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Quotes About Passivity

We no longer sing and dance. We don't know how to. Instead, we watch other people sing and dance on the television screen. Christmas, which was once a festival of active enjoyment, has turned into a binge of purely passive pleasures.
~ Tom Hodgkinson
Television is chewing gum for the eyes.
~ Frank Lloyd Wright
The pew is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of face-to-face fellowship. It is a symbol of lethargy and passivity in the contemporary church and has made corporate worship a spectator sport.
~ Frank Viola
So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you.
~ Franz Kafka
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
Probably I am constitutionally not lazy at all, but there was nothing for me to do.
~ Franz Kafka
Por lo tanto, tal vez sea mejor soportarlo todo con pasividad, comportarse como una simple masa, y si uno se siente arrastrado, no dejarse inducir al menor paso innecesario, contemplar a los demás con la mirada de un animal, no sentir ningún remordimiento en fin, ahogar con una sola mano el fantasma de vida que aún subsista, es decir, aumentar en lo posible la postrera calma sepulcral, y no dejar subsistir nada más.
~ Franz Kafka
Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks.
~ Ron Silver
Laziness is almost as compelling as life.
~ Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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.
~ Malcolm Gladwell
Because we so profoundly personalize success, we miss opportunities to lift others onto the top rung. We make rules that frustrate achievement. We prematurely write off people as failures. 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.
~ Malcolm Gladwell
I had thus learned to push down my feelings, to force myself to not care, to do nothing and let things happen, come what may.
~ Amy Tan
Though the passivity of woman's role weighs on me, suffocates me. Rather than wait for his pleasure, I would like to take it, to run wild. Is it that which pushes me into lesbianism? [...] Do women act thus?
~ Anais Nin
There is no doubt that the act of creation is very similar to the act of dreaming. The difference is that it includes an activity which has been difficult to analyze. It is not only the power to summon an image, but the power to compose with this image. The second faculty, the faculty of active creation, is what is missing from the use of drugs. Drugs induce passivity. Passivity, like the passivity of India induced by religion, is destructive both to human life and to art.
~ Anais Nin
Often, though, the passivity of the woman's role weighs on me, suffocates me. Rather than wait for his pleasure, I would like to take it, to run wild. Is it that which pushes me into lesbianism? It terrifies me. Do women act thus? Does June go to Henry when she wants him? Does she mount him? Does she wait for him? He guides my inexperienced hands. It is like a forest fire, to be with him. New places of my body are aroused and burnt. He is incendiary. I leave him in an unquenchable fever.
~ Anais Nin
The numbers grow as the technology and its accessibility grow. The technology by its very nature encourages more and more passive acquiescence to the graphic depictions. Passivity makes the already credulous consumer more credulous. He comes to the pornography a believer; he goes away from it a missionary.
~ Andrea Dworkin
Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.
~ John Dewey
Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing
~ Aristotle
In het algemeen wordt passiviteit te weinig als deugd erkent. Actie lijk altijd beter - want heroïscher - dan rustig afwachten en nietsdoen. Vermoedelijk komt dat ook omdat wij vrijwel allemaal neuroten zijn die de leegte willen opvullen met werk en andere activiteiten.
~ Arnon Grunberg
Passive pleasure is no pleasure at all.
~ Arthur Adamov
Ci sono quattro tipi di persone: quelli che stanno zitti e non fanno niente, quelli che parlano dello star zitti e non far niente, quelli che fanno qualcosa, e quelli che parlano del far qualcosa.
~ Arthur Bloch
In high school ethics, they went around and asked what everyone thought their classmates were qualified to do. For me, everyone said actress. But to me it was very much 'if it happens, it happens.'
~ Amanda Schull
I don't care who's playing. Even if it's my favorite artist, I'm probably not gonna go and see him.
~ Etta James
I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.
~ Kurt Cobain