Deflect Quotes & Sayings

We're angry about this, upset about that, but who has the time to do anything anymore? There are those reports to report on, memos to remember, e-mails to deflect or delete. They bury us like snow. — Mark Slouka

I kept finding the same anguish, the same doubt; a self-contempt that neither irony nor intellect seemed able to deflect. Even DuBois's learning and Baldwin's love and Langston's humor eventually succumbed to its corrosive force, each man finally forced to doubt art's redemptive power, each man finally forced to withdraw, one to Africa, one to Europe, one deeper into the bowels of Harlem, but all of them in the same weary flight, all of them exhausted, bitter men, the devil at their heels. — Barack Obama

Our fielders have to catch a lot of balls, or at least deflect them to someone who can. — Dan Quisenberry

Because I was a shy and awkward child, I used humour to deflect attention. It was a controlling mechanism. Because I could use it to control my image.
Catherine Tate — Catherine Tate

Mayor Walmsley is using the typical Jim Crow manipulation tactics to deflect the blame and guilt. He's a classic racist politician with an ulterior motive," says Ora. — Shaune Bordere

I saw that, although they were at the mercy of the sweltering heat, or the pains of aging or poverty, they could tolerate these because their faith gave them the hope of being united in spirit with a supernatural presence.

I still denied that presence. My denial, I was realizing, was my armor; it allowed me to deflect a barrage of difficult questions. But it didn't answer those questions. It protected me from charlatans, yes, but it didn't fill my emptiness or give me direction. Doubt served a purpose, but it also prevented me from trusting anyone or anything. Without trust, how could I ever be happy? — Visakha Dasi

True, we can learn much from observation of the failure of others without having to personally suffer the same pain, but the character and memory of the wisdom gained may be more acute and long-lasting from our own personal failures. Even worse is the generational fear of failure prevalent in our culture, resulting from parents carefully programming their offspring as young as three to participate in activities intended to cultivate intellectual and sports prowess which in their design do not allow for failure. Before children can feel the pain of their mistakes, the parents intervene and deflect the taking of personal responsibility by the child. We pay for it so they do not have to. This is the most dangerous thing we can do for them. — Kevin R. Anderson

Any time one person makes an effort to contact a deeper part of him or herself, balance his or her emotions, and deflect the stress momentum, others benefit. As more individuals learn to maintain their poise and balance and refrain from adding to the incoherence around them, they help to counterbalance the frequency of stress — Howard Martin

I think everybody is covering their [posteriors] with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt. — Sandra Bernhard

He doesn't understand why Harry is doing this to him, why Harry is trying to pull him apart. He doesn't understand how Harry has seen past his carefully crafted display. Louis has got smoke and mirrors down to a science, he knows how to deflect and he knows how to act and he's managed to keep people at arms length so nobody would ever question how the magic works. He's got his relationship with Zayn and Liam down to an art, how to give enough so that he doesn't have to lie to them, but able to keep them from knowing how close he is to the edge. Yet here is Harry, ready to unravel everything Louis has sewn together. — Tothemoonmydear

I want no presidency; I want to do my duty. No denunciations here, or out of this House, can deflect me a single inch from going directly at what I aim, and that is, the good of the country. I have always acted upon it, and I will always act upon it. — John C. Calhoun

A vision of cultural homogeneity that seeks to deflect attention away from or even excuse the oppressive, dehumanizing impact of white supremacy on the lives of black people by suggesting black people are racist too indicates that the culture remains ignorant of what racism really is and how it works. It shows that people are in denial. Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks (they could have such feelings and leave us alone) but because it is a system that promotes domination and subjugation? — Bell Hooks

Well, suppose we use our brains. We see things solid. Solidities are important to us in nature. In solidities, there are measures that greatly affect us. There are rhythms in the ins and outs of form. Music, the forest and to many the most impressive of arts deals in measures which seem to go in every direction. They combine, they move together, they deflect and they oppose. Music is a structure of highly mathematical measures. According to the selection and relative value of these measures the music is great or small in its effect on us. — Robert Henri

To "know thyself" must mean to know the malignancy of one's own instincts and to know, as well, one's power to deflect it. — Karl A. Menninger

Humor can bring people under the tent. And a good joke can deflect some of the intensity surrounding a serious subject. — Ted Danson

Some of us are blessed, or cursed, with a dream, and have to bare claw and fang to claim it. To anyone with a diehard dream I want to say: Put aside all the kneading and fretting. Choose your trail. Jump. Watch a moose as it paws through a great depth of snow to get to the antelope bitterbrush underneath (you want to grow that kind of persistence). Deflect naysayers for now; they'll come around in the end. Be open to the sturdy graces that show up. Welcome friends, regardless of species. Beware of trappings; they tend to transmute into traps. Trust thyself. — Mary Beth Baptiste

Deflect, Delegate, Defer or just Do it! — Mark Guido

Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes. — Murray Bookchin

The further one gets from 1912, the more frequently whites have tried to deflect attention away from the county's long history of bigotry by pointing to a specific group: the Ku Klux Klan. It's easy to understand the appeal of such an argument, since it exonerates the ordinary 'people of the county' from wrongdoing during the expulsions and implies that they themselves were the victims of an invasion by hooded, cross-burning white supremacists. The only trouble is that in the America of 1912, there was no such thing as the KKK. — Patrick Phillips

The only difference between comedy and drama is that, in comedy, I'm going to utilize the tool of creating laughter to deflect discomfort and, in drama, I won't use a tool, but we're going to actually deal with the discomfort and see what comes out of it. — Romany Malco

Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

You can't argue with a river, it isgoing to flow.You can dam it up?put it to useful purposes?deflect it, but you can't argue with it. — Dean Acheson

Habit enables us to cling to the familiar, to the self we think we know with a persistence almost irresistible. An anodyne for the terror of the unknown, it effectively keeps us from knowing, and is fatal in itself. Habit is a fiction the organism requires to dim perception. It screens us from the world, and from the true world of the self. Habit - no matter how intense the suffering it causes - is the last thing the personality will give up. It is arming itself against danger. The weapons may be more painful to use than the pain they seek to deflect. No matter. Habit allows us to live - by which Proust means it allows us to exist while it simultaneously compels us to miss Life. — Howard Moss

I felt him move and turned my head to deflect his kiss so that it landed on the side of my jaw instead of my mouth. It shimmered there briefly like some iridescent, impossible butterfly. — Alexis Hall

There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible. — Auberon Waugh

I don't want to be the embarrassment of the galaxy to have had the power to deflect an asteroid, and then not and end up going extinct. We'd be the laughingstock of the aliens of the cosmos if that were the case. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

With a cloak of naturalized rationalism, scholars can deflect our attention from the power effected in their theory-making.

-- Randall Styers, Making Magic, p. 23 — Randall Styers

If he had unlimited money at his disposal, he might go into the wilds somewhere and shoot big game. I never know what the big game have done to deserve it, but they do help to deflect the destructive energies of some of our social misfits. — Hector Hugh Munro

The worst tragedy of sin isn't that it produced bad behavior, but that it produced the idea that bad behavior is strong enough to deflect love. — D.R. Silva

I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many. — Thomas Jefferson

You don't have to be a writer, though, to know that making fun of yourself is a good way to deflect being made fun of. Like many people, I am hypercritical about myself so that I beat the haters to the punch. When I acknowledge my foibles first, no one else can use them against me. I've taken away everyone else's power to make me feel less about myself by doing it first. — Jen Lancaster

She is opinionated, as most of us are, but you won't find yourself impaled on her arguments; she doesn't charge at you as some people do. What [she] does is walk slowly and steadily into a conversational battle, somehow managing to deflect all incoming targets until she is standing in your corner with her flag dug firmly into the ground. I think it comes from the deep-seated confidence she possesses in her core. I think it is the powerful combination of encouraged individualism and a strong family unit. — Carrie Adams

One of the functions that things like professional sports play, in our society and others, is to offer an area to deflect people's attention from things that matter, so that the people in power can do what matters without public interference. — Noam Chomsky

Those who make uncritical observations or fraudulent claims lead us into error and deflect us from the major human goal of understanding how the world works. It is for this reason that playing fast and loose with the truth is a very serious matter. — Carl Sagan

The invention of gunpowder and the constant improvement of firearms are enough in themselves to show that the advance of civilization has done nothing practical to alter or deflect the impulse to destroy the enemy, which is central to the very idea of war. — Carl Von Clausewitz

A stunning meditation on the power of escape, and on the cat-and-mouse contest the self plays to deflect its own guilt. — Ethan Gilsdorf

Michael Faraday demonstrated that if you push a magnet through a coil of wire, an electric current flows. Conversely, if you pass an electric current through a wire it can deflect a nearby magnetic compass. From this, Faraday deduced that electric currents create magnetic fields, and moving magnetic fields create electric currents. Thus was electromagnetism discovered, unifying electricity and magnetism. — Andrew Thomas

Metaphors are tiny saviors leading the way out of sentimentality, small disciples of Pound, urging "Say it new! Say it new!" It's hard for emotion to feel flat if its language is suitably novel, to feel excessive if its rendering is suitably opaque. Metaphors translate emotion into surprising and sublime language, but they also help us deflect and diffuse the glare of revelation. — Leslie Jamison

Something to remember when fighting me, Sardothien," he panted. The sun caught in his golden-brown eyes. "Hmm?" she grunted, lunging to deflect his newest attack. "I don't lose." He grinned at her, and before she could comprehend the words, something cut into her feet and - She had the sickening feeling of falling. She gasped as her spine collided with marble, the rapier flying from her hand. Chaol pointed his blade at her heart. "I win," he breathed. — Sarah J. Maas

Habaneros have a great fruity flavor, but the challenge is that you have to deflect the heat in order to taste the flavor. If you don't, you're dead. They should really have a warning sign on them. Deflect the habanero's heat by pairing it with sweet food. — Bobby Flay

For a Christian to return to a Jewish territoriality is to deny fundamentally what has transpired in the incarnation. It is to deflect appropriate devotion to the new place where God has appeared in residence,
namely, in his Son. This explains why the New Testament applies to the person of Christ religious language formerly devoted to the Holy Land or the Temple. He is the new spatiality, the new locale where God may be met. — Gary M. Burge

I've been deflecting Calypso's blushes all day. I don't have the energy to deflect yours," he said through clenched teeth. "So either block or strip." -- The Twelfth House ~ The Elementals Book I — T.L. McCallan

Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father's temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic. — Han Kang

Clark Kent gives up his powers just to have sexual intercourse with Lois Lane in a glittery bed. Who'd make such a stupid swap? If you could fly? Deflect nuclear missiles into space? Turn back time by spinning the planet in reverse? Sexual intercourse can't be that good. — David Mitchell

Finally, please remember this. If you EVER need something that you can stand behind, something to help you to take on and deflect all of the hatred of this often cruel world, you will ALWAYS have Black Veil Brides. — Andy Biersack

He who is called to and set apart for the work of an evangelist is to devote his time and effort single-mindedly to this God-given task. He is not to be distracted by anything likely to deflect him from this. Persecution will not weaken his resolution. The persuasion of others will fall on deaf ears. Only the clear leading of God will cause him to change his ministry. — Billy Graham

Once again, President Clinton is using American troops to deflect attention from his record of lies, distortions, obstructions of justice and abuse of power. — Ron Paul

Michelangelo is celebrated for the Sistine Chapel; in fact, he supervised a dozen unacknowledged assistants. Even one of the greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, chose to deflect credit for his compositions, writing at the bottom of each of his pieces "SDG," for Soli Deo Gloria - to God alone the glory. By — Twyla Tharp

Whatever outrageous dream keeps flowing across your mind, allow it to live inside you. Don't deflect it, diminish it, invalidate it or come up with some excuse for why it can't happen. This will allow it to explain itself to you - why it's there, what it means, and what if anything you should do about it. — Marianne Williamson

When women age into their power, no wind can upset them, no hand turn aside their knowledge; no fact can deflect their point of view. — Louise Erdrich

Our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after is has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that the most important factor in determining that arrow's destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow. — Jeffrey R. Holland

For a decade, makers of AIDS medicines had rejected the idea of lowering prices in poor countries for fear of eroding profits in rich ones. The position required a balancing act, because the companies had to deflect attacks on the global reach of their patents, which granted exclusive marketing rights for antiretroviral drugs. — Barton Gellman

Reflect or Deflect
The person in the mirror can read your mind. Can you make eye contact?
Kamil Ali — Kamil Ali

Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force. — Marshall McLuhan

No bribes. Nothing that passes under the roof of a temple Or under the roof of the mouth, can appease heaven's anger Or deflect its aim. — Aeschylus

This was not the way to think things out for himself, and that was what he had to do. Take each piece of happening that, by itself, was just a meaningless hurt and find its place in the big picture. Do it over and over and over, because that way one came to understand things, and they hurt less. He had ... come to understand a lot and the knowledge he now held within himself was not made of sharp, separate hurts. It was just one big, heavy sadness. It made him stand very straight, braced against the weight in his heart proudly ... Each bit of knowledge he had gathered, each new hurt he had mastered, made him lift his chin a little higher, hold himself more closely knit and proud, because he had found out all by himself that his pride could be used as a shield to soften and deflect each new blow. His proud, strong body, his still, calm face, was the shield; he had no other weapon against the monsters in this dark tunnel of time that was so much like the shivery, scary part of a story. — Kate Seredy

All I do is have fun. When I'm not working, it's about making people laugh. I love making jokes about things. Even when someone's mad at me, I'll deflect anger with humor. My days are filled with laughter. If I'm not laughing, I'm not happy. — Drew Fuller

Any man of reasonable intelligence can make money if that's what he wants. Mostly it's women or clothes or admiration he really wants and they deflect him. — John Steinbeck

Alec said you do that," said Jace. "Deflect questions about yourself with jokes. — Cassandra Clare

Have you seen interviews with the young John Lennon or Bob Dylan, when the reporter tries to ask about their personal selves? The boys deflect these queries with withering sarcasm. Why? Because Lennon and Dylan know that the part of them that writes the songs is not "them," not the personal self that is of such surpassing fascination to their boneheaded interrogators. Lennon and Dylan also know that the part of themselves that does the writing is too sacred, too precious, too fragile to be redacted into sound bites for the titillation of would-be idolators (who are themselves caught up in their own Resistance). — Steven Pressfield

There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. — Wendell Berry

Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don't worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self-sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.
Strong girls may protect themselves by being quiet and guarded so that their rebellion is known by only a few trusted others. They may be cranky and irascible and keep critics at a distance so that only people who love them know what they are up to. They may have the knack of shrugging off the opinions of others or they may use humor to deflect the hostility that comes their way. — Mary Pipher

Self-recognition is necessary to know one's road, but, knowing the road, the price of the mistakes and perils is worth paying. The following of that road will be all the discipline one needs. Discipline does not mean being molded by outside forces, but sticking to one's road against the forces that would deflect or bury the soul. People speak of finding one — Randolph Bourne

Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn't come out. — Edgar D. Mitchell

The only way I could get comfortable around people was to make them laugh. I was an obedient girl, and humor was my one form of rebellion. I used comedy to deflect. Like, 'Hey, check out my zit!' - you know, making fun of yourself before someone else has a chance to. — Tina Fey

LAW 46
Never Appear Too Perfect
Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity. — Robert Greene

I was crazy about goal keeping. In Russia and the Latin countries, that gallant art had been always surrounded with a halo of singular glamour. Aloof, solitary, impassive, the crack goalie is followed in the streets by entranced small boys. He vies with the matador and the flying ace as an object of thrilled adulation. His sweater, his peaked cap, his kneeguards, the gloves protruding from the hip pocket of his shorts, set him apart from the rest of the team. He is the lone eagle, the man of mystery, the last defender. Photographers, reverently bending one knee, snap him in the act of making a spectacular dive across the goal mouth to deflect with his fingertips a low, lightning-like shot, and the stadium roars in approval as he remains for a moment or two lying full length where he fell, his goal still intact. — Vladimir Nabokov

Here's some advice. Stay alive, says Haymitch, and then bursts out laughing. I exchange a look with Peeta before I remember that I'm having nothing more to do with him. I'm surprised to see the hardness in his eyes. He generally seems so mild.
'That's very funny,' says Peeta. Suddenly, he lashes out at the glass in Haymitch's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. 'Only not to us.'
Haymitch considers this a moment, then punches Peeta in the jaw, knocking him from his chair. When he turns back to reach for the spirits, I drive my knife into the table between his hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers. I brace myself to deflect his hit, but it doesn't come. Instead, he sits back and squints at us.
'Well, what's this?' says Haymitch. 'Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year? — Suzanne Collins

You know how often the turning down this street or that, the accepting or rejecting of an invitation, may deflect the whole current of our lives into some other channel. Are we mere leaves, fluttered hither and thither by the wind, or are we rather, with every conviction that we are free agents, carried steadily along to a definite and pre-determined end? — Arthur Conan Doyle

I decided to deflect her attitude by giving a long, Southern answer. I come from people who know how to draw things out. Annoy a Southerner, and we will drain away the moments of your life with our slow, detailed replies until you are nothing but a husk of your former self and that much closer to death. — Maureen Johnson

If you want to be a champion you cannot have any kind of an outside negative force coming in to deflect you. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Few doctrines throughout History have been able to eradicate hatred, most of them have simply tried to deflect it from one object to another: to the infidel, the foreigner, the apostate, the master, the slave, the father. Naturally, hatred is only called hatred when we see it in others; the hatred which is in ourselves bears a thousand different names. — Amin Maalouf

Indeed one of the best ways to deflect attacks is to make it look like they're succeeding. It's the software equivalent of playing dead. — Joel Spolsky

Hindsight has taught me that there is a ravenous, invisible twin haunting each of us. Despite "good works" and selfless sacrifice for noble causes, without unremitting vigilance, even tiny indulgences will betray high aims and deflect nourishment to this parasitic companion. Unfortunately, not even hindsight frees us from the consequences of such indulgence. Emmett — Peter Coyote

And each and every one, it seems, falls to stagnation, and in that stagnation evil men rise, through greed or lust for power. Like canker buds, they find their way in any government, slipping through seams in the well-intended laws, coaxing the codes to their advantage, finding their treasures and securing their well-being at the expense of all others, and ever blaming the helpless, who have no voice and no recourse. To the laborers they cry, "Beware the leech!" and the leech is the infirm, the elderly, the downtrodden. So do they deflect and distort reality itself to secure their wares, and yet, they are never secure, for this is the truest rhyme of history, that when the theft is complete, so will the whole collapse, and in that collapse will fall the downtrodden and the nobility alike. — R.A. Salvatore

I started out with nothing in the world but a kind of passion, a driving desire. I don't know where it came from, and I don't know why - or why I have been so stubborn about it that nothing could deflect me. But this thing between me and my writing is the strongest bond I have ever had - stronger than any bond or any engagement with any human being or with any other work I've ever done. — Katherine Anne Porter

We can sharply deflect the curve of HIV incidence. — Anthony Fauci

Respect for the faith of sincere believers cannot be allowed either to block or deflect the investigation of the historian. — Maxime Rodinson

Throughout an erratic campaign, Trump consistently blasted political correctness, blaming it for an extraordinary range of ills and using the phrase to deflect any and every criticism. — Moira Weigel

Rudeness is a means to attract attention, assert power, cover-up ineptitude, deflect personal insecurities, and intimidate meeker people. — Kilroy J. Oldster

No, I'm too busy trying to deflect your Power of Stupidity. But I don't think I'm strong enough. — Kami Garcia

And she'd also found Logan again. Now he was her ... what? New-old boyfriend? Lover? Skype buddy? Pen pal with benefits? Whatever his title, his e-mails filled her inbox. Sometimes he sent five a day, short and quipping. Other times he sent longer, more serious ones. She kept her tone light when she replied. That'd always been her MO - a joke, a jab. A way to deflect from what she was really feeling. A way to keep the nonstop ache of missing him from becoming too painful to survive. And honestly, what was there to say that would come close to what she felt? The moments they'd spent together before he'd shipped out on his latest naval tour had been the most peaceful she could remember - even with her anxiety about her dad. It'd been the first time she'd felt complete in a long time. And then, just like that, he was gone again. — Rob Thomas

But today I'm indifferent. And with this comes a glimmer of understanding: I can pick and choose what I absorb and what I deflect. This is how the color spectrum works: Some colors absorb light, while others deflect it, depending on where they are on the spectrum. Earlier in my life, when it came to hurtful words from my mother, I was more like an off-shade of brown, absorbing most of them. Now, with experience, wisdom, and a little more self-confidence, my spectrum is shifting. I'm making a choice to be less absorptive. And her comment... is one for which I choose to become pure white. — Katie Hafner

By concentrating our attention on the effect rather than the causes, we can avoid the laborious, nearly impossible task of trying to detect and deflect the many psychological influences on liking. — Robert Cialdini

NASA will send up a big sun shade that will be in orbit between the earth and sun and deflect 2 or 3 percent of the sunshine back into space. It would be cheaper than the international space station. — James Lovelock

His squirming turned to near seizures, and he swung his arms, smacking me across the cheek. Of course it was the hand with the brick. I saw stars and rolled over. If Rocket got shot at, maybe he could deflect it with his brick, like Wonder Woman. — Rhys Ford

In these times there is a powerful demarcation between the surface and the deep currents of human development. Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than they really are, are happening on the surface. But there is another and deeper change in progress. It is of long, steady persistent growth, very little affected and not at all disturbed by surface conditions. The artist of today should be alive to this deeper evolution on which all growth depends, has depended and will depend. On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the illustration of events, the strife between peoples. On the surface there is propaganda and there is the effort to force opinions. The deeper current carries no propaganda. The shock of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course. It is in search of fundamental principle; that basic principle of all, which in degree as it is apprehended points the way to beauty and order, and to the law of nature. — Robert Henri

The injunction to be nice is used to deflect criticism and stifle the legitimate anger of dissent. — Malcolm Gladwell

Does she make you laugh?" He thought about this. "She laughs a good deal when I'm about," he allowed. Did Colin Eversea really want to be laughed at rather than with his entire life? He was the most maddening person she'd ever met, but his humor contained angles; he used it both to deflect and persuade. And if one could see around it, one would see into vulnerability. — Julie Anne Long

There's so much impetus for change, there's so much desire to not have this oil economy continue, but it continues nonetheless. And people often assume that's because technology is not good enough, or there's no money being invested, or it's just not ready yet. It's none of that. It's actually a system of government and corporate behavior that work in collusion and lock step with one another to deflect any momentum toward true alternative energies. — Josh Tickell

Life wasn't about learning how to deflect the bad, but learning how to hunker down and weather it until it passed. I supposed ... no, I knew, it was the same way with love. — Nicole Williams

He raised his gloved hands skyward, still smiling. He was a hard man to insult, because I'd been trying. He had this sort of cheerful goodwill that seemed to deflect everything. Never trust people who smile constantly. They're either selling something or not very bright. Wren didn't strike me as stupid. Insult — Laurell K. Hamilton

Preaching the Word is the primary task of the Church, the primary task of the leaders of the Church, the people who are set in this position of authority; and we must not allow anything to deflect us from this, however good the cause, however great the need. — David Lloyd-Jones

Once in a while, I still witness occasionally sexist behavior and comments from men (which experience has taught me you should always deflect with humour rather than anger). Old habits die hard, after all, and it's unrealistic to expect dinosaurs to fall silent overnight. — Maelle Gavet

Form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. — Wendell Berry

The past is always waiting to entangle and deflect us. — Mason Cooley

Don't let anyone take your power by influencing what you do ... sure ask for advice when you are still deciding, but once you are sure what you want to go for, don't let anyone deflect you. It is YOUR choice to make and to follow through. — Jay Woodman

When it comes to dealing with a social movement, society has only two options: either it can address the members' grievances, thereby making the movement irrelevant, or it can deflect those grievances and further radicalise the movement. Or as Sidney Tarrow puts it, "actions that begin in the streets [can be] resolved in the halls of government or by the bayonets of the army. — Reza Aslan

Though Christians have long blamed the Jewish leaders for the death of Jesus, in fact, he was executed for a political crime, sedition. The charge against him, posted on a placard over his head on the cross, read, "King of the Jews" The early Christian community, eager to deflect negative attention from the Romans, muted the political nature of Jesus' crime and thereby
contributed to what has become a long, horrible history of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus and of persecuting them because of it. — Howard R. Greenstein

Clever deceivers rarely tell outright falsehoods. It's too risky. The art of deception is closely related to the magician's craft: it involves knowing how to draw attention to a harmless place, to deflect it away from the action. Deeply entrenched patterns of perceptual, emotional, and cognitive dispositions serve as instruments of deception. A skilled deceiver is an illusionist who knows how to manipulate the normal patterns of what is salient to their audience. He places salient markers - something red, something anomalous, something desirable - in the visual field, to draw attention just where he wants it. — Clancy Martin