Quotes & Sayings About Defending Yourself

When I first came to Arsenal, I realised the back four were all university graduates in the art of defending. As for Tony Adams, I consider him to be a doctor of defence. He is simply outstanding. — Arsene Wenger

But selfishness can take on many disguises. It can also be about defending and trying to prove your own belief system while denying there could be value in the beliefs of others. — Karlyle Tomms

Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defense. The light or sound does not care about what you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute. — Eckhart Tolle

Marriage is the sanctuary of the heart. You have been entrusted with the heart of another human being. Whatever else your life's great mission will entail, loving and defending this heart next to you is part of your great quest. — John Eldredge

I'm here to say that you can't make the troubled waters of life go away by defending yourself against them. You can only walk over those troubled waters if you offer peace to them and leave the safety of your boat. — Ted Dekker

We're in greater danger today than we were the day after Pearl Harbor. Our military is absolutely incapable of defending this country. — Ronald Reagan

In most cases an act of unwelcome sex is no more bother than being vaccinated, so there's no point going on about it as if it werea fate worse than death. With skill and good manners you can avoid having to make the sacrifice, but should you find yourself in a compromising situation largely of your own making, you should stop defending your virtue and start worrying about your maturity. It will give you something to think about while the savage pumper bangs away. — Quentin Crisp

You can understand why the original framers of judicial ethics thought it would be undignified and would call into question the legitimacy of the judicial decision-making process to have mudslinging by judges, but the way that we hobble people of enormous integrity from defending themselves is, I think, deeply problematic in states where you have an elected judiciary, or a judge is subject to recall. — Deborah Rhode

War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?" he said.
"Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?"
"Absol - well, okay."
"Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor?"
"All right, I'll grant you that, but - "
"Saving civilization from a horde of - "
"It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together," said Fred Colon sharply.
"Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge? — Terry Pratchett

Defending yourself is not the same as offending your enemy. Watch what you say. — Holly Chamberlin

In aeternum felicitas vindactio. Defending happily ever after. — Seanan McGuire

Many people talk about winning two straight gold medals, but I'm not focusing on defending the title. — Kim Yuna

[Somali maritime violence] is a response to greedy Western nations, who invade and exploit Somalia's water resources illegally. It is not a piracy, it is self defence. It is defending the Somalia children's food. — Muammar Al-Gaddafi

If you're defending a lie, you can only defend it with obfuscations and other lies. You can't defend a lie with the truth. — Harvey Bialy

What we have instead are false memories aroused later and more pertinent to this later perspective than to the original events. Sometimes in matters of great emotion, one representation, retaining all the original intensity, comes to replace another, which is then discarded and forgotten. The new representation is called a screen memory. A screen memory is a compromise between remembering something painful and defending yourself against that very remembering. — Karen Joy Fowler

By amending our mistakes, we get wisdom. By defending our faults, we betray an unsound mind. — Huineng

Against slavery, against tyranny, I would gladly go to my death, no matter whose freedom I was defending. — Sarah J. Maas

I am honored to receive the TED Prize, but it's not about me; it's about our field - and the thousands of men and women around the world, particularly in the Middle East, who are defending and protecting sites. — Sarah Parcak

I remember this scene because it was embarrassing to live through it, and because remembering it is a way of knowing that I am half-true to my beliefs when the time comes. I sit silently defending them and I don't sell them out, but I put on a face that lets people think I'm on the winning team, that I'm laughing along with them instead of just standing among them. I save the best parts for myself and savor them in silence. Number three, power of flight. Number four, marauder. Enough vision to really see something. A stack of gold coins and a ledger. People want all kinds of things out of life, I knew early on. — John Darnielle

Here you had John McCain and Lindsey Graham in a very principled way standing up and defending Barack Obama. You had people like Gene Robinson and a lot of other liberals, who said, and this I personally agree with, however flawed Rand Paul was as a messenger, we need a debate about this. The administration has not been forthcoming enough about its drone policy. — E. J. Dionne

A master drives you toward the substance so that you will stop defending and protecting the forms. — Richard Rohr

There is a circularity here I do not doubt. I am defending the Bible by the Bible. Circularity of a kind is unavoidable when one seeks to defend an ultimate standard of truth, for one's defense must itself be accountable to that standard. — John M. Frame

Numb, I took the perfectly browned puff. Okay. Let me see if I have this right. Al provokes me into defending myself. I nearly kill him. Then Newt tries to kill me, thinking I'm Ku'Sox. Al stops her, saving my life. And now we're all going to have s'mores together? — Kim Harrison

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance. — Edmund Burke

The only way, they argued, to prevent a revolution was to rule Russia with an iron hand. This meant defending the autocratic principle, the unchecked powers of the police, the hegemony of the nobility, and the moral domination of the Church, against the liberal and secular challenges of the urban-industrialize order. — Orlando Figes

This way of life is worth defending. — George W. Bush

Let's see
a prince defending your honor with his vast vocabulary and political competency
okay, maybe. But a rogue defending you with fists and bladed weaponry? No contest there! — Marcia Lynn McClure

Never allow dogmatic interpretations of Karma to keep you from defending what is right or just. You must accept the reality that on occasion, you may very well be the proper instrument of this cosmic force. — Gary Hopkins

Defending evil acts is also evil, All who commit this deed should know By defending evil you make yourself part of it You cause evilness to proliferate and grow — Ruchir Gupta

I hope that nothing ever wussifies me to deny my own personal beliefs. Brainwashed wussies have been taught that standing up for yourself and defending your personal point of view makes you a close-minded hate monger. One must also be respectful of dissenting belief while supporting their own. — Brad Stine

Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications. — Sue Grafton

We cannot control the mind by trying to force it to be peaceful or positive. Many have attempted this using a plethora of methods throughout the ages, but it simply does not work. Trying to fight the human mind is like walking into a lion's den empty-handed and believing that you have a realistic chance of defending yourself. — Christopher Dines

I went mad before he did, you killed everything in me. Kiss me,will you. Stop defending yourself. — Michael Ondaatje

Also, as a rule of thumb, if you find yourself defending your inalienable right to make someone else feel like garbage, you're on the wrong side of the argument. — Rich Burlew

If someone hates you so much that they try to hurt you, defending yourself is not being aggressive, it is doing what's necessary. — Charles F. Glassman

Forgiveness was work, Eduardo told victims' families
but so, then, was love, and deciding what was right, and defending it. Recusing yourself from judgment so you won't be tainted by the aggressor's sin is the same as turning away from empathy so you won't be touched by the victim's pain. — Jennifer DuBois

You can win no battles by defending yourself. — Katherine Lampe

You will never be more than a common Christian until you give up your own interest and cease defending yourself. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

The Europeans must now honor their commitments. That is the position that France is defending. — Francois Fillon

Girl, you're going to be all right. You haven't forgotten the essentials. You know about defending yourself. All you have to do now is remember ... sometimes you have to defend yourself from yourself. — Maya Angelou

I think that if you get too close to the character, if you do too much historical research, you may find yourself defending your view of a character against the author's view, and I think that's terribly dangerous. — Tim Curry

I'd learned long ago you had to block out the rush of regrets that followed the adrenaline dip after a fight. Otherwise the loop of thoughts could pull you under. Did you just kill someone? Or was it a monster, plain and simple? Did that make you a monster? Was it murder if you were defending yourself? Was it a war and were we just soldiers trying to survive?
I preferred the adrenaline rush. (Quinn) — Alyxandra Harvey

When Israelis in the occupied territories now claim that they have to defend themselves, they are defending themselves in the sense that any military occupier has to defend itself against the population they are crushing. You can't defend yourself when you're militarily occupying someone else's land. That's not defense. Call it what you like, it's not defense. — Noam Chomsky

You need to remember that you are worth defending. You need to have courage, in the moment of attack, to take action. You might not like those actions. Hurting someone else doesn't come naturally to most of us. But in that moment, you need to remember that you have a God-given right to defend yourself and do it unflinchingly. — Scarlett Cole

There are two ways of defending a castle; one by shutting yourself up in it, and guarding every loop-hole; the other by making it an open centre of operations from which all the surrounding country may be subdued. Is not the last the truest safety? — Phillips Brooks

She looks at me out of the side of her uncovered eye. Chess, Zombie: defending yourself from the move that hasn't happened yet. Does it matter that he doesn't light up through our eyepieces? That he missed us when he could have taken us own? If two possibilities are equally probable but mutually exclusive, which one matters the most? Which one do you bet your life on? — Rick Yancey

To reject revelational epistemology is to commit yourself to defending the truth of autonomous epistemology. — Greg L. Bahnsen

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions. — Vaclav Havel

While the bodies of young children are usually relaxed and flexible, if experiences of fear are continuous over the years, chronic tightening happens. Our shoulders may become permanently knotted and raised, our head thrust forward, our back hunched, our chest sunken. Rather than a temporary reaction to danger, we develop a permanent suit of armor. We become, as Chogyam Trungpa puts it, "a bundle of tense muscles defending our existence." We often don't even recognize this armor because it feels like such a familiar part of who we are. But we can see it in others. And when we are meditating, we can feel it in ourselves - the tightness, the areas where we feel nothing. — Tara Brach

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it. — Thomas Hardy

George W. Bush did an incredible job in the presidency, defending us from freedom. — Rick Perry

You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself. — Richard M. Nixon

Not one of the orthodox ministers dare preach what he thinks if he knows a majority of his congregation think otherwise. He knows that every member of his church stands guard over his brain with a creed, like a club, in his hand. He knows that he is not expected to search after the truth, but that he is employed to defend the creed. Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment. — Robert G. Ingersoll

Fighting for freedom" is a myth. There's only freedom in uniting. You're not really free with an, "Us vs Them" mentality; because you are constantly defending yourself. And in fighting, there's no time for freedom. — Jason Daniel Chaplin

Everybody wants to defeat the defending champs. — Victor Cruz

Would that I could die, reduce myself to nothing, leave a glorious name to my country, die in the cause of defending it against a foreign invasion and afterwards the sun will shine on my body like a permanent sentinel in these ocean rocks! — Jose Rizal

I had no idea, however, that in Pennsylvania, the cradle of toleration and freedom of religion, it [fanaticism] could have arisen to the height you describe. This must be owing to the growth of Presbyterianism. The blasphemy of the five points of Calvin, and the impossibility of defending them, render their advocates impatient of reasoning, irritable, and prone to denunciation. — Thomas Jefferson

In this night too, in this night of his mortal eyes into which he was now descending, love and danger were again waiting ...
a murmur of glory and hexameters, of men defending a temple the gods will not save, and of black vessels searching the sea for a beloved isle;
the murmor of the Odysseys and Iliads it was his destiny to sing and leave echoing concavely in the memory of man.
These things we know, but not those he felt descending into the last shade of all. — Jorge Luis Borges

I think mothers get a raw deal in American culture, so I've been defending them. I have three daughters, and I know that as they become mothers, they got a lot more gentle towards me! — Tyne Daly

More and more political analysts and weak-kneed politicians are advising the historically pro-life Republican Party to abandon its pro-life stance for political gain. My first response is that if you cannot trust a party on the value of defending human life, how can you trust it on issues like marginal tax rates? — Gary Bauer

October 1976 was the penultimate performance of Bench's Hall of Fame career. All the early success and awards and accolades thrown in his direction had prepared him for this moment - when the Big Red Machine became a dynasty by defending it's World Championship from the season before. — Tucker Elliot

I'm not interested in defending the position of those who already have money, power and privilege. — Michael Gove

The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his life. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Unless strategy evaluation is performed seriously and systematically, and unless strategists are willing to act on the results, energy will be used up defending yesterday. — Peter Drucker

Why should I bother defending myself," Nesta said with lethal cold, "to a male who is so puffed up on his own sense of importance there's barely enough space in the room for his enormous head? — Sarah J. Maas

His voice is soft, his words meant for my ears only. "Until you start standing up for yourself, I'm going to keep defending you. — Kata Cuic

The great laws of the moral world do not vary, however different, under different dispensations, may be the authoritative enunciation of truth, or the means of propagating and defending it. — Henry Parry Liddon

I'm not defending what Cory Booker said. I'm saying I understand why he has to kiss the asses of the rich people on Wall Street, because there's no other way to keep his city afloat. — Bill Maher

We live in a culture in which intelligence is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying. — Susan Sontag

Science and its practice are no longer free and willing today but instead are constantly terrorized by research funding gravy trains and group thinking. This is why science needs defending and it takes courage to cleanse science from those cancerous elements and to bring her forward in its rightful place again. I am humbled and honored by this recognition. — Willie Soon

But I - and I just think it's very - one of the problems of defending the extraordinary principle of freedom of speech is that you have to defend freedom of speech for people like that too. — Salman Rushdie

By defending my bubble bath, he signaled the end of his reign as a free man. Damn — R.J. Blain

You. What is the moral difference, if
any, between the soldier and the civilian?"
"The difference," I answered carefully, "lies in the field of civic
virtue. A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body
politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life.
The civilian does not. — Heinlein Robert A.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice. — G.K. Chesterton

I think that "Arabs coming out in droves" is so violative Jewish values that non-Jews admire so much about Jewish people throughout history, of welcoming the stranger, of standing up for the outsider, of defending the marginalized. This was classic us against them. This was the narrowest and meanest of politics, to which Jews, sadly and tragically, around the world have been subjected to. — Mark Shields

We are not the personalities that our egos are so valiantly defending. Our personalities are simply the result of our current programming. — Ken Keyes Jr.

We've witnessed a fire sale of American liberties at bargain basement prices, in return for the false promise of more security ... The America being designed right now won't resemble the America we've been defending ... The danger isn't that Big Brother may storm the castle gates. The danger is that Americans don't realize that he is already inside the castle walls. — Wayne LaPierre

Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism; it has again and again in the past repressed fanatical and cruel exaggerations of asceticism. Catholicism is not mere mysticism; it is even now defending human reason against the mere mysticism of the Pragmatists. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Of all our feelings the only one which really doesn't belong to us is hope. Hope belongs to life, it's life itself defending itself. Etcetera. — Julio Cortazar

The reality is that while heliocentrism was discussed and often accepted within Catholic circles - it was effectively the only place where it could be - the more traditional view of the solar system still prevailed even among leading scientists. So it's hardly surprising that Galileo's Catholic judges had difficulty accepting his views, especially when they saw themselves as defending scientific orthodoxy and were supported in this by the scientific establishment. — Michael Coren

I always try to attack. While I'm on the offensive, my opponent can think of nothing but defending. — Marcelo Garcia