Quotes About Defensiveness

It is not the absence of defensiveness that characterizes learning teams but the way defensiveness is faced

Excuse me? Those are my fun-sized mobile agony and death dispensers. They're works of art! You can break your own stuff, thank you very much.

The earlier you intervene, the less likely that people will get defensive. The more real-time and specific your feedback is, the easier it is for people to receive it and learn from it. The

Als ik ergens vertel dat ik vegetariër ben, word ik bijna altijd gewezen op een inconsequentie of probeert men een zwak punt te ontdekken in een bewering die ik nooit heb gedaan. (Ik heb vaak het idee dat mijn vegetarische levenswijze voor zulke mensen belangrijker is dan voor mij.)

When a person feels powerless in regard to controlling his life, he can defend against the discomfort of such an experience by asserting control over someone else.

It's a natural thing for people to say, you know, Who's in this book? I find myself get ting a little defensive. People come along and I'm waiting for that first question.

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.

Rob McKenna was a miserable bastard and he knew it because he'd had a lot of people point it out to him over the years and he saw no reason to disagree with them except the obvious one which was that he liked disagreeing with people, particularly people he disliked, which included, at the last count, everybody.

Qué quiere decir la mayoría de la gente cuando dice eso? ¡Tan joven! Algo inocente, algo suplicante, algo indefenso. Pero la juventud no es eso. La juventud es cruda, la juventud es fuerte, la juventud es poderosa... Sí, ¡y cruel! Y alguna cosa más: la juventud es vulnerable».

Some actors don't mind it. Those who are pretty. They think it's nice to be looked at because they are nice to look at. I appreciate that. I'm very happy to salute that aspiration. But I don't like the way I look so I don't like being photographed. I become defensive.

Was it possible to live so defensively that you never got to live at all?

The problem with religion right now. It hasn't evolved. And instead of being open and looking for ways to be relevant in today's world, it's gone all defensive and protective and it's regressed into lowest-common-denominator sound bites - and fundamentalism.

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.

Most people go through life using up half their energy trying to protect a dignity they never had.

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

They've got a wall in China, it's a thousand miles long. To keep out the foreigners, they made it strong. And I've got a wall around me, you can't even see.

Lies are the first step to the violent protection of them

It is, of course, the last resort of a liar to challenge his inquisitor to call him a liar directly.

Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression. Are you defending the truth? No, the truth, in any case, needs no defense. The light or sound does not care about what you or anybody else thinks. You are defending yourself, or rather the illusion of yourself, the mind-made substitute.

Even such a seemingly trivial and normal thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong- defending the mental position with which you have identified- is due to fear of death [of the ego].

Ego takes everything personally. Emotion arises, defensiveness, perhaps even aggression.

the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat.

Even such a seemingly trivial and normal thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong- defending the mental position with which you have identified- is due to fear of death.

For example, even such a seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong — defending the mental position with which you have identified — is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation.