Quotes on Passive

Do you see the consequences of the way we have chosen to think about success? Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung...We are too much in awe of those who succeed and far too dismissive of those who fail. And most of all, we become much too passive. We overlook just how large a role we all play—and by “we” I mean society—in determining who makes it and who doesn’t.

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

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Many of us reject all of the inferior meanings and connotations that others project onto femininity - that it is weak, artificial, frivolous, demure, and passive - because for us, there has been no act more bold and daring than embracing our own femininity. In a world that is awash in antifeminine sentiment, we understand that embracing and empowering femininity can potentially be one of the most transformative and revolutionary acts imaginable.

Let no one think of me that I am humble or weak or passive; let them understand I am of a different kind: dangerous to my enemies, loyal to my friends. To such a life glory belongs.

...so much attention is paid to the aggressive sins, such as violence and cruelty, and greed with all their tragic effects, that too little attention is paid to the passive sins, such as apathy and laziness, which in the long run can have a more devastating and destructive effect upon society than the others.

I've made so many people angry that they kind of blur into one unpleasant memory of people staring at you with somewhere between passive aggression and active aggression.

I think a very good system in a world with a lot of passive investors is one in which there are at least a few entrepreneurial investors, prepared to say what they think, prepared to propose a change in management, change in strategy, change in cost structure, capital structure.

We are not merely passive pawns of historical forces; nor are we victims of the past. We can shape and direct history.

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.

Love is trusting, accepting, and believing, without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it's an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears.

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.

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.

Peace is not passive, it is active. Peace is not appeasement, it is strength. Peace does not 'happen,' it requires work.

Women are not inherently passive or peaceful. We're not inherently anything but human.

What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.

Listening is an activity. It's not passive. We are creating the world by listening all the time.

It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.

The mind is found most acute and most uneasy in the morning. Uneasiness is, indeed, a species of sagacity - a passive sagacity. Fools are never uneasy.

Translation is a form of passive aggression. In doing it, a writer chooses to forgo original authorship so as to play havoc with a foreign original in a process of imitation, zigzagging between the foreign and receiving languages but in the last analysis cancelling the first in favor of the second.

Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.