Silence Is Complicit Quotes & Sayings

There are so many different forms of silence: the silence that tyrannical states force on their citizens, stealing their memories, rewriting their histories, and imposing on them a state-sanctioned identity. Or the silence of witnesses who choose to ignore or not speak the truth, and of victims who at times become complicit in the crimes committed against them. Then there are the silences we indulge in about ourselves, our personal mythologies, the stories we impose upon our real lives. — Azar Nafisi

But once, in his anger, Aidan had asked me whether I thought I had wasted my life, and I had told him no. No, I had not. But I had been wrong. And Tom Cardle has been right. For I had known everything, right from the start, and never acted on any of it. I had blocked it from my mind time and again, refused to recognize what was staring me in the face. I had said nothing when I should have spoken out, convincing myself that I was a man of higher character. I had been complicit in all their crimes, and people had suffered because of me. I had wasted my life. I had wasted every moment of my life. And the final irony was that it had taken a convicted pedophile to show me that in my silence, I was just as guilty as the rest of them. — John Boyne

Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't
and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. — Rebecca Solnit

Her music ran through him with electric energy, more joyous than anything he could remember and more painful than silver. — Thea Harrison

I do not know why sorrows come
and burning teardrops fall;
I only know God still is God
And watches over all. — John Gilbert

Some days you just want to get dressed and go about your business. But if you're a woman, you can't, because there is no unmarked woman. — Deborah Tannen

Do you know what Ed Gein said about women?"
[ ... ]
"'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out and talk to her and be real nice and sweet and treat her right.'" I stop finish my J&B in one swallow.
"What does the other part of him think?" Hamlin asks tentatively.
"What her head would look like on a stick — Bret Easton Ellis

To all those whose progress remains hampered by ego-related distractions, let humility - the spiritual cornerstone upon which Karate rests - serve to remind one to place virtue before vice, values before vanity and principles before personalities. — Matsumura Sokon

We need more men with the guts, with the courage, with the strength, with the moral integrity to break our complicit silence and challenge each other and stand with women and not against them. — Jackson Katz

Fine." I glared at him and shook my head. Stubborn idiot.
"But at least try to look a little more raider-ish, okay? We don't want to attract attention."
Zeke's snort sounded suspiciously like laughter. "Allie, you're a beautiful, exotic-looking vampire girl with a katana. Trust me, if anyone is going to attract attention, it's not going to be me."
I didn't answer as we crossed the flimsy, creaking bridge into the lair of the vampire king. If Zeke had asked, I would've said that I was thinking of how to find everyone, but that wasn't entirely true. I was thinking of the others and how I was going to get them out alive ... but I kept being distracted by the thought that Zeke had called me beautiful. — Julie Kagawa

The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. It seems to have favored the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment. — Claude Levi-Strauss

Hell's bells. I don't call him the Fist of God as a pet name, folks. — Jim Butcher

Pagans can be just as monstrous as any other group. They can be murderers, rapists, pedophiles. We need to accept that they are our problem and deal with them. We need to speak against their crimes and challenge them rather than letting our silence make us complicit. — Thomm Quackenbush

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

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live. — Yann Martel

Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other religion, really. There's no orthodoxy, as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like ... We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy. Right practice rather then right belief. That's all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it's not important in the way you think. It's just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. — Hyam Maccoby

The simple answer is I'd just be a guy trying to feed my family, like everybody else. The complicated answer is, I think I'd be in some sort of military or government world of some sort. — Antoine Fuqua

A complicit mustiness hung in the air, the odour of silence and calm. — Umberto Eco

America's great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago. — Eric Alterman

You are not responsible for the past, but insofar as you do nothing, you are complicit in the present created by it. — Jonathan R. Miller