Passivity Quotes

I have no intention of being a potted plant, and just getting watered every so often.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Not to decide is to decide.

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.

When Orientals are attacked, they don't hit back.

The most fatal of all neutralities is that which results not from choice, but from irresolution.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it.

Liberalism is: To let things drift if they do not affect one personally; to say as little as possible while knowing perfectly well what is wrong, to be worldly wise and play safe and seek only to avoid blame

Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the default of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell.

But the only way never to do the wrong thing is never to do anything.

They also serve who only stand and wait.

I ain't running for office. I ain't running for nothing.

I very rarely made any move to direct anything. I didn't have any faith in myself.

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

Apathy borders upon folly.

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.

Inaction saps the vigor of the mind.

In each case you settle on an act. Doing nothing at all counts as an act.

But indifference would ultimately commend itself as a devastating weapon.

I came to office with one deliberate intent: to change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society — from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation. A get-up-and-go, instead of a sit-back-and-wait-for-it Britain.

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

I believe in the philosophy of turning the other cheek.