Top 38 Defensiveness Quotes & Sayings

True sincerity reveals a powerful form of clarity and discernment that is necessary in order to perceive yourself honestly without flinching or being held captive by your conditioned mind's judgments and defensiveness.

In aversive racism, the concept of racism is abhorrent to that person. But they're filled with racist conditioning and bias, as we all are. Because that conflicts with their identity as good people, they suppress it and are even more in denial about it. They are even more likely to erupt in defensiveness if it gets called out.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse predict an ailing marriage: Criticism, Defensiveness, Stonewalling and Contempt. The worst of these is contempt.

In a person who is open to experience each stimulus is freely relayed through the nervous system, without being distorted by any process of defensiveness.

I always, by an involuntary act of defensiveness, return to my everyday self: so, I find, have I withdrawn from writing about experiences which have most closely concerned and disturbed me. I have been deflected by my own reticence.

I've always wanted to write, but coming from a small-town background - I was born and brought up in Ludhiana - you think you're not the kind of literary person who will write books that will sell. There was always a kind of defensiveness in me.

For a lot of white people, just suggesting that being white has meaning will trigger a deep, defensive response. And that defensiveness serves to maintain both our comfort and our positions in a racially inequitable society from which we benefit.

This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately, it provokes defensiveness, resistance, and counterattack. It is a language of demands.

A lot of people think my sarcasm comes from insecurity and defensiveness, but I assure you I'm just being petty and cruel.

As NVC replaces our old patterns of defending, withdrawing or attacking in the face of judgment and criticism. We come to perceive ourselves and others, as well as our intentions and relationships, in a new light. Resistance, defensiveness, and violent reactions are minimized.

Physical life is characterized by defensiveness, whereas spiritual life is just the opposite.

When people hear needs, it provokes compassion. When people hear diagnoses, it provokes defensiveness and attack.

Be honest, Look for areas where you can admit error and say so. Apologize for your mistakes. It will help disarm your opponents and reduce defensiveness.

In I'm Not A Racist, But..., Lawrence Blum offers answers for our time about what race is, who is a racist, and ways for people to talk about the racialized features of our society without falling into name-calling or defensiveness. With exemplary moral and analytic clarity, Blum offers educators, students, lawyers, judges, leaders, and citizens tools for building a nation of equality, comity, and respect for each person.

You need your ego to survive in the three-dimensional world, but you need only that part of the ego which processes information. The rest - pride, arrogance, defensiveness, fear - is worse than useless. The rest of the ego separates you from wisdom, joy, and God.

Yielding to emotions such as anger or hurt or defensiveness will drive away the Holy Ghost.

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.

It wasn't easy navigating publicity when I started, because I grew up with 'being famous,' and I'm just not into it, and I guess defensiveness gets read into that. And I didn't get an easy ride at the beginning.

Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

A second characteristic of the process which for me is the good life, is that it involves an increasingly tendency to live fully in each moment. I believe it would be evident that for the person who was fully open to his new experience, completely without defensiveness, each moment would be new.

I would advise you against defensiveness on priciple. it precludes the best eventualities along with the worst. At the most basic level it expresses a lack of faith.

I think the main thing that has to end is men's defensiveness.

Cynicism and defensiveness are two things constantly levelled at me. Look, I've got time for people, I'm good mannered. I usually find that when you're down, nobody has a bloody minute for you. If I was a nobody, you wouldn't even talk to me. People, in general, don't like you being upfront and civil. They hate you for it. They label you a cynic 'cos you're reasonable.

Whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life--be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others...I am alienated from my true self. My identity as Abba's child [a child of God] becomes ambiguous, tentative and confused

When you have no defensiveness about what you think but rather you totally believe it, you are passionate about it.

Bishops need to resist the defensiveness that institutions often fall back on in crisis moments.

The student's job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating.

As you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness... then you will become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free.

There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one's errors. It not only clears up the air of guilt and defensiveness, but often helps solve the problem created by the error

I'd say that while it's normal to long for an apology, if you really need it, you're not ready to speak to whoever harmed you. Non-apologizers tend to walk on a tightrope of defensiveness above a huge canyon of low self-esteem - they just can't listen to anything that's going to set them off balance. So focus on what you say for your own sake, because you need to hear your own voice telling the truth.

Humility is a quality for which I have only a limited admiration. In many phases of life it is a great mistake and degenerates into defensiveness or hypocrisy.

To get greater than 100% return on a growth step, give up defensiveness. Defensiveness stifles performance, and destroys relationships.

guilt politics ... I regard as conveniently paralyzing, ripe for backlash defensiveness, counterproductive, and boring.

Look, I'm happy to defend my dad. I don't think he needs any defensiveness.

It is very, very rare where a slight that turns into a grudge that is in need of forgiveness is only about one of the parties. In most of our day-to-day situations - with colleagues at work, with your partner, with your children, with your friends - most of the time, if you really got down with each other and put aside your pride and your defensiveness and you had those hard conversations, you'd find a place where both people had something to ask for forgiveness from the other and to forgive the other.

Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.

My defensiveness in life really helps me as a driver.

When you have an authority figure tell you something that distinguishes you, there's a little bit of a badge of courage or pride point that comes with it, and also some relief that the grownups actually have an answer for the problem. But, at the same time, there's suspicion and defensiveness, like, Why is the way I do things a problem? Maybe the way you do things is the problem. All of these things come with the very notion that you've been described.