Passively Quotes

Passively accepting your sadness is the same as forgetting to build your own happiness. Happiness is more than a mood. It's a long-lasting state that is more accurately called well-being. ~ Deepak Chopra

Actively question what we are doing and why. Rather than passively consuming our culture's ideas and representation of gender, break them down. Reflect on why they are the way they are. Greater undestanding comes through analysis. ~ Ashley Mardell

The sweetest thing we ever had was, like, animal crackers in the pantry. I think my parents sort of passively made sure that we didn't have a lot of junk food at our disposal, and I think that helped me and all my siblings growing up with how to approach nutrition and eating right. ~ Andrew Luck

Men who shared the load at home seemed just as pressed for time as their wives, and torn between the demands of career and small children ... But the majority of men did not share the load at home. Some refused outright. Others refused more passively, often offering a loving shoulder to lean on, an understanding ear as their working wife faced the conflict they both saw as hers. ~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

Sooner or later I too may passively take the print
Of the golden age--why not? I have neither hope nor trust;
May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint,
Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust. ~ Alfred Tennyson

By his own admission, Tom is nothing like his brother. He has neither the fierce ambition nor the compulsion for risk taking. ... Will relied on aggression to anchor the world while Tom passively accepted whatever the world would give or take away. Consequently Tom won no awards, achieved no fame, ... He drifted, bending to daily pressures, never protesting when he was deprived of what he should have rightfully claimed as his own. In his sad trip downstream, Tom dulled the pain with alcohol and a few joints a day - what he called his 'friendly haze'. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I used to love the saying, 'If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.' It sounds great, right?

The only problem is that, as it turns out, it's not even remotely true.
Worse yet, it encourages people to passively wait for someone else to give them a break. Most people who do that will grow old waiting for someone to come along and recognize their genius. ~ John Hawkins

Later on, like practically everyone else in our stupid and godless society, I was to consider these two years as "my religious phase." I am glad that that now seems very funny. But it is sad that it is funny in so few cases. Because I think that practically everybody does go through such a phase, and for the majority of them, that is all that it is, a phase and nothing more. If that is so, it is their own fault: for life on this earth is not simply a series of "phases" which we more or less passively undergo. If the impulse to worship God and to adore Him in truth by the goodness and order of our own lives is nothing more than a transitory and emotional thing, that is our own fault. It is so only because we make it so, and because we take what is substantially a deep and powerful and lasting moral impetus, supernatural in its origin and in its direction, and reduce it to the level of our own weak and unstable and futile fancies and desires. ~ Thomas Merton

I think one of the reasons [Nikolai] Medtner hasn't had a chance is that his music needs very, very committed performances. If you play his works passively, the juice of his music is really not going to be extracted - it's simply not going to come out. ~ Marc-Andre Hamelin

As for the danger of alienating people with good intentions - well, one of the things that I learned from RaceFail (and also from general experience) was that people with good intentions are the ones to fear most. The overt racists are easy to deal with. You can spot them coming a mile away. But the well-intentioned people are scarier. They might not intend harm, but in most cases they haven't thought about all the racist (and other "-ist") messages they've absorbed from society. They haven't done the basic groundwork necessary to purge themselves of that passively-absorbed "-ism". So they say the most incredibly hurtful, self-absorbed, and utterly useless things, then compound the problem by getting upset when they're called on it. I liken these people to sleeper agents - they seem OK at first, but then they suddenly "activate" and stab you in the back, and then they come out of their fugue and freak because there's blood on their hands and they don't know how it got there and they refuse to accept that they're the ones who put it there, OMG, OMG. Meanwhile, you're on the floor bleeding out, unnoticed because of their histrionics.

The rage of RaceFail made many of these well-intentioned sleeper agents wake up. So while yes, I think the anger risked alienating some of them, I'm fine with that. They were always dangerous; I haven't lost anything by their alienation. The ones who wake up are a gain (or they will be, once they shift from "not causing harm" anymore ~ N.K. Jemisin

We believe that Christ is going to come again. But do not think that the Lord Jesus will automatically come if we sit and passively wait. No, there is a work which the church must do. As the Body of Christ, we must learn to work together with God. We should never think that it is enough just to be saved. It is not. We must be concerned with God's need. (CWWN, vol. 34, "The Glorious Church," pp. 61, 63-64) ~ Witness Lee

An age of expansion really did begin, but the phenomenon was of an expanding world, not, as some historians say, of European expansion. The world did not simply wait passively for European outreach to transform it as if touched by a magic wand. Other societies were already working magic of their own, turning states into empires and cultures into civilizations. Some of the most dynamic and rapidly expanding societies of the fifteenth century were in the Americas, southwest and northern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. ~ Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

They were herded passively into the gas chambers. Weary of being hunted and persecuted, of living in constant fear, they dumbly awaited the hand of the sure physician, Death. For them life had lost all meaning and purpose. To prolong it would merely have prolonged their suffering. ~ Miklos Nyiszli

We can passively take our place in the negative chain, accepting the harm to ourselves and passing it on to others. Or we can break the chain and turn the energy of a destructive emotion into a constructive action. ~ Laura Archera Huxley

The mortal experience ... is not like a college course which we can passively audit. Instead, we are taking life's course for credit and there are no summers off - not even semester breaks. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

We are on a perilous margin when we begin to look passively at our future selves, and see our own figures led with dull consent into insipid misdoing and shabby achievement. ~ George Eliot

Psychosynthesis is a method of psychological development and self realization for those who refuse to remain the slave of their own inner phantasms or of external influences, who refuse to submit passively to the play of psychological forces which is going on within them, and who are determined to become the master of their own lives. ~ Roberto Assagioli

There's a difference between listening passively and listening aggressively. To listen with your heart, you have to listen actively. ~ John C. Maxwell

The most dangerous action a woman can take when faced with a criminal is to resist with her fists: That tends to annoy violent criminals, and the woman will very likely be seriously injured. But a woman who takes the advice of Handgun Control Inc. and passively submits is 2.5 times more likely to be injured than a woman who resists with a gun. So if you don't want to lie back and enjoy it, get a gun. Otherwise you may never become a mom. ~ Ann Coulter

No one who passively endures an injustice against himself has the material in him to struggle for the rights of others. The one who patiently forbears becomes an accessory to the injustice done to others. He who resists the injustice which he himself meets can open up the way to a higher right for others. ~ Ellen Key

I would just hear piano players and I would hear music, and just think - I don't just want to sit here and passively listen; I want to get inside it. ~ Hugh Laurie

I hate the indifferent. I believe that living means taking sides. Those who really live cannot help being a citizen and a partisan. Indifference and apathy are parasitism, perversion, not life. That is why I hate the indifferent.

The indifference is the deadweight of history. The indifference operates with great power on history. The indifference operates passively, but it operates. It is fate, that which cannot be counted on. It twists programs and ruins the best-conceived plans. It is the raw material that ruins intelligence. That what happens, the evil that weighs upon all, happens because the human mass abdicates to their will; allows laws to be promulgated that only the revolt could nullify, and leaves men that only a mutiny will be able to overthrow to achieve the power. The mass ignores because it is careless and then it seems like it is the product of fate that runs over everything and everyone: the one who consents as well as the one who dissents; the one who knew as well as the one who didn't know; the active as well as the indifferent. Some whimper piously, others curse obscenely, but nobody, or very few ask themselves: If I had tried to impose my will, would this have happened?

I also hate the indifferent because of that: because their whimpering of eternally innocent ones annoys me. I make each one liable: how they have tackled with the task that life has given and gives them every day, what have they done, and especially, what they have not ~ Antonio Gramsci

Immediately after his re-election [Cameron] announced: "For too long we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens so long as you obey the law we will leave you alone." A statement so far to the right that it conceded the political centre ground to Judge Dredd. ~ Frankie Boyle

Evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of any relationship is your responsibility. You do not have to passively accept what is brought to you. You can choose. ~ Deborah Day

People resist exploitation. They resist as actively as they can, as passively as they must. ~ Immanuel Wallerstein

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think. ~ Michel Foucault

The student is to read history actively not passively. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sketching in general - anywhere, not just in Gitmo, but in life, in the world - is a profoundly disruptive act. Because you're creating something when you're kind of expected to consume or sit passively. I've always sketched things as a way to get into them, whether it was a fancy nightclub or, you know, to have kids think I was cool, whatever. ~ Molly Crabapple

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Acting requires a creative and compassionate attitude. It must aim to lift life up to a higher level of meaning and not tear it down or demean it. The actor's search is a generous quest for that larger meaning. That's why acting is never to be done passively. ~ Stella Adler

Whenever you're called on to make up your mind,
and you're hampered by not having any,
the best way to solve the dilemma, you'll find,
is simply by spinning a penny.
No - not so that chance shall decide the affair
while you're passively standing there moping;
but the moment the penny is up in the air,
you suddenly know what you're hoping. ~ Piet Hein

Uncontrolled, the hunger and thirst after God may become an obstacle, cutting off the soul from what it desires. If a man would travel far along the mystic road, he must learn to desire God intensely but in stillness, passively and yet with all his heart and mind and strength. ~ Aldous Huxley

The real is near, you do not have to seek it; and a man who seeks truth will never find it. Truth is in what is - and that is the beauty of it. But the moment you conceive it, the moment you seek it, you begin to struggle; and a man who struggles cannot understand. That is why we have to be still, observant, passively aware. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

When I became a poet, the Korean literary world expected women poets to sing passively of love. Naturally, this was not written anywhere, but this rule existed nonetheless. Consequently, I received plenty of serious criticism. ~ Kim Hyesoon

Wisdom is not in a book, it has no secret source. You will find the real very near; it is in yourself. But to discover it there must be the activity of constant alertness. When thought is passively aware, watching and following, then the map of self-knowledge unfolds itself. Self-knowledge is not by the study of the self in isolation, for there is no isolation. To live is to be related, and isolation is merely escape. If thought is alertly passive, watching its own movements and flutters, then when sleep comes the conscious mind is capable of receiving the hints and intimations of the hidden consciousness. He who desires to discover the real, the eternal, must put aside every book, every system, every guru, for that which is can be uncovered only through self-knowledge.
From: Fifth Talk in Madras ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You're my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn't believe it, and it wasn't true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how "your sisters" never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet p ~ Bret Easton Ellis

What we call the xenosphere, the psychic link that you are all able to exploit, is made up of strands of alien fungi-like filaments and neurotransmitters. We call the xenoform ascomycetes xenosphericus. It is everywhere, in every environment on Earth. These delicate filaments are too small for the naked eye to see, and they are fragile, but they form multiple links with the natural fungi on human skin. They have an affinity for nerve endings and quickly access the central nervous system. Everybody linked to this network of xenoforms, this xenosphere is uploading information constantly, passively, without knowing. There is a global store of information in the very atmosphere, a worldmind, which only people like you can access. ~ Tade Thompson

We were taught never to give up, never to passively accept fate, but to exhaust every last ounce of will and hope in the face of any challenge. ~ Edward Kennedy

he sees a place where he will passively fade away, like wallpaper that gets too much sunlight and slowly loses its color. This ~ Joe Hill

To find out what happens to a system when you interfere with it you have to interfere with it (not just passively observe it). ~ George E.P. Box

I don't want to be expected to fall in passively someone else's plans for me. That's what I don't want. I don't want it assumed that I simply don't have any personal goals or wishes of my own. Or any basic competence of my own. That's what I don't want! ~ Nora Roberts

A change of heart or of values without a practice is only another pointless luxury of a passively consumptive way of life. ~ Wendell Berry

People who soar are those who refuse to sit back, sigh and wish things would change. They neither complain of their lot nor passively dream of some distant ship coming in. Rather, they visualize in their minds that they are not quitters; they will not allow life's circumstances to push them down and hold them under. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

The few remaining men can exist out their puny days dropped out on drugs or
strutting around in drag or passively watching the high-powered female in action,
fulfilling themselves as spectators, vicarious liver*, or breeding in the cow pasture
with the toadies, or they can go off to the nearest friendly suicide center where
they will be quietly, quickly, and painlessly gassed to death.
Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines,
the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim,
obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience
to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have
now of men, not only not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their
ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of
females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading
the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least
miserable when his dogginess is recognized – no unrealistic emotional demands are
made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men
want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the
filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed.
The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against ~ Valerie Solanas

Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. But if I do have to draw such circles round myself, then it will be better for me to do it passively, in mere wonderment and gaping at the tremendous complex, taking home with me only the refreshment that this sight gives e contrario. ~ Franz Kafka

Now I realized that life supplies us with everything we need for the journey. Everything I had acquired either actively or passively, everything I had learned either voluntarily or by osmosis, was coming back to me as the real riches of my life, even though I had lost everything. ~ Ingrid Betancourt

But at a certain point in our lives, we cannot passively allow our upbringing to define us. We must choose it or choose other. ~ Jon Skovron

I forced myself to comply. When the media reports that a suspect in custody was killed after resisting arrest, they never tell you how hard it is to assist passively with your own kidnapping. They never talk about the discipline it takes to submit. ~ Molly Crabapple

The problem is that those of us sympathetic with the plight of indigenous people view them as quaint and colorful, but somehow reduced to margins of history as the real world [(our world)] moves on We will be known as an era in which we stood by and either actively endorsed or passively accepted the massive destruction of both biological and cultural diversity on the planet. ~ Wade Davis

If a group isn't being actively inclusive, it's being passively exclusive. This passive attitude results in lifestyle communities that do not reflect the local population. ~ Kevin A. Patterson

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And now they're coming for your Social Security money. They want your f**kin' retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. ~ George Carlin

To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action. Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. ~ Eckhart Tolle

To let oneself be carried on passively is unthinkable. ~ Virginia Woolf

We can combat existential anguish – the unbearable lightness of our being – in a variety of ways. We can choose to work, play, destroy, or create. We can allow a variety of cultural factors or other people to define who we are, or we can create a self-definition. We decide what to monitor in the environment. We regulate how much attention we pay to nature, other people, or the self. We can watch and comment upon current cultural events and worldly happenings or withdraw and ignore the external world. We can drink alcohol, dabble with recreational drugs, play videogames, or watch television, films, and sporting events. We can travel, go on nature walks, camp, fish, and hunt, climb mountains, or take whitewater-rafting trips. We can build, paint, sing, create music, write poetry, or read and write books. We can cook, barbeque, eat fine cuisine at restaurants or go on fasts. We can attend church services, worship and pray, or chose to embrace agnosticism or atheism. We can belong to charitable organizations or political parties. We can actively or passively support or oppose social and ecological causes. We can share time with family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances or live alone and eschew social intermixing. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong. ~ Heidi Postlewait

If we stand passively by while the centre of each city becomes a hive of depravation, crime and hopelessness ... if we become two people, the suburban affluent and the urban poor, each filled with mistrust and fear for the other ... then we shall effectively cripple each generation to come. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

Before I knew escape, life was something to be endured, passively. Now I hunger for it. ~ Kristin Halbrook

I often wish I could just passively watch people without being expected to participate myself, like television. ~ M.E. Thomas

Since changes are going on anyway, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed. ~ John Dewey

It is encrusted with history. Embedded within it are peculiar fragments of DNA-some derived from ancient viruses-that were inserted into the genome in the distant past and have been carried passively for millennia since then. Some of these fragments were once capable of actively "jumping" between genes and organisms, but they have now been largely inactivated and silenced. Like decommissioned traveling salesmen, these pieces are permanently tethered to our genome, unable to move or get out. These fragments are vastly more common than genes, resulting in yet another major idiosyncrasy of our genome: much of the human genome is not particularly human. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Better to wait actively than passively. ~ Stephen L. Carter

So far as we yet know, this is the only planet in the entire universe which has summoned forth life in all its brilliance and variety. To knowingly cut this flowering short is undoubtedly a crime, one more unspeakable even than the cruellest genocide or most destructive war. If each person is uniquely valuable, each species is surely more so. I can see no excuses for collaborating in such a crime. As the post-war Nuremberg trials established, ignorance is no defence; nor is merely following orders. To me the moral path lies not in passively accepting our destructive role, but in actively resisting such a horrendous fate. As ~ Mark Lynas

Life, it is true, can be grasped in all its confused futility merely by opening one's eyes and sitting passively, a spectator on the stands of history - but to understand the social processes and conflicts, the interplay between individual and group, even the physicality of human experience, we have need of small-scale models. ~ Will Self

Instead of reality being passively recorded by the brain, it is actively constructed by it. ~ David Eagleman

As it turns out, to 'become who you are' is not about finding a 'who' you have always been looking for. It is not about separating 'you' off from everything else. And it is not about existing as you truly 'are' for all time. The self does not lie passively in wait for us to discover it. Selfhood is made in the active, ongoing process, in the German verb werden, 'to become'. ~ John Kaag

The overload makes users less productive and more stressed; thus, there's a need for some solution. Passively ignoring the problem won't work, since bits are still heavy, even if we pretend not to notice. ~ Mark Hurst

The teacher "teaches" and the students "sit and listen" or learn passively. ~ Joseph Barrell

How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot? You had flung yourself into the action, filled with adventurous impulses: and then? Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records situations decided by others, who submits to whims, finds himself involved in events that elude his control. Then what use is your role as protagonist to you? If you continue lending yourself to this game, it means that you, too, are an accomplice of the general mystification. ~ Italo Calvino

No ordinary effort stops the wheel.
In sleep it spins without resistance.
Passively, falling deeper, lacking the will to activate any change. ~ Stephen Demone

But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer's feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist's love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it 'superhuman'; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity.

Maslow's importance is that he has placed these experiences of 'transcendence' at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of 'the source of power, meaning and purpose' inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called 'generalised hypertension', a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a 'passively negative' attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstrea ~ Colin Wilson

But this leaves us with a very difficult question. Is there a way to move from our worry-filled life to the life of the Spirit? Must we simply wait passively until the Spirit comes along and blows away our worries? Are there any ways by which we can prepare ourselves for the life of the Spirit and deepen that life once it has touched us? ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

Either the gods have power or they don't. If they don't,
why pray? If they do, then why not pray for something else
instead of for things to happen or not to happen? Pray not to
feel fear. Or desire, or grief. If the gods can do anything, they
can surely do that for us. - But those are things the gods left up to me.
Then isn't it better to do what's up to you - like a free man
- than to be passively controlled by what isn't, like a slave
or beggar? And what makes you think the gods don't care
about what's up to us?
Start praying like this and you'll see.
Not "some way to sleep with her" - but a way to stop
wanting to.
Not "some way to get rid of him" - but a way to stop
trying.
Not "some way to save my child" - but a way to lose your
fear.
Redirect your prayers like that, and watch what happens. ~ Marcus Aurelius

A friend in the true sense is not a person who passively nods approval of our conduct or ignores improper behavior. A friend is a person who cares. ~ Marvin J. Ashton

In bed she was affectionate and even frolicsome - the previous night she had climbed over him with the grace of a sportive seal, scattering kisses over his chest and shoulders. He had not expected that of her, having known beautiful women in the past who invariably lay back passively to be worshiped. Instead, Annabelle had teased and caressed him ... ~ Lisa Kleypas

Our flesh is like silly putty that distorts when it is ignored. We are constantly obliged to actively participate in its formation, or else it will droop of its own weight and plasticity.
This incessant formation we cannot stop. We can only make the choice to let it go its own way - directed by genetics, gravity, appetites, habits, the accidentals of our surroundings, and so on - or the choice to let our sensory awareness penetrate its processes, to be personally present in the midst of those processes with the full measure of our subjective, internal observations and responses, and to some degree direct the course of that formation.

We do not have the option of remaining passively unchanged, and to believe for a moment in this illusion is to invite distortions and dysfunctions. Like putty, we are either shaping ourselves or we are drooping; like clay, we either keep ourselves moist and malleable or we are drying and hardening. We must do one or the other; we may not passively avoid the issue. ~ Deane Juhan

The intellectual, i n my sense of the word , is neither a pacifier nor a consensus-builder,but someone whose whole being is staked on a critical sense , a sense of being unwilling to accept easy formulas,or ready-made cliches, or the smooth, ever-so accommodating confirmations of what the powerful or conventional have to say, and what they do. Not just passively unwillingly, but actively willing to say so in public. This is not always a matter of being a critic of government policy, but rather of thinking of the intellectual vocation as maintaining a state of constant alertness, of a perpetual willingness not to let half-truths or received ideas steer one along. That this involves a steady realism, an almost athletic rational energy, and a complicated struggle to balance the problems of one's own selfhood against the demands of publishing and speaking out in the public sphere is what makes it an everlasting effort, constitutively unfinished and necessarily imperfect. Yet its invigorations and complexities, for me at least, make one the richer for it, even though it doesn't make one particularly popular. ~ Edward W. Said

We really know time, says Heidegger, because we know we are going to die. Without this passionate realization of our mortality, time would be simply a movement of the clock that we watch passively, calculating its advance - a movement devoid of human meaning. ~ William Barrett

Are we, intellectual sirs, not actively or passively 'producing' more and more words, more books, more articles, ceaselessly refilling the pot-boiler of speech, gorging ourselves on it rather, seizing books and 'experiences', to metamorphose them as quickly as possible into other words, plugging us in here, being plugged in there, just like Mina on her blue squared oilcloth, extending the market and the trade in words of course, but also multiplying the chances of jouissance, scraping up intensities wherever possible, and never being sufficiently dead, for we too are required to go from forty to the hundred a day, and we will never play the whore enough, we will never be dead enough ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

The "dangerous class," the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue. ~ Friedrich Engels

Not actively surviving is passively dying. ~ Ori Hofmekler

Americans of good-will, the nice decent church people, the well-meaning liberals, the good hearted souls who themselves wouldn't lynch anyone, must begin to realize that they have to be more than passively good-hearted, more than church goingly Christian, and much more than word-of-mouth in the liberalism. ~ Langston Hughes

Whatever the anxiety is based upon, one of the best ways to minimize the anxiety of change - or any other anxiety - is to actively participate in the process of that change, i.e., to do something." She declared it is necessary to become actively involved in the change rather than passively accepting and accommodating it.7 By ~ Phyllis Povell

I'm going to possess you, Charlotte,"
His free hand caressed the flesh of her throat, then threaded into the hair at her nape, pulling the strands there, tipping her head back. Not harshly, but not gently either. "I;m going to take you and claim you and make you beg."
His lips were breaths from hers. Breaths she couldn't count or take.
"The question is, will you passively accept such, or will you possess me right back," he whispered, nearly against her lips. "Take me, claim me? Make me beg? Push from my mind any though that isn't you? ~ Anne Mallory

The sun of quality does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not subordinate to them in any way. It has CREATED them. They are subordinate to IT. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

An active engagement with written material through reflective thought gained by reading and writing leads to intellectual growth. A person whom fails to read and write will experience mental stagnation. Failure to cultivate ideas by exposing oneself to written material limits a person's resources to what they see and hear. Passively reviewing external stimuli might lull a person into believing that they are actively thinking and growing. The more external stimuli a person exposes themselves to, the less time that is available for pursing mental, emotional, and spiritual growth. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Invest in low-turnover, passively managed index funds ... and stay away from profit-driven investment management organizations ... The mutual fund industry is a colossal failure ... resulting from its systematic exploitation of individual investors ... as funds extract enormous sums from investors in exchange for providing a shocking disservice ... Excessive management fees take their toll, and manager profits dominate fiduciary responsibility. ~ David F. Swensen

Human beings have a deeply ingrained habit of passivity, which is strengthened by the relatively long period that we spend under the control of parents and schoolmasters. Moments of intensity are also moments of power and control; yet we have so little understanding of this that we wait passively for some chance to galvanize the muscle that created the intensity.

But whether you use the negative methods of relaxation (which is fundamentally 'transcendental meditation') or the positive method of intense alertness and concentration, the result is the same: a realization of the enormous vistas of reality that lie outside our normal range of awareness. You recognize that the chief obstacle to such awareness is that we don't need it to get through an ordinary working day. I can make do fairly well with a narrow awareness and a moderate mount of vital energy. I have 'peak experiences' when I occasionally develop more awareness and more energy than I need for the task in hand; then I 'overflow', and realize, for a dazzled moment, what a fascinating universe I actually inhabit. It is significant that Maslow's 'peakers' were not daydreaming romantics, but healthy, practical people... ~ Colin Wilson

We all have different desires and needs, but if we don't discover what we want from ourselves and what we stand for, we will live passively and unfulfilled. ~ Bill Watterson

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. ~ James Weldon Johnson

I believe the difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. ~ Michael Gerber

Almost equally complete omission of the small distractions that fill the greater part of human lives. Reading the papers; looking into shops; exchanging gossip; with all the varieties of day-dreaming , from lying in bed, imagining what one would do if one had the right lover, income, face, social position, to sitting at the picture palace passively accepting ready-made day-dreams from Hollywood. ~ Aldous Huxley

So too, in forming a constitution, or in enacting rules of procedure, or making canons, the people do not merely passively assent, but actively cooperate. They have, in all these matters, the same authority as the clergy. ~ Charles Hodge

The practices that once fed my soul feed it no more. John of the Cross, writing from his prison cell, says in the dark night the soul is pained but not hopeless. God's love is not content to leave us in our weakness, and for this reason he takes us into a dark night. He weans us from all of the pleasures by giving us dry times and inward darkness ... No soul will ever grow deep in the spiritual life unless God works passively in that soul by means of the dark night. ~ John Ortberg

There's probably no better example of the throttling of creativity than the difference between what we observe in a kindergarten classroom and what we observe in a high school classroom," she writes in Teach Your Children Well. "Take a room full of five-year-olds and you will see creativity in all its forms positively flowing around the room. A decade later you will see these same children passively sitting at their desks, half asleep or trying to decipher what will be on the next test. ~ Madeline Levine

Most people will passively do exactly what they did last year.Whatever you do, don't let that person be you. ~ Richie Norton

The way you choose to cope with stress can change not only how you feel, but also how it transforms the brain. If you react passively or if there is simply no way out, stress can become damaging. ~ John J. Ratey

But there also seems to be in our culture a curious cautiousness - "You'll get these abundant gratifications only if you don't feel too much, don't let on you want too much." The result is that, instead of conquering the world like Horatio Alger, we should wait passively until the genie of technology - which we don't push or influence, only await - brings us our appointed gratifications. All of this is a part of the rewards which go with belief in the vast myth of the machine in the twentieth century. ~ Rollo May

Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit that bears things - with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope. ~ Corazon Aquino

As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively - especially when they are well-designed. ~ John Maeda

I'm such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don't know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good.

I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down!

I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it.

I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me.

Nature is horrible. It's not cute and loveable. It's kill or be killed. It's very ~ Robert Crumb