Quotes About Denial

T]he forcing of any special brand of freedom and democracy on a people, whether they want it or not, by the brute force of war will be a denial of those very democratic principles which we are striving to advance.

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

The hunter died when he achieved supremacy. Perhaps the death of the hunter will be the long monument to interglacial man. We denied a future to our sucessor beings.

leaders need to help people overcome the four "work-avoidance mechanisms" that most of the rest of us carry around in our heads. Those mechanisms are denial that a problem exists, the desire to escape responsibility even when we recognize the problem, the tendency to scapegoat others for causing it, and—worst of all—cynicism about the possibility of ever remedying the problem.

The will to insist upon a definite, unimpeachable reading of an incident - which might well have been read in other, more generous ways - was a mark of a bewildering denial: a denial of the imagination that, liberated to do its proper work, can lead us in alternative directions.

The tragedy of Nixon was that he had immense political talent and intelligence; if only he had also possessed the ability to look within and measure the darker sides to his character. It is the tragedy that confronts us all to the extent that we remain in deep denial.

You] will tend to deny that you ever experience any envy, at least strong enough to act on. you are simply not being honest with yourself.

Trying to deny our self-absorbed nature, trying to pretend we are somehow more altruistic than others, make it impossible for us to transform ourselves.

The shadow is something we deny and repress. It is so much easier to dig up and moralize about the dark qualities of others. It is almost unnatural for us to look inward at this side of ourselves. But remember you are only half a human if you keep this buried. Be intrepid in this process.

Man is not a rational animal, he is a rationalizing animal.

The most common problem I find among silent sons is their belief that they're just like everybody else. In other words, many either believe that their family was not dysfunctional (when in fact it was) or believe that it was dysfunctional, but they were not affected. This is not unusual for men. The following are some classic behavior patterns in silent sons.

It was about a hero who insisted with every breath that he was anything but a hero.

Die Wirkung eines großen und ganzen Mannes ist wie die der Schönheit: sie verträgt so wenig eine Leugnung, wie man einen Ballon anbohren darf oder einer Statue einen Hut auf den Kopf setzen.

If there is a sense of reality...then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility... the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what is than to what is not... It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

È la realtà che risveglia le possibilità, e nulla sarebbe così assurdo come negarlo. Tuttavia, sommate o in media, quelle che restano sono sempre le stesse possibilità destinate a ripetersi, finché non arriva un uomo per il quale una cosa reale non è più importante di una solo pensata. È grazie a lui che le nuove possibilità acquistano finalmente il loro senso e la loro determinazione, ed è lui che le risveglia

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.

I avoid opinions," Nissim said. "It's easier that way to accept both answers equally, and deny both of them at the same time. That's how I treat problems that I don't understand.

C'est insensé Vous avez tout perdu. - Je ne suis pas de votre avis. Permettez-moi de vous faire remarquer que je suis toujours en vie - Je vous l'accorde. Pour le moment.

An upset is our maker's way of telling us that we need to learn something. It is a tap on our shoulder saying, 'Pay attention. You have something important to learn. If you lie, blame, justify, or deny the upset, you waste the upset and will waste a precious gem of wisdom..

they stay busy as a way of avoiding something they do not want to face.

Yet deep down they know they are avoiding something important.

Today, I often meet people who are too busy to take care of their wealth. And there are people too busy to take care of their health. The cause is the same. They're busy, and they stay busy as a way of avoiding something they do not want to face. Nobody has to tell them. Deep down they know. In fact, if you remind them, they often respond with anger or irritation.

I've met so many people who say, 'Oh, I'm not interested in money.' Yet they'll work at a job for eight hours a day. That's a denial of truth. If they weren't interested in money, then why are they working? That kind of thinking is probably more psychotic than a person who hoards money.

He believed he was dead and used to rage at his wife because she wouldn't bury him. I'd a-done it.