Neutral Quotes & Sayings

We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they think carefully about how their decisions will affect the court's own legitimacy and authority. — Noah Feldman

Technology is neutral and sterile. Now, technology is the nature of modern man; it is our environment and our horizon. Of course, every work of man is a negation of nature, but at the same time, it is a bridge between nature and us. Technology changes nature in a more radical and decisive manner: it throws it out. — Octavio Paz

Living in Supreme Influence, your language is neutral and/or moving toward your vision rather than moving away. In other words, you speak about what you do want, not about what you don't want. — Niurka

Shoes are a neutral blessing for us because feet generally aren't regarded as a place where the battle for self-esteem is won or lost. Feet don't change size when the body does through the natural ageing process. — Simon Van Booy

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch — Bertrand Russell

There is no biological reason for sodomy. The body does not need it; society does not need it; in this sense it is not a sin involving the intemperate use of something good or morally neutral, nor is it a sin involving the misuse of such things. It is an act which by its nature frustrates the function of the organs of the body it employs. — Anthony Esolen

That is a goal, to step out on stage and to actually be present. Honestly alive and present. Although, it doesn't always happen. We're fallible, we're imperfect. That's what a lot of books are written about; that's what a lot of religions have sought after is that kind of zen mentality of just being totally neutral and open and vulnerable to all of the forces in the universe without being attached to them. — Dan Mangan

By extrapolating a little from Freud, it becomes possible to think of nationalism as a kind of narcissism. A nationalist takes the neutral facts about a people - their language, habitat, culture, tradition and history- and turns these facts into a narrative, whose purpose is to illuminate the self-consciousness of a group, to enable them to think of themselves as a nation with a claim to self-determination. A nationalist, in other words, takes "minor differences"- indifferent in themselves- and transforms them into major differences. For this purpose, traditions are invented, a glorious past is gilded and refurbished for public consumption, and a people who might not have thought of themselves as a people at all suddenly begin to dream of themselves as a nation. — Michael Ignatieff

Individual security bargains may be located by the process of security analysis practically at any time. They can be bought with good overall results at all periods except when the general market itself is clearly in a selling range for investors. They show up to best advantage during the years in which the market remains in a relatively narrow and neutral area. — Benjamin Graham

We must move from revenue-neutral to revenue-reducing tax reform, because the federal government spends far too much money. — Carly Fiorina

Emotionally charged events are better remembered - for longer, and with more accuracy - than neutral events. — John Medina

GNP is therefore in a certain sense a value-neutral quantity: a measure of activity, not of activity of any kind of value. A first argument against continued growth is just this. The GNP does not give any guarantee of meaningfulness of that which is created. Growth in GNP does not imply any growth in access to intrinsic values and progress along the course of self-realization. Obviously any kind of economic growth which is not related to intrinsic values is neutral or detrimental. The measure of GNP is somehow related to the fierceness of activity in the society but this fierceness may very well have more to do with a lack of ability of the members of the society to engage in meaningful activity than a measure of something humanity should look upon with joy. There is no clear relation to life quality. — Arne Naess

Newton's three laws of motion are less a product of novel experiments than of the attempt to reinterpret well-known observations in terms of motions and interactions of primary neutral corpuscles — Thomas S. Kuhn

'The Wire' fans are very specific and hard core. Nobody is neutral about 'The Wire.' You either love it, or you couldn't watch it, and there is no in-between. — Deirdre Lovejoy

My personal opinion is that the neutral position on the mood spectrum - what I called emotional sea level - is not
happiness but rather contentment and the calm acceptance that is the goal of many kinds of spiritual practice. — Andrew Weil

For perhaps the first time in public, he used the neutral 'Africans' instead of the pejorative 'Kaffirs'. The change in language reflected a deeper change in his way of thinking about the world. When he first came to South Africa, Gandhi had pleaded for Indians to be distinguished from Africans, whom he then considered 'uncivilized'. Now, fifteen years later, he brought all races within a single ambit. They all had similar hopes, and would one day have the same rights. In the future, Indians and Africans would be absolutely free men, mingling with Boers and Britons in a nation where one's citizenship did not depend on the colour of one's skin. — Ramachandra Guha

The perceived failings of leaders of other neutral or occupied European countries, including France, Spain, Sweden or Norway, or of the countries that fought alongside the Nazis, have not caught the public imagination in the English-speaking world in anything like the same way. — Clare O'Dea

The Christian confession is not a neutral proposition; it is prayer, only yielding its meaning within prayer. — Pope Benedict XVI

Numerous studies have clearly demonstrated that coconut oil has a neutral effect on cholesterol levels. The reason coconut oil does not adversely affect cholesterol is because it is composed primarily of medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA). These fatty acids are different from those commonly found in other food sources and are burned almost immediately for energy production, and so they are not converted into body fat or cholesterol to the degree other fats are and do not affect blood cholesterol levels. — Bruce Fife

Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them ... One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one's self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference. — Victor Hugo

We look up, if only to see if we're likely to be rained on. The sky calls attention to itself, whether scored by herons, cranes, or wires; illumined by sunsets, Perseids, or ballparks; broken up by the twigwork of oaks or maples, painted in rainbows, or just primed in the pale gray of my '52 Ford. If we are truthful, the sky is never neutral. — Robert Michael Pyle

Identity politics instructs people to define their politics not by reference to general moral principles of justice and rights, but some shared experience of oppression. It divides people into myriad oppressed groups, each jockeying for power to secure its own interests against others - not put in place neutral rules that work for everyone (because such rules, in their thinking, only serve to entrench "existing power relations" and "structural marginalization"). — Shikha Dalmia

I'm from New York. I have a non, neutral accent. It can go any way you want. — Abigail Breslin

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

Donald Judd spoke of a "neutral" surface, but what is meant? Neutrality must involve some relationship (to other ways of painting, thinking?) He would have to include these in his work to establish the neutrality of that surface. He also used "non" or "not" - expressive - this is an early problem - a negative solution or - expression of new sense - which can help one into - what one has not known. "Neutral" expresses an intention. — Jasper Johns

There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It's a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It's a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free. — Sarah Schulman

The system functioned relatively automatically, and the prevailing system of racial meanings, identities, and ideologies already seemed natural. Ninety percent of those admitted to prison for drug offenses in many states were Black or Latino, yet the mass incarceration of communities of color was explained in race-neutral terms, an adaptation to the needs and demands of the current political climate. — Michelle Alexander

Technology is not good, it's neutral. — Tom Shadyac

To be a librarian is not to be neutral, or passive, or waiting for a question. It is to be a radical positive change agent within your community. — R. David Lankes

A truly living human being cannot remain neutral. — Nadine Gordimer

There's no neutral language about travel. Either travel is described in ways that make it sound kind of shallow or just glossy or silly or a way for rich people to spend their time; or else travel is often described in quite derogatory ways, you know, like immigrants swarming across borders, for instance. — Emma Donoghue

The language in which the revealed Hindu texts are composed, namely, Sanskrit, has a neuter gender in addition to the masculine and feminine. In fact, the ultimate reality, the Supreme God of Hindus, is often described as neutral gender. A verse of Rigveda says that all the various deities are but descriptions of One Truth (ekam sat), and it is in neuter gender as if to emphasise that God is not male. — M. L. Ahuja

People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army. — Banksy

Who thinks they're not open-minded? Our hypothetical prim miss from the suburbs thinks she's open-minded. Hasn't she been taught to be? Ask anyone, and they'll say the same thing: they're pretty open-minded, though they draw the line at things that are really wrong. (Some tribes may avoid "wrong" as judgemental, and may instead use a more neutral sounding euphemism like "negative" or "destructive".)

When people are bad at math, they know it, because they get the wrong answers on tests. But when people are bad at open-mindedness they don't know it. In fact they tend to think the opposite. — Paul Graham

History is contemporary. Your understanding of history confirms what you think of the present. It's not neutral. I would be very surprised if people with a different view of the present, don't take issue with my view of the past. I just hope that people deal with the content of the film. — Ken Loach

I don't know what to say about Asians. I think everyone is "racist," to differing degrees, in that everyone's brain will automatically associate information with other information, based on the information they are looking at (for example skin color, bone structure), but I think focusing on race in any manner that isn't neutral or self-aware probably increases racism. — Tao Lin

The public don't want to authorize the internet to become a battleground. We need to do everything we can as a society to keep that a neutral zone, to keep that an economic zone that can reflect our values, both politically, socially, and economically. — Edward Snowden

If we define the word Theos as that on which everything else depends but which itself depends on nothing else - a reasonable definition - then none of these scientific theories is theologically neutral. All of them rest on fundamental assumptions which can be questioned. But the questioning, if it is to be rational, has to rely on other fundamental assumptions which can in turn be questioned. It follows (and this is Polanyi's point) that there can be no knowing without personal commitment. We must believe in order to know. — Lesslie Newbigin

I'm Switzerland; neutral as can be, and also with great chocolate. — Neal Shusterman

Just as a car parked on a hill will naturally roll backward when shifted into neutral, we will naturally go the wrong way if we shift our Christian lives into neutral and stop seeking to learn and grow as believers. — Greg Laurie

In Tetrad form, the artifact is seen to be not neutral or passive, bur an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground. — Marshall McLuhan

Discussions about the ethics of suicide are immediately biased by the verb that customarily attaches to it in English. One "commits" suicide. Because this presupposes the wrongfulness of the suicide, I avoid that verb, opting instead for "carry out" suicide. This is evaluatively neutral, avoiding both the usual bias against suicide and the unusual bias in favor of it that the verb "achieve" would effect. "Carry out" is preferable to "practice", which implies something ongoing. Finally, "carry out" also implies a suicide that is completed rather than merely attempted. — David Benatar

When you are in neutral, you are completely open to whatever information needs to come through at that time for the highest good. We simply can't be neutral if our emotions get in the way. — Catherine Carrigan

Was there supposed to be a moment of blinding clarity when the path through the thicket appeared, brightly illuminated, and Good, Bad, and Morally Neutral all sorted themselves out, slightly messy but completely unambiguous, like egg yolk and egg white and shell?
If so, I missed it — Ann Redisch Stampler

C'mon kids! Wake up and smell the CO2! Take over your administration building, occupy your university president's office, or storm in on the next meeting of your college's board of trustees until they agree to make your school carbon neutral. — Thomas Friedman

Let me say this: I only expect the black media to uphold the standards of excellence in journalism and when you do that, you have to go in with a neutral mind. — Bill Cosby

I shall be neutral and inert. No difficulty there. Throes are the only trouble, I must be on my guard against throes. But I am less given to them now, since coming here. — Samuel Beckett

Don't you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended. One is on neutral ground - not in one's own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place. Oh Heavens! How stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people - sitting on strange stairs - hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself - hearing - far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves on stairs - they issue forth, unprotected. — Katherine Mansfield

When crossing someone's borders you have to be prepared to engage in a war that is far more brutal than if it were to take place on neutral territory. — Sylvester Stallone

Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

If Christians continue to rely on emotion and ignore evidence, they will continue to lose their children to secularism. As Ravi Zacharias points out, a tepid Christianity cannot withstand a rabid secularism. And make no mistake-secularism is rabid. The world isn't neutral out there. Today's culture is becoming increasingly anti-Christian. — Frank Turek

Used throughout a room, orange can become surprisingly neutral, and yet it can be bright and mood-enhancing. — Jonathan Adler

But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple. — Neil Postman

In a crime there is always a perpetrator and a victim. If you look the other way, do not get involved, stay neutral, or remain silent, you will always help the perpetrator and never the victim. — Vivien Spitz

Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls. — Mike Yaconelli

I really think, if anything, there is more evidence to show that the violent games reduce aggression and violence. There have actually been some studies about that, that it's cathartic. If you go to QuakeCon and you walk by and you see the people there [and compare that to] a random cross section of a college campus, you're probably going to find a more peaceful crowd of people at the gaming convention. I think it's at worst neutral and potentially positive. — John Carmack

Treating ourselves like appliances that can be unplugged and plugged in again at will or cars that stop and start with the twist of a key, we have forgotten the importance of fallow time and winter and rests in music. We have abandoned a whole system of dealing with the neutral zone through ritual, and we have tried to deal with personal change as though it were a matter of some kind of readjustment. — William Bridges

Big-government economics breeds crony capitalism. It's corrupt, anything but neutral, and a barrier to broad participation in prosperity. — Paul Ryan

It is accepted as an axiom by all Americans that the civil power ought to be not only neutral and impartial as between different forms of faith, but ought to leave these matters entirely on one side, regarding them no more than it regards the artistic or literary pursuits of the citizens. — James Bryce

Let's not confuse traditional behaviours with good manners. The definition of etiquette is gender neutral - it simply means we strive at all times to ensure a person in our company feels at ease. — Lynn Coady

The transition between competing paradigms cannot be made a step at a time, forced by logic and neutral experience. Like the gestalt switch, it must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. — Thomas Kuhn

When I came to Delhi first and said, "This is not India. And then I was taken to Varanasi and there I loved, loved the culture. It was a beautiful journey. The way the people dressed - even the poorest people, and the fabrics! With vegetable dyes, and I was fascinated by the color.But in the end I loved the men - all in white - so many shades of white. And I said, "What am I going to do? A color collection or a white collection?" I finally did a neutral white collection. — Donna Karan

We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard. — Jon Meacham

Language is not neutral. It is not merely a vehicle which carries ideas. It is itself a shaper of ideas. — Dale Spender

In any new situation, whether it involves an elevator or a rocket ship, you will almost certainly be viewed in one of three ways. As a minus one: actively harmful, someone who creates problems. Or as a zero: your impact is neutral and doesn't tip the balance one way or the other. Or you'll be seen as a plus one: someone who actively adds value. Everyone wants to be a plus one, of course. But proclaiming your plus-oneness at the outset almost guarantees you'll be perceived as a minus one, regardless of the skills you bring to the table or how you actually perform. — Chris Hadfield

I made very sure that I did not get involved with any of the commercial Linux companies, exactly so that I would be neutral and not ever seen as "working for the competition". — Linus Torvalds

Power doesn't corrupt. It's neutral. Someone always wants to corrupt power. It's the way a shotgun is not a deadly weapon until someone chooses to use it irrationally. — Steve Ditko

Amid the stirring and manifold activities of the age in which we live, to be neutral in the strife is to rank with the enemies of the Saviour. There is no greater foe to the spread of His cause in the world than the placid indifferentism which is too honorable to betray, while it is too careless or too cowardly to join Him. — William Morley Punshon

You are where you are and what you are because of yourself, nothing else. Nature is neutral. Nature doesn't care. If you do what other successful people do, you will enjoy the same results and rewards that they do. And if you don't, you won't. — Brian Tracy

I'm an atheist. I'm not neutral about religion, I'm hostile to it. I think it is a positively bad idea, not just a false one. And I mean not just organized religion, but religious belief itself. — Christopher Hitchens

I will tell you, as president, I'm not going to be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with Israel. — Ted Cruz

Monday ushers in a particularly impressive clientele of red-eyed people properly pressed into dry-cleaned suits in neutral tones. They leave their equally well-buttoned children idling in SUVs while dashing to grab double-Americanos and foamy sweet lattes, before click-clacking hasty escapes in ass-sculpting heels and polished loafers with bowl-shaped haircuts that age every face to 40. My imagination speed evolves their unfortunate offspring from car seat-strapped oxygen-starved fast-blooming locusts, to the knuckle-drag harried downtown troglodytes they'll inevitably become. One by one I capture their flat-formed heads between index finger and thumb for a little crush-crush-crushing, ever aware that if I'm lucky one day their charitable contributions will fund my frown-faced found art project to baffle someone's hallway. — Amanda Sledz

The use of force stands in need of control by a public neutral authority, in the interests of liberty no less than of justice. Within a nation, this public authority will naturally be the state; in relations between nations, if the present anarchy is to cease, it will have to be some international parliament. — Bertrand Russell

the existing market economy has no "stable" or "neutral" setting: there is only growth or contraction. — Richard Heinberg

There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing. — Christiane Amanpour

0Cross-gender behaviour is seen as less acceptable in boys than it is in girls: unlike the term 'tomboy' there is nothing positive implied by its male counterpart, the 'sissy'. — Cordelia Fine

I was a child during the Lebanese civil war, and I remember Israeli bombardments. So growing up, my view of Israel was completely negative. I'm not coming from a neutral place, but with time, I've had to re-examine my thinking. — Ziad Doueiri

Which natural gift would you most like to possess? The ability to master other languages (which would have hugely enhanced the scope of these answers).
How would you like to die? Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around).
What do you most dislike about your appearance? The way in which it makes former admirers search for neutral words. — Christopher Hitchens

Science itself is a humanist in the sense that it doesn't discriminate between human beings, but it is also morally neutral. It is no better or worse than the ethos with and for which it is used. — Max Lerner

I don't believe any lip shade is off-limits, but texture is key. A sheer lipstick in a healthy pink or neutral color looks more polished and grown-up than a super-shiny gloss. — Bobbi Brown

The inducements of interest for observing [neutral] conduct ... has been to endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes. — George Washington

And when Jace was ten years old, Valentine killed him. Michael,
I mean."
"That sounds like something he would do," said Luke. His tone was neutral, but there was something in his voice that made Clary look at him sideways. Did he not believe her?
"Jace saw him die, " she added, as if to bolster her claim.
"That's awful," said Luke. "Poor messed-up kid. — Cassandra Clare

I don't believe, in the end, that there is any such thing as no style. Even a very neutral, plain style, one that doesn't use colloquialisms, lyrical flourishes, heavy supplies of metaphor, etc., is a style, and it becomes a writer's characteristic style just as much as a thicker, richer deployment of idiom and vocabulary. — Lydia Davis

I am a she. The mask is a he, or is actually gender-neutral. People love the character. — K. Guillory

As I always say, leopard print is a neutral. — Leandra Medine

A profession that we are a nation "under God" is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation "under Jesus," a nation "under Vishnu," a nation "under Zeus," or a nation "under no god," because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion. — Alfred Goodwin

I didn't know there were options like gender neutral or gender fluid. I later realized you could be a girl and dress like a guy. — Ruby Rose

To overcome negative emotions, consulting intuition is always useful. How can it guide you. During nervous periods, it offers a more centered alternative to agitation. Intuition is a neutral from of information that allows you to soberly gauge the validity of your worries. If you tune in and find out they're unfounded, you'll be relieved. If they are founded, you can develop a strategy to deal with them. — Judith Orloff

Insecurity is gender neutral. Insecurity comes at various levels with power and position. — Aparna Jain

I have a fearless but neutral personality. — Yani Tseng

Something is neutral only with respect to something else - like an intention or an expectation. — Susan Sontag

You don't even have to move for everything to become horribly complicated, for things to happen, for there to be anger and iitigation, you only have to breathe in this world, the slightest in-breath or out-breath like the minimum swaying inevitable in all light objects hanging by a thread, our veiled and neutral gaze like the inert oscillation of toy airplanes suspended from a ceiling, and that always end up going into battle because of that minimal tremor or pulsation. — Javier Marias

Lie there panning, looking, all ribs and elbows and dilated eyes. The awake floor is littered with gear and dirty clothes, blond hardwood with sealed seams, two throw-rugs, the bare waxed wood shiny in the windows' snowlight, the floor neutral, faceless, you cannot see any face in the floor, awake, lying there, faceless, blank, dilated, playing beam over floor again and again, not sure all night forever unsure you're not missing something that's right there: you lie there, awake and almost twelve, believing with all your might. — David Foster Wallace

It became normal for women on the internet to adopt gender-neutral or male screen names. — Arthur Chu

You're evil, you know that?" I said.
She grinned and shook her head. "Chaotic Neutral, sugar. — Ernest Cline

The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name ... We must be impartial in thought as well as in actiona nationthat neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world. — Woodrow Wilson

Surrounded by military airplanes and warships from the world's most civilized and developed nations, we have been denied permission by friendly governments, for reasons of security, to land anywhere, but in the tiny, and still neutral, Republic of Djibouti. — Thor Heyerdahl

Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests. — Howard Zinn

Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well, this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it, but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there, and we had to tell the truth. — Christiane Amanpour

Keep your opinions to yourself. I think it's important that I stay neutral on politics and remain hard to understand. I don't want to be pigeonholed as conservative, liberal, independent or anything. I back the man for the things the man believes in, not whether it says "R" or "D" down there beside his name. — Merle Haggard