Silence Is Complicity Quotes & Sayings

We know that silence equals consent when atrocities are committed against innocent men, women and children. We know that indifference equals complicity when bigotry, hatred and intolerance are allowed to take root. And we know that education and hope are the most effective ways to combat ignorance and despair. — Gabrielle Giffords

Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the opressor. — Ginetta Sagan

Cultures tend to invite the dominance of one over the other, as a means by which an individual succeeds and advances or, conversely, fails and falls. A culture dominated by attackers - and one in which the qualities of attacking are admired, often overtly encouraged - tends to breed people with a thick skin, which nonetheless still serves to protect a most brittle self. Thus the wounds bleed but stay well hidden beneath the surface. Cultures favouring the defender promote thin skin and quickness to take offence - its own kind of aggression, I am sure you see. The culture of attackers seeks submission and demands evidence of that submission as proof of superiority over the subdued. The culture of defenders seeks compliance through conformity, punishing dissenters and so gaining the smug superiority of enforcing silence, and from silence, complicity. — Steven Erikson

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. — Mahatma Gandhi

WITH THE EMBERS STILL BURNING:
The scientific community has done a pronounced amount of hand-wringing about its involvement in the atomic bomb's creation, and a disproportionately absent amount of the soul-searching with respects to its creation of the science of eugenics. The 450,000 deaths due to the bomb are relatively small in the shadow of the many millions dead as a result of National Socialism's eugenic campaign. The casualties of The Holocaust are the casualties of the science of eugenics, which so many scientists had actively campaigned for leading up to World War II. Yet, the scientific community has confronted its complicity with collective silence and sometimes outright censorship. — A.E. Samaan

My message to the international community is that our silence and complicity especially on the situation in Gaza shames us all. It is almost like the behaviour of the military junta in Burma — Desmond Tutu

At what point, I wondered, does silence become complicity? — David Liss

Each death laid a dreadful charge of complicity on the living; each death was incongenerous, its guilt irreducible, its sadness immortal; a bracelet of bright hair about the bone. I did not pray for her, because prayer has no efficacy; I did not cry for her, because only extroverts cry twice; I sat in the silence of that night, that infinite hostility to man, to permanence, to love, remembering her, remembering her. — John Fowles

Silence is complicity. Speak now or surrender your ground. — Michelle Malkin

Have I, have you, been too silent? Is there an easy crime of silence? — Carl Sandburg

We hold each other and I'm shaking, because I'm thinking how close I came to losing her. If she'd been closer to ground zero in San Diego, she'd be dead now. So many people are dead, because for decades citizens like me and my dad, my uncle, and Lissa's parents - good people - quietly financed war after war because it's easier to pay our taxes than to risk our livelihoods by trying to change the system. Our silence let wealth accumulate in the hands of people like Thelma Sheridan, people who came to believe they could buy absolutely anything, even innocence. — Linda Nagata

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Silence,they say,is the voice of complicity. But silence is impossible. Silence screams. Silence is the message,just as doing nothing is an act. Let who you are ring out and resonate in every word and deed. Yes,become who you are. There's no sidestepping your own being or your own responsibility. What you do is who you are. You are your own comeuppance. You become your own message. You are the message. In the Spirit of Crazy Horse. — Leonard Peltier