Bystander Quotes

“While in principle groups for survivors are a good idea, in practice it soon becomes apparent that to organize a successful group is no simple matter. Groups that start out with hope and promise can dissolve acrimoniously, causing pain and disappointment to all involved. The destructive potential of groups is equal to their therapeutic promise. The role of the group leader carries with it a risk of the irresponsible exercise of authority.
Conflicts that erupt among group members can all too easily re-create the dynamics of the traumatic event, with group members assuming the roles of perpetrator, accomplice, bystander, victim, and rescuer. Such conflicts can be hurtful to individual participants and can lead to the group’s demise. In order to be successful, a group must have a clear and focused understanding of its therapeutic task and a structure that protects all participants adequately against the dangers of traumatic reenactment. Though groups may vary widely in composition and structure, these basic conditions must be fulfilled without exception.
Commonality with other people carries with it all the meanings of the word common. It means belonging to a society, having a public role, being part of that which is universal. It means having a feeling of familiarity, of being known, of communion. It means taking part in the customary, the commonplace, the ordinary, and the everyday. It also carries with it a feeling of smallness, or insignificance, a sense that one’s own troubles are ‘as a drop of rain in the sea.’ The survivor who has achieved commonality with others can rest from her labors. Her recovery is accomplished; all that remains before her is her life.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Don’t be a witness. Be an activist.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“It’s a strange feeling when you realise that you have become a passive bystander, watching the quirks of your own fate with an icy indifference.”
― Anurag Shourie, Half A Shadow

“Our culture has an idea of competition in the pursuit of excellence that can make anyone not striving for the top feel like a worthless, non-productive bystander. This applies not only to one's career but even to one's leisure.”
― Elaine N. Aron, The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You

“I was sitting down hanging with the fellas them just for the girls, because really and truly this was bugging me. How could these fellas have the finest girls in the community, and they don’t work, they don’t have any money. Anytime something has to be purchased they would say, ‘Man, Scrooge, throw the blow; buy this and buy that.’
So we were sitting on a car one day. They were out to a disco the night before and this fella got chopped or stabbed. I didn’t know anything about it until the fellas came around looking for KC the next day. These fellas just yuck out their guns and started busting shots, and everybody just break off running for their lives. Afterwards I mumbled to myself that these are some crazy fellas. They just came shooting for no reason. The funny thing about it is this: guns were not even that common on the streets then. We’re talking around 1987, 1988. I believe the fella who fired those shots at us, goes by the nickname Dog and he lives in the US now.
I said to Ada, ‘What kind of thing this is? I mean, these fellas came and just started shooting.’
That sent a whole new way of thinking in my mind. Prior to that, I was just a person going to work, coming home, and chilling. I just happened to be sitting there one day. They didn’t know me and they didn’t care who I was. I never used to even be with KC and them. I just happened to be there that day. If I had known that those fellas were crazy like that, to come shooting at whoever they saw, I wouldn’t have been there hanging with KC and them. After that, my whole mindset changed. It was either shoot or be shot. Scrooge, former leader of the Rebellion Raiders street gang that once boasted of having some ten thousand members.”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander. (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum qtd. in Halter)”
― Ken Wytsma, Pursuing Justice: The Call to Live and Die for Bigger Things

“It's unwise to be a backseat driver, passenger or bystander in your own life.”
― Rasheed Ogunlaru

“If Buddhists think evil is unreal they must be mad! Thinking evil is unreal is holding hands with evil under the table!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“When someone tries to derail an argument with an insult, your response depends on who the audience is. If the two of you are alone, say something like, “This isn’t recess. I’m out of here,” and walk away. You’re not about to persuade the jerk. But if there are bystanders, ridicule the insult. “So Bob’s answer to the problem of noise in this town is that I’m a jerk. Was that helpful to you all?” You turn sophistry into genuine banter.”
― Jay Heinrichs, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion

“You think you've met bad people, and then you meet people who are worse. They're doing nothing - they're not- we're just as bad. We're just as bad for doing nothing. We don't care.”
― Alice Oseman, Solitaire

“Evil demanded little of me – it merely asked me to stay silent, to do nothing. And I complied.”
― Josie Ferguson, The Silence In Between