passive resistance

noun

opposition to a government or to specific governmental laws by the use of noncooperation and other nonviolent methods, as economic boycotts and protest marches. Compare civil disobedience, noncooperation ( def 2 ).

Origin:
1880–85

Related forms

pas·sive re·sist·er, noun

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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World English Dictionary

passive resistance

—n
	resistance to a government, law, etc, made without violence, as by fasting, demonstrating peacefully, or refusing to cooperate

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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American Heritage

Cultural Dictionary

passive resistance definition

A technique of demonstrating opposition to a government's activities simply by not cooperating with them. It is particularly associated with Mahatma Gandhi, who opposed violent revolution in his own country's fight for independence. (Compare civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.)

Matching Quote

"There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose if a few went to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen."

-Henry David Thoreau

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