Bystander Quotes & Sayings

The honest and good man ought to be exactly like a man who smells strong, so that the bystander as soon as he comes near him must smell whether he choose or not. — Marcus Aurelius

In these days before antiseptics, doctors themselves also suffered high mortality rates. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War (1853-1856), watched one particularly inept surgeon cut both himself and, somehow, a bystander while blundering about during an amputation. Both men contracted an infection and died, as did the patient. Nightingale commented that it was the only surgery she'd ever seen with 300 percent mortality. — Sam Kean

Don't sit back and be a bystander of your own life — Caprice Crane

Manipulating or controlling others through the use of one's illness or suffering,for example,was-and remains-extremely effective for people who find they cannot be direct in their interactions,Who argues with someone who is in pain? And if pain is the only power a person has,health is not an attractive replacement. It was apparent to me that becoming healthy represented more than just getting over an illness. Health represented a complex progression into a state of personal empowerment in which one had to move from a condition of vulnerability to one of invincibility,from victim to victor,from silent bystander to aggressive defender of personal boundaries. Completing this race to the finish was a yeoman's task if ever there was one.Indeed,in opening the psyche and soul to the healing process,we had expanded the journey of wellness into one of personal transformation.
- — Caroline Myss

Captain Crawford didn't like the idea of any kind of murder, but he went at it patiently and honestly and with none of the stupidity and bombast and rubber-hose techniques that Los Angeles crime fiction writers had led me to expect. I'd gotten the impression that unless a gifted amateur in love with the lady got himself almost beaten to a pulp and practically inside the lethal gas chamber before he unmasked the venal and brutalized constabulary, any innocent bystander they could get their hands on was a gone duck. — Leslie Ford

Come on, Kittycat, don't be a bystander. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

In any great narrative, there is a moment when a character must decide to become more than a bystander. — Jeff Goins

Dick Simnel smiled the expansive smile of a man who really, really wants to talk about his wonderful pet project and is now keen to illuminate every bystander to the point of boredom, and in the worst cases suicide. Moist recognized the type; they were invariably useful and in themselves amiable and quite without malice of any sort, but nevertheless they were implicitly dangerous. — Terry Pratchett

[we] read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our own conduct. — William James

Be an active bystander because sooner or later you or someone you love could be a victim too. — Shahla Khan

I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction ... I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me. — Emma Cline

It is not open to the cool bystander ... to set himself up as an impartial judge of events which would never have occurred had he outstretched a helping hand in time. — Winston Churchill

I don't want to be 'the magician'; I want to be an innocent bystander along with the magical moment. — Michael Carbonaro

You did the right thing." "Yes, I did." He stroked her cheek with his thumb. "But with you, Arabella Anne Westfall, I have done everything wrong, from the moment we met, at nearly every turn. I have been arrogant and overly confident and short-tempered and deeply, insatiably lustful"-a bystander gasped-"and afraid of this between us. I was everything that must have been abhorrent to you when all you wished was to find your prince charming. Instead you ended up with a blind, surly, autocratic fool. If I could turn back time, if I could so what I should have done-" "Before I fell in love with you?" "-b-before I stole your virtue." His brow cut down. "By God, woman, you will always say what I least expect, won't you?"

-Arabella & Luc — Katharine Ashe

I don't consider myself to be a crusader of any sort. I was bystander to a certain number of newspaper crusades. They end badly, in terms of being either fraudulent or by inspiring legislations that makes things worse. So, I regard myself as someone coming to the campfire with the truest possible narrative he can acquire. — David Simon

In our Mechanics' Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter's planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,
rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it. — Curtis Sittenfeld

After a few short years (fifteen, to be exact - brief by his count, interminable by hers), surrounded by all this vegetative rampancy, she was feeling increasingly unsure of herself. She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. As a novelist she needed this. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness.
But here, on the sparsely populated island, human culture barely existed and then only as the
thinnest veneer. — Ruth Ozeki

At its core, black theology is predicated on the assertion that God has a unique relationship with African Americans. God is not a passive bystander in human history but rather an active participant in the struggles of oppressed and dispossessed people. — Melissa V. Harris-Perry

And more and more studies and reports were coming out demonstrating that the real initiators of damage in the arteries were oxidation and inflammation, with cholesterol more or less in the role of innocent bystander. Oxidation and inflammation, along with sugar and stress (more on that in chapters 4 and 8), were clearly what aged the human body the most. — Jonny Bowden

Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions. — Dorothea Lange

you do not want to manipulate or control your breath in any way. It can be performed standing, sitting, or while lying down. You will be successful whether you observe one breath or twenty. This is about awareness, not manipulation. Do not try to change your breath. Let it be what it is in that moment. All you have to do is observe your breath as if you were a bystander watching someone else breathe. Notice — K. Kris Loomis

The objection to profit is as if a bystander, observing the planter digging his crop, should say: "You put in only one potato and you are taking out a dozen. You must have taken them away from someone else; those extra potatoes cannot be yours by right." If profit is denounced, it must be assumed that running at a loss is admirable. On the contrary, that is what requires justification. Profit is self-justifying. — Isabel Paterson

She tilted her head to the right. "You didn't even tell me you had taken the case."
"I had done what? Oh, I see what you mean. Well, I hadn't and haven't. My getting shot ought to prove I was an innocent bystander."
"Does it hurt much?"
"It itches. I forgot to have the dressing changed this afternoon."
"Wasn't Nora utterly terrified?"
"So was I and so was the guy that shot me. There's Halsey. I haven't spoken to him yet. — Dashiell Hammett

There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House. — Michael Eric Dyson

I'm out of the equation, an innocent bystander at the major love affair Joan is having with Joan — Francine Prose

I wasn't an activist then. I would become one eventually, but at that time I did not yet see myself as an organizer or a leader, I saw myself as a foot soldier in the movement and as an active participant - not a bystander or observer - in a particular and extraordinary moment in history. I think that all of my friends felt some degree of obligation to at least show up, be counted, and stand with our brothers and sisters and to be as fierce and fabulous and free as possible — Cleve Jones

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes. — Thomas Paine

One only wishes Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander's last meal. — Stephen King

I live for those rare and delicious moments when the words on the page take off and I am the bystander, watching as the tale shows me what will happen next. — Robert Reed

The terrors of the child are quite reasonable, and add to his loveliness; for his utter ignorance and weakness, and his enchanting indignation on such a small basis of capital compel every bystander to take his part. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm not sure what I feel. All I know is that I'm tired of being the innocent bystander who gets punched in the gut. It's their fight - Mom and Dad's. But how come Heath and I are the ones who end up bruised?" He rearranged one of my braids and wound the loose tail around the tip of his index finger. "Because everything we do in life affects someone else. Buddhists say that inside and outside are basically the same thing. It's like we're all trapped together in a small room. If someone pisses in the corner, we all have to worry about it trickling across the floor and getting our shoes wet. — Jenn Bennett

These weren't encouraged in the city, since the heft and throw of a longbow's arrow could send it through an innocent bystander a hundred yards away instead of the innocent bystander at whom it was aimed. — Terry Pratchett

At one point in the story, following a brazen daytime bank robbery, Electro is shown escaping from the authorities by climbing up the side of a building, as easily as Spider-Man . . . we see one observer exclaim, "Look!! That strangely-garbed man is racing up the side of the building!" A second man on the street picks up the narrative: "He's holding on to the iron beams in the building by means of electric rays - using them like a magnet!! Incredible!"

There are three feelings inspired by this scene. The first is wonder as to why people rarely use the phrase "strangely-garbed" anymore. The second is nostalgia for the bygone era when pedestrians would routinely narrate events occurring in front of them, providing exposition for any casual bystander. And the third is pleasure at the realization that Electro's climbing this building is actually a physically plausible use of his powers. — James Kakalios

I could've just walked away but I never could have forgiven myself to allow Starbucks to drift into mediocrity or not be relevant. I just couldn't be a bystander. — Howard Schultz

How then shall mathematical concepts be judged? They shall not be judged. Mathematics is the supreme arbiter. From its decisions there is no appeal. We cannot change the rules of the game, we cannot ascertain whether the game is fair. We can only study the player at his game; not, however, with the detached attitude of a bystander, for we are watching our own minds at play. — David Van Dantzig

Oh,and the hunk wasn't hard on the eyes, either." Grinning, she gave an obvious and deliberate shudder. "The real physical type.I thought he was going to punch that idiot Tarmack right in the face. Was kinda hoping he would. Anyway,the pair of you made a great team."
"I suppose."
"So,what about those smoldering looks?"
"What smoldering looks?"
"Get out." Mo cheerfully wiggled her eyebrows. "I got singed and I was only an innocent bystander. The guy looks at you like you were the last candy bar on the shelf and he'd die without a chocolate fix."
"That's a ridiculous analogy, and you're imagining things."
"He was going to pound Tarmack into dust for dissing you.Man, I just wanted to melt when he hauled the guy up by the collar.Too romantic. — Nora Roberts

Do you see what we've got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He's actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won't quit until it's all cleansed. God himself is Fire! — Eugene H. Peterson

Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. — Yehuda Bauer

I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement. — Alice Sebold

Yes, the investor is often his own worst enemy. Yes, the marketing colossus known as the mutual fund industry provides the weaponry which enables investors' to indulge their suicidal instincts. No, the fund industry was hardly an innocent bystander in the market boom and the subsequent carnage. "We have met the enemy and he is us" ... all of us. — John C. Bogle

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander. — Elie Wiesel

The man who could withstand, with his fellow-men in single line, a charge of cavalry may lose all command of himself on the occurrence of a fire in his own house, because of some homely reminiscence unknown to the observing bystander. — Arthur Helps

the "attackers" - forming such a slick, seductive narrative that the average citizen - the "victim" - was almost an afterthought. "Bystander A" was glimpsed only in passing. — No One

But, in an "Islamophobic" West, the new ground rules were quickly established: Islam trumped feminism, trumped homosexuality, trumped everything. In speeches around the globe, the 44th President of the United States affected a cool equidistance between his national interests and those of others. He was less "the leader of the Free World" than the Bystander-in-Chief, and thus the perfect emblem of a western world content to be spectators in their own fate. — Mark Steyn

You can either be a bystander who lives his life in reaction to the decisions that others make, or you can be the leader who is making those decisions. — Gabrielle Zevin

It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. It is tempting to say that a Nazi murderer is beyond the pale of understanding ... Yet to deny a human being his human character is to render ethics impossible.
To yield to this temptation, to find other people inhuman, is to take a step toward, not away from, the Nazi position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history. — Timothy Snyder

I didn't want to get into acting just to play bystanders. I feel a bystander enough in my own life. And I do think that theatre can contribute to a certain analysis and commentary on our own world. — Elliot Cowan

There are generally three parties to child abuse: the abused, the abuser and the bystander. — Louise Penny

Those men and women of Yangzhou died a hundred years ago, Tian Haoli, and nothing can be done to change that. But the past lives on in the form of memories, and those in power are always going to want to erase and silence the past, to bury the ghosts. Now that you know about the past, you're no longer an innocent bystander. If you do not act you are complicit with the Emperor and his Blood Drops in this new act of violence, this deed of erasure. Like Wang Xiuchu, you're now a witness. Like him, you must choose what to do. You must decide if, on the day you die, you will regret your choice. — Ken Liu

She missed the built environment of New York City. It was only in an urban landscape, amid straight lines and architecture, that she could situate herself in human time and history. She missed people. She missed human intrigue, drama and power struggles. She needed her own species, not to talk to, necessarily, but just to be among, as a bystander in a crowd or an anonymous witness. — Ruth Ozeki

...A man's religion and love life were nobody else's concern so long as neither of them gouged out some innocent bystander's eyes. — Douglas C. Jones

Violence between the combatants may be called war; violence by the bystander against the combatants may be called law. The Leviathan theory, in a nutshell, is that law is better than war. — Steven Pinker

It's the way some men say, "I'm not the problem" or that they shifted the conversation from actual corpses and victims as well as perpetrators to protecting the comfort level of bystander males. An exasperated woman remarked to me, "What do they want - a cookie for not hitting, raping, or threatening women?" Women are afraid of being raped and murdered all the time and sometimes that's more important to talk about than protecting male comfort levels. Or — Rebecca Solnit

the "bystander effect": the more people around to provide help, the less likely one is to receive help. Dad hypothesized that this didn't apply to black people, a loving race whose very survival has been dependent on helping one another in times of need. So he made me stand on the busiest intersection in the neighborhood, dollar bills bursting from my pockets, the latest and shiniest electronic gadgetry jammed into my ear canals, a hip-hop heavy gold chain hanging from my neck, and, inexplicably, a set of custom-made carpeted Honda Civic floor mats draped over my forearm like a waiter's towel, and as tears streamed from my eyes, my own father mugged me. He — Paul Beatty

help us to live with more confidence that Jesus is the Good Shepherd, not a consulting partner; a very present Lord, not an absentee landlord; the reigning King, not an impotent bystander. — Scotty Smith

When she scooped up her clothes, opened his door, then snapped her fingers for a guard down the hall, Wroth watched like a bystander.
"Pssst. Minion. I need these laundered. Very little starch. Don't just stand there gawking or you'll anger my good frenemy General Wroth. We're like this."
He couldn't see her but knew she was twining two fingers together. — Kresley Cole

To a bystander like me, those who made 190 million pounds deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS, in spite of its very strong capital base, and drove it into the bosom of Lloyds TSB Bank, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers. — John Sentamu

In a way, I'm kind of a bystander looking at this phenomenon that is ABBA, which is still around, and that I thought would be finished in 1981 and forgotten. I'm amazed how this could happen, and I don't know why it happened. I'm just grateful and humble. I just sit back and enjoy. — Bjorn Ulvaeus

On inspection it turned out to be a tiny toad, a quarter of an inch long, hopping mightily after an escaping millipede, itself no bigger than a thread, both going for all they were worth until they disappeared in the grass. Then a wolf spider, stratling in size and hairiness, streaked over the gravel, either chasing something smaller or being chased by something bigger, I couldn't tell which. I reckoned there must be a million minor dramas playing out around the place without ceasing. Oh, but they were hardly minor to the chaser and the chasee who were dealing in the coin of life and death. I was a mere bystander, an idler. They were playing for keeps. — Jacqueline Kelly

Sometimes the spirit is playing you. I call it following the will of the music, and when that feeling shows up, you just go with it. It's almost like I'm a bystander. I'm watching this happening, and it's not a mental process. It's just spontaneous. — Charlie Musselwhite

What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering. — Jeffrey Kluger

Peanut butter, or turkey?"
"Turkey. Soft on the mayo, extra mustard."
Rick lifted an eyebrow at her. "Do I look like a cook?"
"You do until Vilseau comes back. Because anything beyond microwave pizza is your territory, sweetheart."
With a grin he began slathering mustard on one of the slices of bread. "Wonderful. So now I have to negotiate a multimillion-dollar deal and cook? Do you want tomatoes?"
"Hell, yes, my darlin'."
"Ahem. Innocent bystander trying not to barf over here." Stoney waved a hand at them from the doorway. "What's the gig?"
"Food first. Do you want Rick to make you a sandwich?"
"Hey," Rick protested. — Suzanne Enoch

I come from a people who gave the Ten Commandments to the world. Time has come to strenghten them by three additional ones, which we ought to adopt and commit ourselves to: thou shall not be a perpetrator; thou shall not be a victim; and thou shall never, but never, be a bystander. — Yehuda Bauer

I've never had Internet access. Actually, I have looked at things on other people's computers as a bystander. A few times in my life I've opened email accounts, twice actually, but it's something I don't want in my life right now. — Jhumpa Lahiri

We can choice to cower at the river's edge, watching as life sails past us, always the bystander, never the participant. We can shade our eyes and fret about all the untold dangers below the surface. We can play and replay all the warnings we've ever heard.
Or.
Or we can equip ourselves with what we need to survive — Justina Chen

Don't be a witness. Be an activist. — DaShanne Stokes

Now that I think about it, maybe he is a werewolf. I can picture him lunging over the moors in hot pursuit of his prey, and I'm certain that he wouldn't think twice about eating an innocent bystander. I'll watch him closely at the next full moon. He's asked me to go dancing tomorrow
perhaps I should wear a high collar. Oh, that's vampires, isn't it? I think I am a little giddy. (After meeting Mr. Markham V. Reynolds, Jr.) — Mary Ann Shaffer

Do not be a perpetrator. Do not be a bystander. Do not be a victim. — Yehuda Bauer

In a city where public executions,duels, fights, magical feuds, and strange events regularly punctuated the daily round, the inhabitants had brought the profession of interested bystander to a peak of perfection. They were, to a man, highly skilled gawpers. — Terry Pratchett

To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate. — Mark Steyn

I used to wonder why God used a prop like the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil to inflict guilt on Adam&Eve, until I realized it could have been a steak or a plate of fries or a bagel. Anything. Making people feel guilty is a staple of religion and society in general. It works. And if you can transfer guilt from a real criminal to an innocent bystander, you've really got something going. It's a magic stage trick that can make a career. — Jon Rappoport

Too often Jesus Christ was not my Master but a bystander I visited with at church occasionally. — James MacDonald

It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering. — Judith Lewis Herman

Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else's toxic state. — Daniel Goleman

Hey, I'm an upstander - not a bystander! — R.J. Palacio

But if there is one dominant myth about the world, one huge mistake we all make, one blind spot, it is that we all go around assuming the world is much more of a planned place than it is. As a result, again and again we mistake cause for effect; we blame the sailing boat for the wind, or credit the bystander with causing the event. — Matt Ridley

Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,' said Carrot
'What, in Ankh-Morpork?'
'Yes, sir.'
'We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value — Terry Pratchett

Picture the lobby of a hotel. [ ... ] Now fill up the lobby with dentists and superheroes. Men and women, oral surgeons, eighth-dimensional entities, mutants, and freaks who want to save your teeth, save the world, and maybe end up with a television show, too. [ ... ] Boards in the lobby list panels on advances in cosmetic dentistry, effective strategies for minimizing liability in cases of bystander hazard, presentations with titles like Spandex or Bulletproof? What Look Is Right For You? — Kelly Link

A terrified-looking bystander, a nerdy man in a sweater, calls the police and stammers into the phone: 'A huge group of people are fighting and there's pepper spray and superheroes and I don't know. — Jon Ronson

The proponents of UFOs offer up impressive quantities of principally eyewitness data, which although largely subjective and circumstantial in nature, is nevertheless quite intriguing ... Many of the high-quality sighting reports involve certain objective aspects, which, to an open-minded bystander, are quite impressive. — Peter Davenport

It's the way some med say, "I'm not the problem" or that they shifted the conversation from actual corpses and victims as well as perpetrators to protecting the comfort level of bystander males. An exasperated woman remarked to me, "What do they want--a cookie for not hitting, raping, or threatening women? — Rebecca Solnit

But witnesses incur responsibilities, as anyone who has ever seen a traffic accident and had to go to court to testify, knows. In the new world of globally televised war crimes, the defence of 'not knowing,' or neutrality, will dissolve for everyone. To be a witness or bystander is not a value-free choice but, inadvertently, a moral position; and in this sense the 'guilt' of people who live with the memory of crimes committed by members of their families, or communities, has been unwittingly extended to everyone who watches appalling pictures on the news. — Erna Paris

Then, things get hard, because once you know magic exists, you have to decide whether to be the bystander, or the magician ... and we were all born to be magicians. — Dianna Hardy

Being a bystander to suffering is not an option. — Peter Singer

But the soul of Africa, its integrity, the slow inexorable pulse of its life, is its own and of such singular rhythm that no outsider, unless steeped from childhood in its endless, even beat, can ever hope to experience it, except only as a bystander might experience a Masai war dance knowing nothing of its music nor the meaning of its steps. — Beryl Markham

It is easy to sanctify policies or identities by the deaths of victims. It is less appealing, but morally more urgent, to understand the actions of the perpetrators. The moral danger, after all, is never that one might become a victim but that one might be a perpetrator or a bystander. — Timothy Snyder

And Thou shalt never, but never be a bystander. — Yehuda Bauer

Whenever somebody asks me to define what a hero is, I remember Latane and Darley's experiment, staging epileptic fits in front of one, two, or three observers. A solitary observer will help immediately if he's going to help at all, but the larger the crowd the longer the delay. It's the Bystander Effect: the wider the diffusion of responsibility, the greater the impulse to let someone else go first. The hero goes first. — Marion G. Harmon