Passive Quotes - Page 20

• The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.

  Steven Pinker

  Children, Ideas, Achievement

  "Steven Pinker: The evolutionary man". Interview with John Crace, www.theguardian.com. June 16, 2008.

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• So shall we come to look at the world with new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the affections, — What is good? by yielding itself passive to the educated Will. ... Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Ideas, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.48, Library of America

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• I’m worried that students will take their obedient place in society and look to become successful cogs in the wheel - let the wheel spin them around as it wants without taking a look at what they’re doing. I’m concerned that students not become passive acceptors of the official doctrine that’s handed down to them from the White House, the media, textbooks, teachers and preachers.

  Howard Zinn

  Teacher, Successful, Media

  "A People's History of the United States". Book by Howard Zinn, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1980.

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• We women have lived too much with closure: "If he notices me, if I marry him, if I get into college, if I get this work accepted, if I get this job" -- there always seems to loom the possibility of something being over, settled, sweeping clear the way for contentment. This is the delusion of a passive life. When the hope for closure is abandoned, when there is an end to fantasy, adventure for women will begin.

  Carolyn Heilbrun

  Jobs, Adventure, College

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• When you're in a competitive environment, always give out the impression that you don't care. It makes people want you more. If you act desperate, it's over. I think a passive attitude is helpful. It comes naturally because I'm lazy.

  Diablo Cody

  Attitude, Thinking, People

  "Running with Diablo". Interview with Matt Smith, www.citypages.com. December 26, 2007.

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• The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and passive.

  Michael Pollan

  Nature, Verbs, Active

  Michael Pollan (2009). “The Omnivore's Dilemma: The Search for a Perfect Meal in a Fast-Food World”, p.9, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• We must relinquish our passive observation of the world outside; we can open the door to the world we want. In understanding ourselves, we come to understand the world. In allowing ourselves to heal, we become the healers of the world. In praying for peace, we become bringers of peace. Thus we actualize the power within us to remedy the psychic wounds of humanity.

  Marianne Williamson

  Doors, Psychics, Understanding

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• 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

  Teamwork, Football, Games

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• For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Home, Fate

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Struggle, Acceptance, Opposites

  "Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr: The Power of Nonviolent Action". Book by Mary King, p. 231, 1999.

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• 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

  Love, Courage, Character

  "Witnessing". Selected Correspondence, Julian Assange's old blog, IQ.org (via Archive.org), web.archive.org. January 3, 2007.

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• Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.

  Frank Herbert

  Acceptance, Government, Names

  "The Dosadi Experiment" by Frank Herbert, (p. 297), 1977.

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• In a car you're always in a compartment, and because you're used to it you don't realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You're a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Moving, Car, Gone

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• The thrill of terror is passive, masochistic, and implicitly feminine. It is imaginative submission to overwhelming superior force.

  Camille Paglia

  Thrill, Feminine, Submission

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae”, p.339, Yale University Press

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• In negotiating with rejected lovers or husbands, women must stop thinking they can make everyone happy. In many cases of harassment and stalking, it is clear that the woman never learned how to terminate the fantasy which requires resolution and decisiveness on their part. Wavering, dithering, or passive hysterical fear will only intensify or prolong pursuit.

  Camille Paglia

  Husband, Thinking, Wavering

  Camille Paglia (2011). “Vamps & Tramps: New Essays”, p.47, Vintage

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• Who gives is positive; who receives is negative; still there remains an immense class of mere passives.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Class, Giving, Negative

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives - agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate.

  Saul Alinsky

  Passion, Men, Bridges

  "Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals" by Saul Alinsky, (pp. xxi-xxii), 1971.

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• 1) Différance is the systematic play of differences, of the traces of differences, of the spacing by means of which elements are related to each other. This spacing is the simultaneously active and passive (the a of différance indicates this indecision as concerns activity and passivity, that which cannot be governed by or distributed between the terms of this opposition) production of the intervals without which the "full" terms would not signify, would not function.

  Jacques Derrida

  Mean, Play, Differences

  "Positions" by Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, (p. 21), 1982.

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• 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.

  Jacques Ellul

  Unique, Organization, Definitions

  "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes". Book by Jacques Ellul, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner,, 1965.

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• The status quo was rote memorization and recitation in classrooms thronged with passive children who were sternly disciplined when they expressed individual needs.

  David Guterson

  Children, Memorization, Needs

  David Guterson (1992). “Family matters: why homeschooling makes sense”, Harcourt

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• But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her. If the concept of identification suggested that an individual experiences a work as a mirror in which he might recognize himself, the notion of relatability implies that the work in question serves like a selfie: a flattering confirmation of an individual's solipsism.

  Rebecca Mead

  Book, Play, Mirrors

  "The Scourge of 'Relatability'". www.newyorker.com. August 1, 2014.

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• If you work outdoors be passive, go with the weather. This may mean two hours sheltering from a downpour, followed by a wonderful burst of sunlight and a rainbow.

  John Newbery

  Mean, Weather, Two

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• Growing up closes so many doors. The modern world doesn't allow for miracles, so we don't see them. It's a very precious gift, an open mind, but it's not passive. You've got to nurture it like a bed of roses; otherwise it will wither and die. Make sure you don't close off your mind to things you find strange. Sometimes they may be the only truth.

  Tim Lebbon

  Growing Up, Bed Of Roses, Doors

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• Man is not the source of all things, as the subjective idealists would say. Nor is he the passive observer of all things, as the objective idealists would say. The Quality which creates the world emerges as a relationship between man and his experience. He is a participant in the creation of all things. The measure of all things.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Men, Unity, Quality

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, Ch. 29, 1974.

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• Imagine that for hundreds of years your most formative traumas, your daily suffering and pain, the abuse you live through, the terror you live with, are unspeakable - not the basis of literature. You grow up with your father holding you down and covering your mouth so another man can make a horrible searing pain between your legs.... You learn how to leave your body and create someone else who takes over when you cannot stand it any more. You develop a self who is ingratiating and obsequious and imitative and aggressively passive and silent - you learn, in a word, femininity.

  Catharine MacKinnon

  Growing Up, Pain, Father

  "Only Words". Book by Catharine MacKinnon, 1993.

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