Quotes About The Passive Voice

#1. 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

#2. '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

#3. 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

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

Lorrie Moore

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

Rupert Sheldrake

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

Sonia Sotomayor

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

Jay Rubin

#8. 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

#9. 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

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. It is greatly understated to compare humans to an absorbent sponge, a glowing fuse; they are each an innumerable harmony, a living self that has an effect on all of the forces that surround them.

Johann Gottfried Herder

#14. 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

#15. Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.

John Updike

#16. 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

#17. If the demons lie within they travel with you.
Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.

Jeanette Winterson

#18. I have never judged myself by other people's standards. I have always expected a great deal of myself, and if I fail, I fail myself.

Sophia Loren

#19. 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

#20. They say marriage will change you but it didn't change me. Being in love changed me.

R. Kelly

#21. If God wanted us to bend over he would put diamonds on the floor

Joan Rivers

#22. 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

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

William DeWitt Hyde

#24. Victory is a thousand times sweeter when you're the underdog.

Jenny Han

#25. We divide the roles of mystic, doctor, therapist, artist, herbalist, naturalist, and storyteller into separate, often inimical professions. In most other societies, there was one word, one job assignment, for somebody who was all these things at once.

Martha N. Beck

#26. 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

#27. You are strong enough to go without.

Ally Condie

#28. It's the oldest, corniest piece of advice in the world but it still works. The strongest networks are built on friendship. Be a friend not only to the people in your network, but to the people who matter the most to the people in your network.

Harvey MacKay

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. Each step of the way, I'm learning. When I leave an interview, I learn whether I feel, 'Oh, that was nice,' or that made me feel like a little piece of me was taken.

Brie Larson

#32. Don't worry, God understands,' Mom said. 'He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.

Jeannette Walls

#33. Nothing goes perfectly for us. But ... being incomplete is what pushes us onward to the next something ... If we were even perfectly satisfied, what meaning would the rest of our lives hold, right?

Takehiko Inoue

#34. Daddy worked for God, but asked for no pay. For he believed that God provides a way.

Dolly Parton

#35. I've supported Jeremy Corbyn all the way along because I think that was the right thing to do. I've reluctantly reached the conclusion that his position is untenable.

Ed Miliband