Denial The Defense Quotes & Sayings

As an artist, it's been clear that the price of art has nothing to do with you, it has to do with an idea of what the market will tolerate. — Liam Gillick

I see how you look at me," spits the hateful man. He thinks we look upon him with the evil eye when we are not looking at him that way at all. We are just looking at him. It's because he can't accept the hate inside of himself that he projects it onto us. — Kate McGahan

Denial of one's need for others is the most common type of defense against bonding. If people come from a situation, whether growing up or later in life, where good, safe relationships were not available to them, they learn to deny that they even want them. Why want what you can't have? They slowly get rid of their awareness of the need. — Henry Cloud

Denial is a strong if imperfect defense. — Tom Brokaw

In our commitment to raise healthy, conscious children and create a healthy world, it is hard to understand how people can choose to spend money for something that not only does not work, but poisons humans and the environment. — Gabriel Cousens M.D.

The foundation is an aggressive, well-financed p.r. machine adept at manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents. With a budget of $750,000 a year from members and outside supporters, the foundation's reach far exceeds its actual membership of about 3,000. The Freyds and the members know who we are, but the press knows less than it realizes about who they are, what drives them, or why they've been so successful. — Mike Stanton

In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.' — Peter Benchley

A defense strategy favored by many "spiritual" people is an elaborate form of denial, an assertion that the individual has "gone beyond" the shadow qualities of sexuality, anger, passion, desire, and self-interest. Many religions cater exclusively to this strategy. Priests, ministers, gurus, and "enlightened masters" who adopt a posture of transcendent superiority have great appeal to people with similar defense systems, who are able to escape their personal confrontations by identifying as members of an elite, 'enlightened' group. — Starhawk

I'm no genius, but I'm a damn good football coach. — Bear Bryant

If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would oherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person's actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms. It's a no-win situation. It's a death penalty really. — Dennis Lehane

Sorrow comes with so many defense mechanisms. You have your shock, your denial, your getting wasted, your cracking jokes, and your religion. You also have the old standby catchall
the blind belief in fate, the whole "things happening for a reason" drill.
But my personal favorite defense has always been anger, with its trusty offshoots of self-righteous indignation, bitterness, and resentment. — Emily Giffin

Consider whether fulfillment of the goal you have chosen will constitute success. What is success? If you possess health and wealth, but have trouble with everybody (including yourself), yours is not a successful life. Existence becomes futile if you cannot find happiness. When wealth is lost, you have lost a little; when health is lost, you have lost something of more consequence; but when peace of mind is lost, you have lost the highest treasure. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Who makes the fairest show means most deceit. — Pericles

Dickens' hypocrites are the prime beneficiaries of his inventive genius. The heroes and heroines have no imagination. We could scrap all the solemn parts of his novels without impairing his status as a writer. But we could not remove Mrs. Gamp or Pecksniff or Bounderby without maiming him irreparably. — John Carey

The most common emotional defense is avoidance (an ineffective coping skill for any stressor) as expressed through denial (e.g., "That wasn't really bad, I barely remember it"). — Brian Luke Seaward

By practice men can bring even the heart under control, until it will just beat at will, slowly, or quickly, or almost stop. Nearly every part of the body can be brought under control. — Swami Vivekananda

It's good to see you, little one." He (Uncle Eddie) scanned her short skirt. "I only wish I were not seeing quite so much of you. — Ally Carter

They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened
Exodus (1960) screenplay — Dalton Trumbo

Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization. — Zbigniew Brzezinski

I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth. — Anonymous

DENIAL
Defense mechanism in which the existence of unpleasant realities is disavowed; refers to keeping out of conscious awareness any aspects of external reality that, if acknowledged, would produce anxiety. — Benjamin James Sadock

Denial is a defense mechanism, all about self-preservation. — Eric Jerome Dickey

It was so much easier to be loved than to have to do any of the desperate work of loving. — Patrick Ness

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail. JUDITH LEWIS HERMAN Trauma and Recovery — Jon Krakauer

The central mechanism of the avoidance mechanism of PTSD is the ego defense of denial — Frank M. Ochberg

Actually, nothing hurts like hearing the word slut, unless it is hearing the word rape dropped about carelessly. Again, a word I wouldn't have thought much about, except that when I was in high school a girl gave her senior speech on her best friend's rape. She ended not with an appear for women's rights or self defense, but by begging us to consider our language. We use the word 'rape' so casually, for sports, for a failed test, to spice up jokes. 'The test raped me.' 'His smile went up to justifiable rape.' These references confer casualness upon the word, embedding it into our culture, stripping it of shock value, and ultimately numb us to the reality of rape. — Christine Stockton

The second trait of narcissism in which asceticism plays a role is blankness. "If only I could feel" - in this formula the self-denial and self-absorption reach a perverse fulfillment. Nothing is real if I cannot feel it, but I can feel nothing. The defense against there being something real outside the self is perfected, because, since I am blank, nothing outside me is alive. In therapy the patient reproaches himself for an inability to care, and yet this reproach, seemingly so laden with self-disgust, is really an accusation against the outside. For the real formula is, nothing suffices to make me feel. Under cover of blankness, there is the more childish plaint that nothing can make me feel if I don't want to, and hidden in the characters of those who truly suffer because they go blank faced with a person or activity they always thought they had desired, there is the secret, unrecognized conviction that other people, or other things as they are, will never be good enough. — Richard Sennett

The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It's called Denial. — Dan Brown

If one must be rejected, one succeed, make him my lord within whose faithful breast is fixed my image, and who loves me best. — John Dryden

It is a good thing to proceed in order and to establish propositions. This is the way to gain ground and to progress with certainty. — Gottfried Leibniz

Basic research is to work at the very edge, the very border of, of knowledge, and move that border forward. You look and look for new secrets, and you don't know where it's going to lead you. — Fred Kavli

Denial is a useful defense mechanism until it's not. — Rosalind Kaplan