Passive Obedience Quotes

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.

If workers are more insecure, that's very 'healthy' for the society, because if workers are insecure, they won't ask for wages, they won't go on strike, they won't call for benefits; they'll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that's optimal for corporations' economic health.

Universal and perpetual peace appear to me no more or less than everlasting passive obedience and non-resistance. The human flock would be fleeced or butchered by one or a few.

If all Church power vests in the clergy, then the people are practically bound to passive obedience in all matters of faith and practice; for all right of private judgment is then denied.

It's not just about a coach telling you what to do and just following it unthinkingly.

In governing the people, the leader empties their minds but fills their stomachs, weakens their wills but strengthens their bones. He always keeps them [the people] innocent of knowledge and free from desire; he sees that the clever never dare to act [against him].

If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed.

Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.

We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter.

The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience.

Christian morality (so called) has all the characters of a reaction.... In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality. It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives to a virtuous life - in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character.... It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established.

The Unconscious Civilisation There is a certain terrifying dignity to the big ideologies. With the stroke of an intellectual argument the planet is put in its place. Only the bravest or the most foolish of individuals would not become passive before such awe inspiring destinies.

If we choose to be no more than clods of clay, then we shall be used as clods of clay for braver feet to tread on.

Nothing is so sweet as to lie passive in God's hands, and know no will but His.

To rest satisfied with existing evils, as if we could do nothing, is not obedience; but neither is it obedience to imitate the actions of the apostles.

Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.

The passive master lent his hand, To the vast Soul which o'er him planned.