Docility Quotes

One wonders at the docility of the students who evidently must be satisfied enough with the credentials to be uncaring about the lack of education. (Jane Jacobs)
The State is not force alone. It depends upon the credulity of man quite as much as upon his docility. Its aim is not merely to make him obey, but also to make him want to obey.
H. L. Mencken
Music for entertainment ... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility.
Theodor Adorno
All successful bunko men come in time to believe the world, except for themselves, is populated with a race of human sheep who may be trusted to conduct themselves with true sheeplike docility.
Dashiell Hammett
Those who have hitherto governed the nation, believing, and believing with justice, that ignorance and docility go hand in hand, have taken care to ration the education of the workers in doses small enough to be innocuous to the established order.
R. H. Tawney
I was on the whole much pleased, and from what I then saw, have conceived a higher opinion of the natural capacities of the black race, than I had ever before entertained. Their apprehension seems as quick, their memory as strong, and their docility in every respect equal to that of white children.
Benjamin Franklin
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use of vigorous criticism.
Carl Sagan
Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.
Carl Sagan
A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.
Henry Hazlitt
The child manifests the same reactions of defiance and obedience. The child, too, can hide his stubbornness behind an excessive docility.
Wilhelm Stekel
What wonder if the novel claim had clashed With old requirement, seemed to supersede Too much the customary law? But, brave, Thou at first prompting of what I call God, And fools call Nature, didst hear, comprehend, Accept the obligation laid on thee, Mother elect, to save the unborn child, As brute and bird do, reptile and the fly, Ay and, I nothing doubt, even tree, shrub, plant And flower o' the field, all in a common pact To worthily defend the trust of trusts, Life from the Ever Living: - didst resist - Anticipate the office that is mine - And with his own sword stay the upraised arm, The endeavour of the wicked, and defend Him who, - again in my default, - was there For visible providence: one less true than thou To touch, i' the past, less practised in the right, Approved less far in all docility To all instruction, - how had such an one Made scruple "Is this motion a decree?" (Robert Browning)