Quotes About Defensiveness

Bateson (1972) describes the prepsychotic child as growing up "unskilled in determining what people really mean and unskilled in expressing what he really means, which is essential for normal relationships." He suggests that this situation occurs in normal relationships as well. When a person is caught in a double-bind situation, he will respond defensively in a manner similar to the schizophrenic, though less intensely.

D'Artagnan took every smile for an insult, and every look as a provocation

"But you're the toughest son of a b!&€# i've ever seen.You never let anybody get near you.You never let anybody know what you really think.

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 and hypocrisy.

My biggest concern in counseling is not that God won't guide us into truth, but that either I or the counselee will get in His way through rigidity, pride, blind spots, defensiveness, and the like.

The moment you say so-and-so is wise or is cruel or defensive or loving or whatever, you have hardened your perception and become prejudiced and ceased to perceive this person moment by moment, somewhat like a pilot who operates today with last week's weather report.

I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being.

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.

You always have some trans girl saying, 'Oh, they were just being funny! They aren't really transphobic,' Just like you will always have some black folks defending some white person for using the 'N' word because they are 'cool.'

As a human being, it's in your nature, when somebody says something about you negatively, to defend yourself and lash back. That's what we all have to learn not to do. You have to forgive a person. And when you forgive a person, you have to forgive yourself.

Arrakeen had become an ungenerous place, a contained place, unreasonable and self-righteous in its harsh outlines.

L'insulto é l'arma del debole.

For his part, Frank Wisner never truly regarded himself as a Southerner except, his middle son, Ellis, recalled, on those occasions when outsiders denigrated the region. "That's when he got his back up," Ellis Wisner recalled. "If people made fun of it, that's when he became a Southerner.

Toxically shamed people tend to become more and more stagnant as life goes on. They live in a guarded, secretive and defensive way. They try to be more than human (perfect and controlling) or less than human (losing interest in life or stagnated in some addictive behavior).

The need to create a citadel in which to hide from the world is characteristic of people with a schizoid disposition

If men can learn to be less defensive, more open to others, and more accepting of accountability, they will adapt well to the new global economy.

And often with our love we want merely to overleap envy. And often we attack and make ourselves enemies, to conceal that we are vulnerable.

The liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor

hate to be wrong, and I hate that I am wrong so often in so many ways, that my thinking is often defensive, judgmental, and skittish. (I have a thinking disorder. I once took a 20 Questions quiz about drinking but substituted thinking and I got most of them: Do you prefer to think alone? Do you hide your thinking from loved ones? Has thinking begun to impact your health and quality of life?) Anyway

People like to talk shit, but it's usually to justify their own apathy.

They're lucky I didn't rip their arms off for touching her. (Devyn)

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.

I just get really defensive as soon as anyone comes near my personal life. I made a decision early on that it's strictly off-limits. No exceptions.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative, too conventional. Too safe, too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later, too often on the back foot.