{"quotes":[{"text":"Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.","author":"Yukio Mishima","tags":["acceptance","elegance","inaction","indifference","japan","passivity","refinement"],"id":32920,"author_id":"Yukio+Mishima"},{"text":"He suffered from an unlucky faculty—common to many men, especially Russians—the faculty of seeing and believing in the possibility of good and truth, and at the same time seeing too clearly the evil and falsity of life to be capable of taking a serious part in it.","author":"Leo Tolstoy","tags":["evil","good","life","passivity"],"id":36027,"author_id":"Leo+Tolstoy"},{"text":"Do not let your boss, your spouse, your kids, your neighbors, or anyone push you around or walk all over you. This does not mean you need to be a butt-hole - but you may need to draw some clear lines for the people in your life. Want to do it right? Communicate expectations clearly, and consistently. People cannot treat you the way you want them to treat you unless you tell them HOW to treat you.","author":"Josh Hatcher","tags":["boundaries","confidence","manhood","passivity","relationships","self-respect"],"id":40707,"author_id":"Josh+Hatcher"},{"text":"In sum, then a conservative tech writer offers a really attractive way of looking at viewer passivity and TV's institutionalization of irony, narcissism, nihilism, stasis. It's not our fault! It's outmoded technology's fault! If TV-dissemination were up to date, it would be impossible for it to 'institutionalize' anything through its demonic 'mass psychology'! Let's let Joe B., the little lonely guy, be his own manipulator or video-bits! Once all experience is finally reduced to marketable image, once the receiving user of user-friendly receivers can choose freely, Americanly, from an Americanly infinite variety of moving images hardly distinguishable from real-life images, and can then choose further just how he wishes to store, enhance, edit, recombine, and present those images to himself, in the privacy of his very own home and skull, TV's ironic, totalitarian grip on the American psychic cajones will be broken!'E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction' (The Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993).","author":"David Foster Wallace","tags":["irony","passivity","tv"],"id":42508,"author_id":"David+Foster+Wallace"},{"text":"Feelings are great, and they have a purpose, but it’s certainly not to guide your life. Whoever said, “Follow your heart” was a fool. Your “heart” is your emotional center. Emotions have a great purpose - to allow us to enjoy life, to mourn loss, to have a tangible way to experience love - but feelings are fickle, and they are not meant to be the guiding force in our life.","author":"Josh Hatcher","tags":["emotion","emotions","feelings","fickle","guidance","guiding","love","manhood","mourning","passivity"],"id":79861,"author_id":"Josh+Hatcher"},{"text":"If we are quiet enough, we can hear it: the space between us filling up fast with all the things we are too afraid to say to each other.","author":"Julian Aguon","tags":["fear","passivity","silence"],"id":89600,"author_id":"Julian+Aguon"},{"text":"Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.","author":"Tom Robbins","tags":["anarchy","cuba","government","passivity","revolution"],"id":102963,"author_id":"Tom+Robbins"},{"text":"The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.","author":"Robert Greene","tags":["activity","conventionalism","creativity","passivity"],"id":111340,"author_id":"Robert+Greene"},{"text":"Your daily output is directly proportional to your daily thoughts while your activity or passivity remains as a constant. You get what you think to do provided you do it!","author":"Israelmore Ayivor","tags":["constant","daily","direct","direct-proportion","directly-proportional","every-day","everyday","food-for-thought","get-it","israelmore-ayivor","output","passive","passivity","positive","positive-thinking","proportion","proportional","remain","think","think-positive","thoughts"],"id":150515,"author_id":"Israelmore+Ayivor"},{"text":"I would rather have strong enemies than a world of passive individualists. In a world of passive individualists nothing seems worth anything simply because nobody stands for anything. That world has no convictions, no victories, no unions, no heroism, no absolutes, no heartbeat. That world has rigor mortis.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["absolutes","beliefs","convictions","dead-world","heartbeat","individualism","man","meaninglessness","open-mindedness","passivity","rigor-mortis","robot-world","unions","world","zealot"],"id":154863,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":38,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}