Self Confrontation Quotes & Sayings

The cross stands as a mystery because it is foreign to everything we exalt- self over principle, power over meekness, the quick fix over the long haul, cover-up over confession, escapism over confrontation, conform over sacrifice, feeling over commitment, legality over justice, the body over the spirit, anger over forgiveness, man over God. — Ravi Zacharias

When there's a status quo, usually what shakes everybody up is some sort of military confrontation, at which point we all come running and screaming to pick up the pieces. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

The neurotic preoccupied with his symptom is led to believe that his central task is one of confrontation with his particular obsession or phobia. In a sense his neurosis allows him to take control of his destiny - to transform the whole of life's meaning into the simplified meaning emanating from his self-created world. — Ernest Becker

As more people have found the courage to break through shame and speak about woundedness in their lives, we are now subjected to a mean-spirited cultural response, where all talk of woundedness is mocked. The belittling of anyone's attempt to name a context within which they were wounded, were made a victim, is a form of shaming. It is psychological terrorism. Shaming breaks our hearts. All individuals who are genuinely seeking well-being within a healing context realize that it is important to that process not to make being a victim a stance of pride or a location from which to simply blame others. We need to speak our shame and our pain courageously in order to recover. Addressing woundedness is not about blaming others; however, it does allow individuals who have been, and are, hurt to insist on accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness. Constructive confrontation aids our healing. — Bell Hooks

A western buckaroo, I share his scorn for people who go camping by the book, relying on the authority of some half-assed assistant scoutmaster whose total experience outdoors probably consists of two overnight hikes and a weekend in the Catskills. But we have just had that confrontation. The one who goes by Pritchard's book is Sid's wife, and I am wary. It is not my expedition. I am a guest here. — Wallace Stegner

When rival worldviews are in play, it is not adaptation that is called for but confrontation: confrontation — John Piper

I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil. — William Styron

Does trying to understand the universe at all betray a lack of humility? I believe it is true that humility is the only just response in a confrontation with the universe, but not a humility that prevents us from seeking the nature of the universe we are admiring. If we seek that nature, then love can be informed by truth instead of being based on ignorance or self-deception. If a Creator God exists, would He or She or It or whatever the appropriate pronoun is, prefer a kind of sodden blockhead who worships while understanding nothing? Or would He prefer His votaries to admire the real universe in all its intricacy? I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. — Carl Sagan

But despite the scarcity of confrontation with whites in our neighborhood, race and racism permeated every aspect of our lives. Our parents taught us that in order to succeed, we 'had to be twice as good as white folks.' We were constantly being prepared to enter a world dominated by whites. — Junius Williams

God's chief way of acting is by persuasion and patience and long-suffering, not by coercion and stark confrontation. He acts by gentle solicitation and by sweet enticement. He always acts with unfailing respect for the freedom and independence that we possess. — Howard W. Hunter

Management," according to the neorealists, means maintaining the conflict as "a low intensity confrontation" - which means the loss of local, human lives, without any damage to the mediating superpower. — Noam Chomsky

The bed is now as public as the dinner table and governed by the same rules of formal confrontation. — Angela Carter

Our cross is the point of our unlikeness to the image of Christ, where we must die to self in order to be raised by God into wholeness of life in the image of Christ right there at that point.

So the process of being conformed to the image of Christ takes place at the points of our unlikeness to Christ, and the first step is confrontation. — M. Robert Mulholland Jr.

The untalented are more at ease in a society that gives them valid alibis for not achieving than in one where opportunities are abundant. In an affluent society, the alienated who clamor for power are largely untalented people who cannot make use of the unprecedented opportunities for self-realization, and cannot escape the confrontation with an ineffectual self. — Eric Hoffer

I do not think that having children - I have three teenagers - keeps you young. The reverse. It thrusts you into a full-frontal confrontation with your own all-too-obvious maturity. — Rachel Johnson

As the commercial confrontation between [free software] and software-that's-a-product becomes more fierce, patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here somewhere. — Eben Moglen

The almost Oriental politeness of the West Coast is one of its distinctive regional features, in marked contrast to the contentiousness of the East Coast ... So few human contacts in Los Angeles go unmediated by glass (either a TV screen or an automobile windshield), that the direct confrontation renders the participants docile, stunned, sweet. — Edmund White

Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees — Dee Remy

Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous. — Lillian Hellman

The role of race cannot be understated in an era of fervent social Darwinism. For decades the Balkans had enacted in microcosm the racial hatreds at great-power level. In consequence the Balkan states were likely, indeed expected, periodically to blow a head gasket over racial and religious differences and threaten a major confrontation by dragging their powerful sponsors into the local mess. — Paul Ham

I started photographing myself, and found that I could see portions of myself that I had never seen before. Since I face just my face in the mirror, I know pretty much what it's like. When I see a side-view I'm not used to it, and find it peculiar ... So, photographing myself and discovering unknown territories of my surface self causes an interesting psychological confrontation. — Lucas Samaras

I aspire to be the president of all Venezuelans. The message is clear. Venezuelans are fed up with confrontation, with division. — Henrique Capriles Radonski

When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, "Allahu Akbar," because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers. — Mohamed Atta

One of the most commonly overlooked spiritual practices is daring to be completely honest with everyone you encounter. Some may say others cannot handle their honesty, but true honesty is not a strategy or a weapon of any kind. It is the willingness to be open and absolutely transparent in sharing how any moment feels in your heart. It has nothing to do with confrontation, accusation, or any form of blame. True honesty is the willingness to stand completely exposed, allowing the world to do what it may, and say what it will, only so you may know who you are - beyond all ideas. — Matthew Kahn

He caught me neat, right on the fucking face and I took one step back and thought, you're not getting away with that you bastard! I was punching the piss out of him, he kept going down, but I didn't kick him, he'd had enough. I didn't put the boot in to a man older than myself. But this confrontation was out of the blue, out of the fucking blue. That's what I had to face. — Stephen Richards

For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul in an effort to survive. For others it means a serious personal life survey that ultimately forces the confrontation with the futility, anesthetics, and despair in their lives. — W. Scott Lineberry

In my view, success is earned externally by being better than other people. But character, that sort of unfakeable goodness, is earned by being better than you used to be. And it's about self-confrontation. — David Brooks

One of the most wonderful things about Pride and Prejudice is the variety of voices it embodies. There are so many different forms of dialogue: between several people, between two people, internal dialogue and dialogue through letters. All tensions are created and resolved through dialogue. Austen's ability to create such multivocality, such diverse voices and intonations in relation and in confrontation within a cohesive structure, is one of the best examples of the democratic aspect of the novel. In Austen's novels, there are spaces for oppositions that do not need to eliminate each other in order to exist. There is also space - not just space but a necessity - for self-reflection and self-criticism. Such reflection is the cause of change. We needed no message, no outright call for plurality, to prove our point. All we needed was to reach and appreciate the cacophony of voices to understand its democratic imperative. There was where Austen's danger lay. — Azar Nafisi

He had to learn that not giving at the right time was more compassionate than giving at the wrong time, and that fostering independence was more loving than taking care of people who could otherwise take care of themselves. He even had to learn that expressing his own needs, anger, resentments and expectations was every bit as necessary to the mental health of his family as his self-sacrifice, and therefore that love must be manifested in confrontation as much as in beatific acceptance. Gradually coming to realize how he infantilized his family, he began to make — M. Scott Peck

Change comes from confrontation. You have to be confronted or confront yourself. — Bryant McGill

It's always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches. — James Baldwin

Standing up for yourself doesn't always involve verbal confrontation. Sometimes it's about not wasting energy on people who are negative. — Sherry Argov

A clear look back on the Cold War's battlegrounds, along with a sense of relief that the world survived forty-five years of confrontation, evokes feelings of humility and regret. — John Lamberton Harper

The school of relationships is where you learn self-knowledge. I just don't know how you could learn it sitting alone in the desert on a rock by yourself. You have to see where you fail at it. And that confrontation with your own ability - "I was again not able to love" - those are the teachable moments. — Richard Rohr

Confrontation is better than speculations. — Sunday Adelaja

All of my life, when things got too difficult, I folded up the tent and went to bed. I couldn't stand a challenge ... I was terrified of confrontation. I was very laid-back, and just wouldn't get involved or fight back. — Phoebe Snow

Thinking, even when thinking is difficult, versus nonthinking Awareness, even when awareness is challenging, versus unawareness Clarity, whether or not it comes easily, versus obscurity or vagueness Respect for reality, whether pleasant or painful, versus avoidance of reality Respect for truth versus rejection of truth Independence versus dependence Active orientation versus passive orientation Willingness to take appropriate risks, even in the face of fear, versus unwillingness Honesty with self versus dishonesty Living in and being responsible to the present versus retreating into fantasy Self-confrontation versus self-avoidance Willingness to see and correct mistakes versus perseverance in error Reason versus irrationalism — Nathaniel Branden

We all have a dark side. Most of us go through life avoiding direct confrontation with that aspect of ourselves, which I call the shadow self. There's a reason why. It carries a great deal of energy. — Lorraine Toussaint

The public forum is not, of course, the most helpful place to conduct a profitable confrontation with one's parents. If we are to allow the feelings of childhood to be revived, we need an enlightened witness and not the pent-up, undigested hatred of formerly abused children who, as adults, totally identify with the perpetrators. To expose oneself defenselessly to public view while harboring such feelings from childhood can amount to a kind of self-inflicted punishment, something one seeks when, in spite of everything, one still feels guilty at having expressed the criticism and is prepared to accept hate reactions as a well deserved punishment. — Alice Miller

Contrary to English which has two liquid phonemes, Asian languages have one liquid consonant which causes Asian speakers to have difficulty in hearing and producing /L/ and /R/ accurately. When we examine the pictographic script we observe that the sickle tool is represented by a staff-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'L' and the head is represented by a head-shaped pictograph signaling the letter 'R'; it is as if the Asiatic culture got historically traumatized based on the cultural confrontation between the Aryan and Semitic traditions. If we look at Early Aramaic alphabet we observe that the 'R' looks like a serpent's head and 'L' looks like the sickle. If originally the script got developed from hieroglyphs, then it ought to operate in that same manner rather than being phonetically produced for example by the sound of cutting wheat for the letter 'R' as my friend Randy Simons suggested. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying "no" to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane. — Stefan Molyneux

There are limits to self-improvement. Inevitably you hit the point where what you are is, well, what you are, and all the teach-yourself videos and easy-to-use equipment on those creatinous home TV shopping things can no longer ward off you confrontation with your self. — Jessica Zafra

He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. When life opens up before you, when you don't really know death ... it's easy to promise yourself change. Keeping the lines hard, the parts of me separate, was what I knew, how I lived. — Adam Berlin

We're not going to save the monkey unless we can shed the monkey. And the greatest impetus, the greatest inspiration to the expression of our higher selves comes in the confrontation with psyche that occurs in the psychedelic experience. — Terence McKenna

The true use of Shakespeare or of Cervantes, of Homer or of Dante, of Chaucer or of Rabelais, is to augment one's own growing inner self. Reading deeply in the Canon will not make one a better or a worse person, a more useful or more harmful citizen. The mind's dialogue with itself is not primarily a social reality. All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one's own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one's confrontation with one's own mortality. W — Harold Bloom

Serpentining means trying to control a situation, backing out of it, pretending it's not happening, or maybe even pretending that you don't care. We use it to dodge conflict, discomfort, possible confrontation, the potential for shame or hurt, and/or criticism (self- or other-inflicted). Serpentining can lead to hiding out, pretending, avoidance, procrastination, rationalizing, blaming, and lying.
I have a tendency to want to serpentine when I feel vulnerable. If I have to make a difficult call, I'll try to script both sides of it. I'll convince myself that I should wait, I'll draft an e-mail while telling myself that it's better in writing, and I'll think of a million other things to do. I'll emotionally run back and forth until I'm exhausted. — Brene Brown

Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut. — Sidney Greenberg

You can guess this is how men have been handling Eva's hostility for her whole life. Just distract her. Get through the moment. Avoid confrontation. Run away. That's pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our own attention. Jacking off. Denial. — Chuck Palahniuk

I want to say that yes, it was worth it; that I could suffer through pain and torture for her and go through a lot more than what Puck and his friends are capable of, and I can do it for all of eternity; suffer, until she realizes how much I love her.
But she's gone before I can say any of it.
I wait till she's left.
And then I reach for my wallet.
Hidden inside one of the flaps is a piece of paper that barely conceals a razorblade. Its frayed edges still have my blood on them. The blood is from the previous cuts I've made and I carry it around like a trophy, like Dexter carries around his victims' blood on slides. I use that blade to give myself a cut and it starts bleeding. Right away, it feels as though the pressure that has been building inside me ever since that confrontation with Puck is lifted.
I feel free again. — Kady Hunt

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States. — Edward Said

By manipulating queuing, by manipulating expectation, you can lead people to a fundamental confrontation, not only with themselves, but with the Other. — Terence McKenna

Eternal beginner, starting over and over in a new place in new circumstances, with new languages, new people, a new commission. They had this in common: the continual rushed confrontation with change, the feeling of being hothoused, forced to bloom early, the exhausting exhilaration of doing the unreasonable not just adequately but well and with grace. — Mary Doria Russell

The feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. — Albert Camus

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

Some form of gnosis or immediacy is attached to all thinking as its root-form or primitive origination; every act of thinking has this passive derivation, this coming-into-being of thinking not out of nothing (as it likes to imagine) but out of some unthinkable something. But the most self-abstractivist or self-reductivist kind of thinking cannot tolerate even the notion (much less the traumatic experience or confrontation) of an incurable pathos, a weakness or blind-spot, within consciousness. The very idea is an insult to the autonomy or self-determinability of ego/will/reason. — Kenny Smith

Confront somebody with an issue before it becomes a conflict. Confrontation is not all bad. — Sunday Adelaja

If some nation says to us, 'You can have aid, but you have to end confrontation,' then I say, 'Go to hell with your aid.' — Sukarno

I guess I'm hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control, especially if I sense the dullness inside me get too heavy and thick, warning me that something is again approaching, creeping slowly towards my room, no figment of my imagination either but as tangible as you and I, never ceasing to scratch, waiting, perhaps for a word or an order or some other kind of sign to at last initiate this violent and by now inevitable confrontation - always as full of wrath as I am full of fear. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I'm interested in conflict and confrontation. — Thom Mayne

Not the comfort, but the confrontation and hardship, is the teacher of a great life. — Debasish Mridha

The necessity of reform mustn't be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: "Don't criticize, since you're not capable of carrying out a reform." That's ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn't have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, "this, then, is what needs to be done." It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn't have to lay down the law for the law. It isn't a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is. — Michel Foucault

We have a small faction, and they are a minority, who believe they are there to govern. Then there is the majority of us who believe that indeed we are there to govern but more importantly we are there to be an opposition to the Democratic philosophy and the only way to do that is through confrontation. — Tom DeLay

There are times when my passion for basketball led me into confrontations that I could have handled a lot better. I've always been too confrontational, especially when I know I'm right. — Bobby Knight

Consciousness permits us to develop the instruments of culture - morality and justice, religion, art, economics and politics, science and technology. Those instruments allow us some measure of freedom in the confrontation with nature. — Antonio Damasio

Don't let anger rule your life. Avoid confrontation. It's an imperfect world, and people make mistakes, even when they're trying to do their best. — Stan Hinden

I don't worry about superpower confrontation. You know, I lived through the Cold War days, and where everybody was worried about a Soviet Union armed to the teeth. I think we're going to get along fine with Russia, and I don't see them as internationally ambitious. — George H. W. Bush

I submit that the real reason we criticized and disliked Lynch's Laura's muddy bothness is that it required of us an empathetic confrontation with the exact same muddy bothness in ourselves and our intimates that makes the real world of moral selves so tense and uncomfortable, a bothness we go to the movies to get a couple hours' fucking relief from. — David Foster Wallace

They (i. e., the Pythagoreans ) did not advocate the free confrontation of conflicting points of view. Instead, like all orthodox religions, they practised a rigidity that prevented them from correcting their errors. — Carl Sagan

I got into direct confrontation with everybody I love. — Lauryn Hill

The West will continue to conquer peoples, even if it means a confrontation with another civilization, Islam, firmly entrenched where it was 1,400 years ago. — Silvio Berlusconi

Sitting there, watching the shades of evening settle slowly on the drab little town, it seemed to me that nothing but blind blundering vengeance, howsoever camouflaged, awaits all those who dare to step out of its stifling confines. It is a confrontation whose outcome is as certain as the end of solitary boats beating against a maelstrom. — Arun Joshi

I define poetry as celebration and confrontation. When we witness something, are we responsible for what we witness? That's an on-going existential question. Perhaps we are and perhaps there's a kind of daring, a kind of necessary energetic questioning. Because often I say it's not what we know, it's what we can risk discovering. — Yusef Komunyakaa

I bored myself to tears with the daytime television drama of confrontation (I've been wronged!). I winced at sluggish morning half-memories of wearing wrongness like a lampshade on my head (I'm mentally ill!). — Merri Lisa Johnson

You should have worn a baby pink t-shirt on which a child sucks his thumb. That would have given you the required juvenile look.

~ Subhangi Tyagi — Kirtida Gautam

It was not supposed to be this easy. This was to be the final confrontation. There was to be struggle, torment, despair. But the witch - who was the only person in the woods who wanted nothing - was not what Hazel had to defeat. — Anne Ursu

All confrontation is based on deception. — Paul Watson

The path toward peace is much easier than the path toward war and confrontation. — Federico Mayor Zaragoza

Engagement provides opportunities to demonstrate how confrontation can be done both effectively and civilly — Gregory S. Prince Jr.

Tell me, how do get away from your own self? she questioned. I knew what she meant with a sickening realization. They knew what I was. Somehow, they had found out my only secret. — Shannon A. Thompson

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation. — Clarence Day

Liberty and security are often in direct confrontation and must be balanced in a way that protects us without destroying what is worth protecting. — Charles B. Rangel

We don't want to impose our solutions by force, we want to create a democratic space. We don't see armed struggle in the classic sense of previous guerrilla wars, that is as the only way and the only all-powerful truth around which everything is organized. In a war, the decisive thing is not the military confrontation but the politics at stake in the confrontation. We didn't go to war to kill or be killed. We went to war in order to be heard. — Subcomandante Marcos

We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers. — Richard M. Nixon

This is one of the marks of a truly safe person: they are confrontable. — Henry Cloud