People often use the passive voice because it’s indirect, polite, unaggressive, and admirably suited to making thoughts seem as if nobody had personally thought them and deeds seem as if nobody had done them, so that nobody need take responsibility. Writers who want to take responsibility are wary of it. The cowardly writer says, “It is believed that being is constituted by ratiocination.” The brave writer says, “I think, therefore I am.”
