Passive Aggression Quotes

Passive Aggression – Being covertly spiteful with the intent of inflicting mental pain. ~ Ashta-Deb

Why does forgiveness irritate me so much?" I ask Chuck.
"Because it's the ultimate act of passive aggression," he says.
"Because it keeps sin alive," says my sister. ~ Abigail Thomas

This is passive-aggression in action. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

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. ~ John Oliver

Everybody in life is struggling for power, and some people use morality and righteousness as a weapon, while others use different means, even passive aggression. From a distance, we are all fighting, and I am looking at this from a distance. ~ Robert Greene

I thought of how many women told me dispiritedly about how their husbands waited for them to ask - or to make a list - and how demoralizing that was for them. I could not help thinking that there was some element of passive aggression in this recurrent theme of nice men, good, playful dads, full of initiative and motivation at work, who "waited to be asked" to do the more tedious baby-related work at home, until the asking was finally scaled back or stopped. ~ Naomi Wolf

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. ~ Lawrence Venuti

It was then that my gaze happened to fall on the bookcase, on the gap there, where the old paperback of "Nine Stories" had fallen flat. "Where's the thing?" I said.
"What thing?"
"The mesh. My mesh."
She shrugged. "I tossed it."
"Tossed it? Where? What do you mean?"
In the next moment I was in the kitchen, flipping open the lid of the trash can, only to find it empty. "You mean outside?" I shouted. "In the dumpster?"
When I came thundering back into the room, she still hadn't moved. "Jesus, what were you thinking? That was mine. I wanted that. I wanted to keep it."
Her lips barely moved. "It was dirty. ~ T.C. Boyle

Whether a country is actually free is determined not by how well-rewarded its convention-affirming media elites are and how ignored its passive citizens are but by how it treats its dissidents, those posing authentic challenges to what the government does. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men. ~ Auberon Herbert

To some women nothing fits better than the onset of ambition. Love makes them passive ~ Francoise Sagan

We have to start thinking of ourselves as citizens of the Internet, not just passive users. I don't see how we can bring about change in our digital lives if we don't take responsibility. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

While all of us dread being blamed, we all would wish to be more responsible - that is, to have the ability to respond with awareness to the circumstances of our lives rather than just reacting. We want to be the authoritative person in our own lives: in charge, able to make the authentic decisions that affect us. There is no true responsibility without awareness. One of the weaknesses of the Western medical approach is that we have made the physician the only authority, with the patient too often a mere recipient of the treatment or cure. People are deprived of the opportunity to become truly responsible. None of us are to be blamed if we succumb to illness and death. Any one of us might succumb at any time, but the more we can learn about ourselves, the less prone we are to become passive victims. Mind and body links have to be seen not only for our understanding of illness but also for our understanding of health.

Dr. Robert Maunder, on the psychiatric faculty of the University of Toronto, has written about the mindbody interface in disease. "Trying to identify and to answer the question of stress," he said to me in an interview, "is more likely to lead to health than ignoring the question." In healing, every bit of information, every piece of the truth, may be crucial. If a link exists between emotions and physiology, not to inform people of it will deprive them of a powerful tool. And here we confront the inadequacy of language. Even to speak about links betw ~ Gabor Mate

Not everyone would see a passive public as necessarily a bad thing. There are benefits to limiting political engagement to a minority of highly committed citizens, with the majority involving itself only in elections and other major events. This elitist theory exists as as strand within Western democratic thought, with proponents arguing that modern governance is so complex that over-politicisation of issues and over-participation by the masses is an liability: it would add an irrational element to governance that could undermine democracy. Sustainable democracy instead requires a fairly passive mass, such that most matters are debated and settled within the political elite, at least when things are running smoothly ~ Cherian George

At worst, is not this an unjust world, full of nothing but beasts of prey, four-footed or two-footed? ~ Thomas Carlyle

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick ... When I came to him, he said to me, "Henri, here I am lying in this bed, and I don't even know how to think about being sick. My whole way of thinking about myself is in terms of action, in terms of doing things for people. My life is valuable because I've been able to do many things for many people. And suddenly, here I am, passive, and I can't do anything anymore."
As we talked I realized that he and many others were constantly thinking, "How much can I still do?" Somehow this man had learned to think about himself as a man who was worth only what he was doing. And so when he got sick, his hope seemed to rest on the idea that he might get better and return to what he had been doing. If the spirit of this man was dependent on how much he would still be able to do, what did I have to say to him? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

My dad actually taught me to box when I was, like, nine years old, because I got picked on at school all of the time. I was on a boys' hockey team, so I would get all of my aggression out there. ~ Eliza Coupe

The meaning of these lines is anything but passive for it suggests that evil can be made absurd through excess; it suggests rendering evil absurd through dwarfing its demands with the volume of your compliance, which devalues the harm. This sort of thing puts a victim into a very active position, into the position of a mental aggressor. The victory that is possible here is not a moral but an existential one. ~ Joseph Brodsky

For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands. ~ Stefan Zweig

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

You know, you have to start with hope ... you don't get anywhere in this country without hope. So it's a necessity. What Barack says is that people have to understand hope isn't just blind optimism. It isn't passive. It isn't just sitting there waiting for things to get better. Hope is the vision that you have to have. It's the inspiration that moves people into action ... There are more people engaged in this political process in this year than we've seen in my lifetime. And it is all because of hope because people believe in the possibility of something unseen. ~ Michelle Obama

Primatologists Richard Wrandham and Dale Peterson summarize... writing, 'Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression. ~ Cacilda Jetha

Freedom is never given to anybody, for the oppressor has you in domination because he plans to keep you there." And he went beyond Douglass to espouse a doctrine of passive, non-violent resistance. "Hate begets hate, violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness," King said. "Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding. ... This is a nonviolent protest. We are depending on moral and spiritual forces. ~ Robert A. Caro

The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom ... What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers. What we're talking about are core American values. ~ Rick Santorum

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 are revolutionaries for peace and freedom not violence. And we are going to fight through creativity rather than aggression. ~ Nurudeen Ushawu

When we go, go fast. Stop for nothing. Maximum aggression wins the day here. ~ James S.A. Corey

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity. ~ Lionel Shriver

Emotionally I'm an introvert but it come off as aggression ~ Kevin Gates

[These]were the legitimate acts of self-defense which had been forced upon the Irish people by English aggression... We did not initiate the war, nor were we allowed to choose the battleground. ~ Michael Collins

...experience has proved the distinction of active and passive courage. The fanatic who endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the state would tremble and fly before the face of an armed enemy. ~ Edward Gibbon

I don't think aggression works like thirst or sleep. I think aggression is more elicited by particular situations. I think it can be mitigated. ~ Steven Pinker

Without rules you can't have anything, but you don't want to just be pedantic or obsessive. The painting is finished when it's working. The overall balance is right. Balance shouldn't be confused with design. There has to be restless jostle and aggression and a bit of dynamism, not just pat-ness or settled-ness or immediate pleasing-ness. ~ Matthew Collings

Never use the passive where you can use the active. ~ George Orwell

As she uttered the words of the prayer, she glanced up at him as if he were God Himself. He watched her with growing pleasure. In front of him was kneeling the directress, being humiliated by a subordinate; in front of him a naked revolutionary was being humiliated by prayer; in front of him a praying lady was being humiliated by her nakedness.
This threefold image of degradation intoxicated him and something unexpected suddenly happened: his body revoked its passive resistance. Edward was excited!
As the directress said, 'And lead us not into temptation,' he quickly threw off all his clothes. When she said, 'Amen,' he violently lifted her off the floor and dragged her onto the couch. ~ Milan Kundera

The object of defense is preservation; and since it is easier to hold ground than to take it, defense is easier than attack. But defense has a passive purpose: preservation; and attack a positive one: conquest ... If defense is the stronger form of war, yet has a negative object, it follows that it should be used only so long as weakness compels, and be abandoned as soon as we are strong enough to pursue a positive object. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Be fueled by the opportunities of today. Do not be passive in your life. Be courageous in driving forward in this journey of life. I know people will try to push you back. I know life will challenge you to find refuge in the past. I know the present induces fear. Do not be fooled into backwards living. Be courageous enough to keep moving forward. ~ Steve Maraboli

..:A soda can unshaken, is not as intimidated and dangerous as a shaken one. So is a passive person who only dreams and does nothing to acquire his/her dreams/goals as a person who struggeles daily but continues trying anyways to see his/her dreams come true:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

Why do SEALs fight so much? I haven't made a scientific study of it, but I think a lot is owed to pent-up aggression. We're trained to go out and kill people. And then, at the same time, we're also being taught to think of ourselves as invincible bad-asses. ~ Chris Kyle

Even the term violence against women is problematic. It's a passive construction, there's no active agent (of violence) in the sentence. It's a bad thing that happens to women. It's a bad thing that happens to women, but when you look at that term 'violence against women' nobody is doing it (acts of violence) to them, it just happens, men aren't even a part of it." Jackson Katz, PHD from his Ted talk 'violence against women it's a mens issue ~ Karen Kilgariff & Georgia Hardstark

Insanity, blood-soaked death, murderous aggression, this is who the Psy were before Silence. No other race, it is said, bred more vicious, more intelligent, or more sadistic serial killers. But worse was the clawing madness that destroyed so many of them, saints and sinners alike, until it became known as the flip side to their incredible psychic gifts. ~ Nalini Singh

You can permit yourself any liberty in the opening except the luxury of a passive position. ~ Grigory Sanakoev

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. ~ Parker Palmer

You can argue that conservative values are at odds with feminist ideology, but ultimately the question has to be not only what women are we empowering, but also what are we empowering them to do. White women aren't just passive beneficiaries of racist oppression; they are active participants. ~ Mikki Kendall

The whole of nature, as has been said, is a conjugation of the verb to eat, in the active and in the passive. ~ William Ralph Inge

Society is ruled by the harsh maxim: "production for the sake of production." The decline from craftsman to worker, from an active to an increasingly passive personality, is completed by man qua consumer - an economic entity whose tastes, values, thoughts and sensibilities are engineered by bureaucratic "teams" in "think tanks." Man, standardized by machines, is reduced to a machine. ~ Murray Bookchin

Aggression means emotions. Emotions means you're gonna get off your plan and that means you'll lose the fight. ~ Wladimir Klitschko

Mother Nature's ruthless to the weak, but isn't arbitrary cruel or negative. Mother Nature saves aggression for extreme situations, and instead uses consistent leadership
to help keep things running smoothly. Mother nature doesn't rule by fear and anger, but by calm strength and assertiveness. ~ Cesar Millan

You know, I'm not sure you picked the right alias. Insomnia is too passive. I vote we change it to Velociraptor."
Ruby laughed. "Relatively small, but surprisingly ferocious?"
"Exactly. All in favor? ~ Marissa Meyer

Reading is not a passive act. It's a creative act. It's a relationship between the writer and a person the writer will probably never meet. I think it's very wrong to write in a way that leaves no room for the reader to maneuver. I don't want to get in the way. What I'd really like to do is to perform the Indian Rope Trick - go higher and higher and eventually disappear. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations. ~ Sogyal Rinpoche