Defensiveness Quotes

• 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.

  Carl Rogers

  Good Life, Believe, New Experiences

  Carl Rogers (2012). “On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy”, p.188, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  Henry Cloud

  Giving Up, Growth, Return

  Twitter post from Jan 17, 2014

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• 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.

  Brian Weiss

  Pride, Joy, Ego

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• 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

  Dale Carnegie

  Courage, Business, Mistake

  Dale Carnegie, General Press (2016). “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, p.143, GENERAL PRESS

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• 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.

  Dale Carnegie

  Mistake, Errors, Looks

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.104, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• 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.

  Carl Rogers

  Nervous, Process, Congruence

  Carl Ransom Rogers (1995). “On Becoming a Person: A Therapist's View of Psychotherapy”, p.353, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• 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.

  Audre Lorde

  Communication, Ignorance, Names

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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• You are completely at choice who you will be today in your interactions with others. Compassionate, kind, giving and forgiving will create one set of probabilities; angry, judgmental, critical and defensive will create another one altogether.

  Marianne Williamson

  Inspirational, Interaction With Others, Giving

  FaceBook post by Marianne Williamson from Apr 27, 2013

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

  Audre Lorde

  Wall, Guilt, Bricks

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.124, Crossing Press

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

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Communication, Compassion, People

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• 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.

  Deepak Chopra

  Motivational, Spiritual, Anger

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• 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.

  Renee Fleming

  Jobs, Confusing, Suggestions

  Renee Fleming (2005). “The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer”, p.57, Penguin

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• 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.

  Elizabeth Lesser

  Children, Party, Pride

  Source: www.npr.org

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

  Jon Stewart

  Men, Thinking, Ends

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• 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

  Brennan Manning

  Children, Confused, Compassion

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

  Eben Alexander

  Spiritual, Opposites, Life Is

  Eben Alexander (2012). “Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey Into the Afterlife”, p.117, Simon and Schuster

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

  John M. Gottman

  Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, Criticism, Worst

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• 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.

  Adyashanti

  Powerful, Order, Mind

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

  Dana Gould

  Sarcasm, Thinking, People

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• There is a certain degree of satisfaction in having the courage to admit one's errors.

  Dale Carnegie

  Errors, Degrees, Satisfaction

  Dale Carnegie (2016). “How to win friends & influence people”, p.117, Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd

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• 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.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Levels, Worst, Advise

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• 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.

  Harriet Lerner

  Apology, Long, Focus

  Source: www.elle.com

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• When people hear needs, it provokes compassion.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Compassion, People, Needs

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

  Richard G. Scott

  Hurt, Emotion, Ghost

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