Passive Voice In Quotes

#1. The very natural tendency to use terms derived from traditional grammar like verb, noun, adjective, passive voice, in describing languages outside of Indo-European is fraught with grave possibilities of misunderstanding.

Benjamin Lee Whorf

#2. There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

Charles Baxter

#3. Live in the active voice, rather than passive. Think more about what you happen than what is happening to you.

William DeWitt Hyde

#4. Never use the passive voice. Do not say, 'It will get done.' Say, 'I'll do it,' and then stick to a solid, unwavering deadline

Gina Barreca

#5. The passive voice could always be used to obscure blame.

Lorrie Moore

#6. All research scientists know that writing in the passive voice is artificial; they are not disembodied observers, but people doing research.

Rupert Sheldrake

#7. Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

Sonia Sotomayor

#8. Using the passive voice is always very helpful. Mind you, a lot of that propaganda English emanates from here. The British establishment has always used the passive voice. It's been a weapon of discourse so those who committed terrible acts in the old empire could not be identified.

John Pilger

#9. Be as vigilantly on guard against translating such a sentence into the passive voice as you would against committing murder.

Jay Rubin

#10. The simplest and cheapest of all reforms within institutional science is to switch from the passive to the active voice in writing about science.

Rupert Sheldrake

#11. For 10 years, I have fought passionately for climate protection.

Angela Merkel

#12. Strunk and White don't speculate as to why so many writers are attracted to passive verbs, but I'm willing to; I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe.

Stephen King

#13. The single problem plaguing all students in all schools everywhere is the crisis of disconnection. Meaningful Student Involvement happens when the roles of students are actively re-aligned from being the passive recipients of schools to becoming active partners throughout the educational process.

Adam Fletcher

#14. There is nothing like being left alone again, to walk peacefully with oneself in the woods. To boil one's coffee and fill one's pipe, and to think idly and slowly as one does it.

Knut Hamsun

#15. When someone says something petty or nasty, one of those little passive-aggressive things that would usually just pick at me for days, my new response is not to shut the door and bitch to anyone who will listen. Now? The moment they say it? "What did you mean by that?" I ask in a calm voice. It

Shonda Rhimes

#16. Passive voice is better than writing out a humongous number and taking the risk that your readers' brains will be numb by the time they get to the verb.

Mignon Fogarty

#17. We have not passed that subtle line between childhood and adulthood until we move from the passive voice to the active voice - that is, until we have stopped saying "It got lost," and say, "I lost it.

Sydney J. Harris

#18. I use "perpetrated" because it's the kind of word that passive-voice writers are fond of. They prefer long words of Latin origin to short Anglo-Saxon words - which compounds their trouble and makes their sentences still more glutinous. Short is better than long. Of the 701 words in

William Zinsser

#19. Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason.

Constance Hale

#20. When you are discussing a successful coach," sports psychologist Bruce Ogilvie once said, not of Ramsay but of the entire profession, "you are not necessarily drawing the profile of an entirely healthy person.

David Halberstam

#21. Objectivity is the subject subjugating the object. That is how you assert yourself. You make yourself the active voice and the object is the passive no-voice.

Emily Levine

#22. I'm not going to ruin my movie because of some stupid ruling that it has to be ninety minutes long. That's just like adding three more plates to the last supper, or an extra wing to the Pentagon.

Charles Willeford

#23. If you work hard, and give up certain things, and yes, resort to bribery now and then, you'll be an arborist, or a sea anemonist, or anything else you want.

Anthony Marra

#24. The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently. The score:
There comes what will come.

Yvor Winters

#25. Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.

William Safire

#26. 'TIME's spell-check always admonishes me whenever I compose a sentence in the passive voice, a warning that is often ignored by me.

Richard Corliss