Neutrality Quotes

• 

  If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

  Desmond Tutu

  Bullying, Peace, Elephants

  FaceBook post by Desmond Tutu from Jan 22, 2014

  274 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.

  Elie Wiesel

  Bystanders, Remembrance, Silence

  Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, Norway, 11 Dec. 1986

  190 Copy quote

  Show source

• Personally, I think neutral is just another way of saving your own ass at the expense of someone else's.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Thinking, Saving, Way

  J. D. Robb, Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, Maggie Shayne (2001). “Out of this World”, p.312, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• With a great moral issue involved, neutrality does not serve righteousness; for to be neutral between right and wrong is to serve wrong.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Issues, Doe, Moral

  Theodore Roosevelt (1954). “1914-1919”

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

  Elie Wiesel

  Peace, Bystanders, History

  Elie Wiesel (2011). “From the Kingdom of Memory: Reminiscences”, p.170, Schocken

  284 Copy quote

  Show source

• Language, journalism, food, sex. All is politics. Even innocent love stories are politics. ... There is no such thing as neutrality.

  Nawal El Saadawi

  Sex, Stories, Journalism

  9 Copy quote

• Neutrality, as a lasting principle, is an evidence of weakness.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Weakness, Principles, Lasting Love

  Lajos Kossuth (1852). “Kossuth in New England: A Full Account of the Hungarian Governor's Visit to Massachusetts ; with Speeches, and the Addresses that Were Made to Him ...”, p.31

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.

  Max Eastman

  People, Diversity, Favors

  Max Eastman (1951). “Enjoyment of Poetry with Anthology”

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is well to be independent also well not to be neutral.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Independent, Wells

  7 Copy quote

• Silence in the face of atrocity is not neutrality; silence in the face of atrocity is acquiescence.

  Samantha Power

  Silence, Political, Atrocities

  76 Copy quote

• When we inject people with positivity, their outlook expands. They see the big picture. When we inject them with neutrality or negativity, their peripheral vision shrinks. There is no big picture, no dots to connect.

  Barbara Fredrickson

  Positive, Positivity, People

  Barbara Fredrickson (2009). “Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the Upward Spiral That Will Change Your Life”, p.57, Harmony

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

  Desmond Tutu

  Bullying, Justice, Sides

  "The secrets of a peacemaker". Interview with Gary Younge, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2009.

  72 Copy quote

  Show source

• In every encounter we either give life or we drain it; there is no neutral exchange.

  Brennan Manning

  Life, Giving, Words Of Wisdom

  Brennan Manning (2014). “Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”, p.101, Tyndale House

  94 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw.

  George Eliot

  Saws, Merit, Abstract

  George Eliot (2016). “Middlemarch”, p.376, Xist Publishing

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• That expression "positive neutrality" is a contradiction in terms. There can be no more positive neutrality than there can be a vegetarian tiger.

  V. K. Krishna Menon

  Expression, Justice, Diversity

  35 Copy quote

• Man is always partial and is quite right to be. Even impartiality is partial.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Men, Impartiality

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook F 78, 1799.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is not a time to keep the facts from the people-to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. For, as the poet Dante once said: 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

  John F. Kennedy

  People, Panic, Facts

  Speech, Tulsa, Okla., 16 Sept. 1959 (printed in John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, ed. Allan Nevins [1960]).

  138 Copy quote

  Show source

• The heart is never neutral.

  Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury

  Heart

  11 Copy quote

• Indifference, lukewarmness, and neutrality are always attached to failure.

  John Landis Mason

  Indifference

  8 Copy quote

• Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.

  Criss Jami

  Hypocrisy, Easier

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.77, Criss Jami

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't be neutral on a moving train.

  Howard Zinn

  Moving, History, Justice

  Howard Zinn (1999). “Marx in Soho: A Play on History”, p.57, South End Press

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• A wise neuter joins with neither, but uses both as his honest interest leads him.

  William Penn

  Wise, Use, Honest

  William Penn (1782). “The Select Works of William Penn....”, p.157

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Neutral men are the devil's allies.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Democracy, Devil

  25 Copy quote

• There is no neutrality. There is only greater or lesser awareness of one's bias.

  Phyllis Rose

  Acceptance, Judging, Awareness

  10 Copy quote

• The principle of neutrality ... has increasingly become an obsolete conception, and, except under very special circumstances, it is an immoral and shortsighted conception.

  John Foster Dulles

  Commitment, Special, Principles

  28 Copy quote