life he is an incongruous figure.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us.”
― Derek Landy, Skulduggery Pleasant

“Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“In a dependent relationship, the protégé can always control the protector by threatening to collapse.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“Becoming aware of our inner man and woman means to discover the roots and creative potential of both the male and female aspect within ourselves. Becoming aware of the inner man and woman means to understand that they have different visions of life. It means to understand that they have different perspectives and views of life. The inner man and woman are our two wings of love and freedom. Through awareness, acceptance and understanding, we can allow our two wings to develop in a deep and natural harmony. In the world today, a one-sided development of the male side leads to destructivity. A one-sided development of the male side leads to ego, struggle, exhaustion and a separation from life. A one-sided development of the female side leads to passivity and dependence.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Presence - Working from Within. The Psychology of Being

“Peter does what he usually does when he doesn’t know what to do next: he gives up.”
― Marc-Uwe Kling, QualityLand

“That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End

“Nobody is going to save you but yourself and the ‘best’ and only way to do so is
through action.”
― Oli Anderson, Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness

“You don't talk; you watch talk shows. You don't play games; you watch game shows.

Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.”
― Brad Bird

“Meaning is not found in passivity. You must track it down with fervent pursuit and fierce endurance. Meaning must be earned.”
― Shawn Davis, The Talk: A Young Person's Guide to Life's Big Questions

“Passivity is always active.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“The clear message you should derive from the benefits of mental and physical exercise is that the worst thing you can do to your brain is to be content living a passive life. The habit of passivity is pervasive in our culture, from longing for miracle cures to watching television for hours to being politically apathetic. Physical and mental action is fundamental to maintaining mental health.”
― John J. Ratey, A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain

“If there was one thing that Alice felt like she'd done wrong, it was being too passive.”
― Emma Straub, This Time Tomorrow

“It's noble to be timid, illustrious to fail to act, sublime to be inept at living.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“É impressionante a passividade com que nos habituamos às rotinas".”
― Max Moreno, Dias de Lua

“when left unchecked, passivity can easily turn to apathy, which is neither helpful nor innocent. Instead, it is symptomatic of a more serious problem—hidden hostility masquerading as passivity.”
― Carlton U. Forbes, A Few Choice Words: A Collection of Inspirational and Motivational Discourses

“An overly passive person often has difficulty seeing the value in improving him or herself.”
― Carlton U. Forbes, A Few Choice Words: A Collection of Inspirational and Motivational Discourses

“People who have no vested interest in their wellbeing are often content with a passive attitude.”
― Carlton U. Forbes, A Few Choice Words: A Collection of Inspirational and Motivational Discourses

“I imagine that a minority of people were born to be active participants, while a majority were meant to be passive observers.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Stamerenophobia

“Sleeping after doing little is profitable than sleeping after doing nothing.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, These Words Burn Like Fire

“It seems, however, that humans can’t free themselves of choices and decisions, no matter where they go. Life doesn’t go on if you don’t choose one thing or another.”
― Jang Eun-Jin, No One Writes Back

“A few autocracies still portray themselves to their citizens as model states. The North Koreans, famously, hold vast military parades with elaborate gymnastics displays and huge portraits of their leader, very much in the Stalinist style. But many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don’t offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don’t inspire them to build a better world. Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build. Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too. You may not like our leader, but the others are worse. You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.”
― Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.