Defends Quotes

... People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet ~ Alice Walker

I am a woman that defends animals, right, left, and in the centre. Animals aren't political. ~ Brigitte Bardot

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks. ~ Salman Rushdie

Cleverly assorted scraps of spurious science are inculcated upon the children to prove necessity of law; obedience to the law is made a religion; moral goodness and the law of the masters are fused into one and the same divinity. The historical hero of the schoolroom is the man who obeys the law, and defends it against rebels. ~ Peter Kropotkin

A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. ~ Ann Dillard

Wisdom the most powerful human resource, defends people just as money does ( Eccl 7:12) ~ JOEL NYARANGI AKOYA

Every time I step onto the field, whether people like it or not, I'm not trying to play dirty - I'm just playing tough. And I'm trying to earn my spot on the team. I'm trying to earn a starting spot. I'm trying to become a complete midfielder who attacks, who defends. So that's the mindset. ~ Carli Lloyd

The preservation of a free government requires not merely that the metes and bounds which separate each department of power be invariably maintained; but more especially that neither of them be suffered to overleap the great Barrier which defends the rights of the people. The Rulers who are guilty of such an encroachment, exceed the commission from which they derive their authority and are Tyrants. The people who submit to it are governed by laws made neither by themselves nor by an authority derived from them, and are slaves. ~ James Madison

The pessimism that protests and defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

To me, it's a heroic attribute to be so committed to a principle that you apply it, not when it's easy, not when it supports your position, not when it protects people you like, but when it defends and protects people that you hate. ~ Glenn Greenwald

But to be is still more marvelous, because it is endless and requires no demonstration. To be is music, which is a profanation of silence in the interest of silence, and therefore beyond good and evil. Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act of creation swimming on its own bosom. Music neither goads nor defends, neither seeks nor explains. Music is the noiseless sound made by the swimmer in the ocean of consciousness. It is a reward which can only be given by oneself. It is the gift of the god which one is because he has ceased thinking about God. It is an augur of the god which every one will become in due time, when all that is will be beyond imagination. ~ Henry Miller

He who defends with love will be secure; Heaven will save him, and protect him with love. ~ Lao-Tzu

We breathe, Lily defends our relationship. My brows rise. Let's not kid ourselves. We struggle with our codependency on a daily basis. ~ Krista Ritchie

He who defends everything, defends nothing. ~ Frederick The Great

Ignorance defends itself savagely, and illiteracy, as I well knew, can be shrewd. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I know not which I prefer the look of - those who attack us or that which defends us! ~ Michael Moorcock

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status ~ Laurence J. Peter

Misdirection is the key to survival, never attack what your enemy defends, never behave as your enemy expects, and never reveal your true strength, if knowledge is power then to be unknown is to be unconquerable. ~ A.S. Chambers

Gentleness brings victory to him who attacks, and safety to him who defends. Those whom Heaven would save, it fences round with gentleness. ~ Laozi

The scientist rigorously defends his right to be ignorant of almost everything except his specialty. ~ Marshall McLuhan

He dumped me again!' She narrows her eyes on Tom accusingly. I drop my bag by my desk and watch as Victoria fires all sorts of accusations at a very guilty looking Tom. 'Don't ask me to come out with you ever again,' she spits, pointing her pen at him. 'Friday, you cleared off with the scientist, and last night you didn't even have the decency to go home with the same man!'

'Tom!' I gasp sarcastically. 'I thought the scientist was your soul mate?'

'He still might be,' Tom defends himself in a high pitched voice. 'I'm just sampling what's on offer before I decide on what to invest in. ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

What has become of critique when someone as eminent as Stanley Fish, the "enemy of promises" as Lindsay Waters calls him, believes he defends science studies, my field, by comparing the laws of physics to the rules of baseball? What has become of critique when there is a whole industry denying that the Apollo program landed on the moon? What has become of critique when DARPA uses for its Total Information Awareness project the Baconian slogan Scientia est potentia? Didn't I read that somewhere in Michel Foucault? Has knowledge-slash-power been co-opted of late by the National Security Agency? Has Discipline and Punish become the bedtime reading of Mr. Ridge? ~ Bruno Latour

In addition, unlike Othello, whose profession of arms is socially honorable, Shylock is a professional usurer who, like a prostitute, has a social function but is an outcast from the community. But, in the play, he acts unprofessionally; he refuses to charge Antonio interest and insists upon making their legal relation that of debtor and creditor, a relation acknowledged as legal by all societies. Several critics have pointed to analogies between the trial scene and the medieval Processus Belial in which Our Lady defends man against the prosecuting Devil who claims the legal right to man's soul. […] But the differences between Shylock and Belial are as important as their similarities. The comic Devil of the mystery play can appeal to logic, to the letter of the law, but he cannot appeal to the heart or to the imagination, and Shakespeare allows Shylock to do both. In his "Hath not a Jew eyes…" speech in Act III, Scene I, he is permitted to appeal to the sense of human brotherhood, and in the trial scene, he is allowed to argue, with a sly appeal to the fear a merchant class has of radical social evolution:

You have among you many a purchased slave
Which like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,

which points out that those who preach mercy and brotherhood as universal obligations limit them in practice and are prepared to treat certain classes of human beings as things. ~ W.H. Auden

In libertarianism the aim isn't judging better from best, it's making sure that there is freedom for the perpetual revolution of ideas. It too opposes custom, tradition, the authority of winnowed wisdom, and our moral heritage that is our inheritance and defends only that which serves its purpose; utility and efficiency are its trumps and those cannot be conserved but rather only aimed at. Libertarianism is thereby tolerant of all behavior that seems not to damage others because its strongest belief is that no truth but freedom itself has been settled. ~ Darrin Moore

Fear not death, nor Satan's thrusts, God defends whom in Him trusts; ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The length of this document defends it well against the risk of its being read. ~ Winston Churchill

When a new writer defends his "style," the teacher smiles (or cringes) because real style isn't an artifice. Real style - voice - arrives on its own, as an extension of a writer's character. When style is done self-consciously and purposefully it becomes affectation, and as transparent as any affectation - an English accent on an old college chum from New Jersey, for example. ~ Bill Roorbach

A sword is only as good, or as evil, as its user. In good hands it defends the helpless and brings justice. In evil hands it leaves a swath of despair and suffering. The same goes for...laws--or anything, for that matter. Either good men use them for good, or evil men use them for evil, but they are not inherently good or evil in themselves."
--Wenchel ~ R.J. Gilbert

Modern man defends nothing energetically except his right to debauchery. ~ Nicolas Gomez Davila

Your reason is your friend. It defends the island of your awareness. But you don't want your reason to rule everything. ~ Frederick Lenz

Your brand is your personal lawyer ... It defends and speaks for you even in your absence. Keep calm and maintain a good brand! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Some are so carried away that they contentiously assert that the flock of errors arising from them is sufficiently compensated by the publication of some book which defends religion and truth. Every law condemns deliberately doing evil simply because there is some hope that good may result. Is there any sane man who would say poison ought to be distributed, sold publicly, stored, and even drunk because some antidote is available and those who use it may be snatched from death again and again? ~ Anonymous

I've never seen her defend herself the way she defends other people. It's like she thinks she doesn't deserve it, or maybe she thinks she doesn't need it. ~ Cheryl Rainfield

Thought is a disease of the brain. The mind defends itself against the degenerative process of creativity; it begins to jell; notions solidify into inalterable systems. ~ Thomas M. Disch

Our success in life is determined by one primary objective: how functionally transformed into Christ's likeness have we become? If He sees that we were forgiving even when wounded; if He sees in us a heart that holds fast its faith even in times of adversity; if He finds us to be truly repentant and genuinely humble, even when we could boast; and if He sees we are... committed to a life of love, we will have fulfilled the purpose of God. We will receive a great reward. If, however, the Lord sees in us a soul easily offended or that we blame others for our joyless, angry attitude; if He scans our inner man and finds we are self-righteous and judgmental; or if our conscience alternately either accuses or defends ourselves, then we will render an account for our life at the judgment seat of Christ (Rom. 1:29, 2:5; 2 Cor. 5:10; Heb. 9:27). Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we settle the eternal goal for our lives. Are we seizing life's opportunities to appropriate Christ or are we mostly coasting? Let us say with vision and assurance, I am preparing myself for God. ~ Francis Frangipane

If you want to understand our sexual state of play, start with the fact that a man who kills half a hundred female sex workers is shown more mercy than a female sex worker who defends herself against seven men. ~ Sady Doyle

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals. ~ Pope Francis

Comedy defends the commonplace; tragedy explodes it. ~ Mason Cooley

Man only honors what he conquers or defends. ~ Joseph Goebbels

We reject the charge of tribalism, particularly from those whose theologies serve to buttress the most nefarious brand of tribalism of all - the omnipotent state. The church is the one political entity in our culture that is global, transnational, transcultural. Tribalism is not the church determined to serve God rather than Caesar. Tribalism is the United States of America, which sets up artificial boundaries and defends them with murderous intensity. ~ William H. Willimon

The advantages of a propaganda that constantly "adds the power of organization" to the feeble and unreliable voice of argument, and thereby realizes, so to speak, on the spur of the moment, whatever it says, are obvious beyond demonstration. Foolproof against arguments based on a reality which the movements promised to change, against a counterpropaganda disqualified by the mere fact that it belongs to or defends a world which the shiftless masses cannot and will not accept, it can be disproved only by another, a stronger or better, reality.

It is in the moment of defeat that the inherent weakness of totalitarian propaganda becomes visible. Without the force of the movement, its members cease at once to believe in the dogma for which yesterday they still were ready to sacrifice their lives. The moment the movement, that is, the fictitious world which sheltered them, is destroyed, the masses revert to their old status of isolated individuals who either happily accept a new function in a changed world or sink back into their old desperate superfluousness. The members of totalitarian movements, utterly fanatical as long as the movement exists, will not follow the example of religious fanatics and die the death of martyrs (even though they were only too willing to die the death of robots). Rather they will quietly give up the movement as a bad bet and look around for another promising fiction or wait until the former fiction regains enough strength to establish another ~ Hannah Arendt

Holistic, unconditional love, agape, is the unity in which duality disappears. It is as if a certain internal boundary has vanished. With agape what we love is ourselves, the way a mother loves her child as herself. This is the meaning of loving another as yourself – transcending our phenomenal borders and experiencing ourselves in another and the other in, not apart from, us. Eventually, if love is comprehensive, it unites us with everything and allows us to know that we are everything. Therefore, how can we support the illusion of this isolated, separate self that is threatened by and defends itself from everything outside? Love returns us to the unity that is actually Reality. Reality is not the isolation, suspicion, envy, selfishness, and fear of loss that we have come to accept as normal; it is that we are all part of one Life. The same Spirit moves in us all. You come to know this better when you realize that we all have the same kinds of feelings, the same wish to be known and respected, to share ourselves and let down our defenses. We are continually faced with a choice between personal achievement, personal security, and comfort on the one hand, and working for the whole and helping everyone and everything toward perfection on the other. We are faced with a choice between looking out for ourselves and contributing wholeheartedly to a common good. We are faced with focusing on self-love or increasing our love of all Life. (p. 191) ~ Kabir Edmund Helminski

I didn't have a knee-jerk reaction like some people did to the language and the violence. My stepfather was a history teacher at Lincoln High School in Dallas. So, I was already familiar with the N-word and the brutality of slavery. What I was drawn to was the love story between Django and Broomhilda and how he defends and gets the girl in the end. I thought it was just an amazing and courageous project. ~ Jamie Foxx

You both love Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hawthorne and Melville, Flaubert and Stendahl, but at that stage of your life you cannot stomach Henry James, while Gwyn argues that he is the giant of giants, the colossus who makes all other novelists look like pygmies. You are in complete harmony about the greatness of Kafka and Beckett, but when you tell her that Celine belongs in their company, she laughs at you and calls him a fascist maniac. Wallace Stevens yes, but next in line for you is William Carlos Williams, not T.S. Eliot, whose work Gwyn can recite from memory. You defend Keaton, she defends Chaplin, and while you both howl at the sight of the Marx Brothers, your much-adored W.C. Fields cannot coax a single smile from her. Truffaut at his best touches you both, but Gwyn finds Godard pretentious and you don't, and while she lauds Bergman and Antonioni as twin masters of the universe, you reluctantly tell her that you are bored by their films. No conflicts about classical music, with J.S. Bach at the top of the list, but you are becoming increasingly interested in jazz, while Gwyn still clings to the frenzy of rock and roll, which has stopped saying much of anything to you. She likes to dance, and you don't. She laughs more than you do and smokes less. She is a freer, happier person than you are, and whenever you are with her, the world seems brighter and more welcoming, a place where your sullen, introverted self can almost begin to feel at home. ~ Paul Auster

By and large, pity runs counter to the law of development, which is the law of selection. Pity preserves things that are ripe for decline, it defends things that have been disowned and condemned by life. […] In the middle of our unhealthy modernity, nothing is less healthy than Christian pity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Against her foes Religion well defends Her sacred truths, but often fears her friends. ~ George Crabbe

The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home, and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system - the violence is already there, and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say that they are opposed to Negroes 'resorting to violence' what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists. ~ Robert F. Williams

He examined everything freely, I hesitated in front of many things. He destroyed but did not build, saying what was not, but not what was. And denial is convincing; it sets neither boundaries nor goals for itself. It strives toward nothing; it defends nothing. It is harder to defend something than to attack it, because everything that is made reality constantly wears down, constantly deviates from the initial idea. ~ Mesa Selimovic

I saw the Tracker - but that's wrong, really. I saw right to where the tracking thing was. I saw those winnowing tentacles come out again, and the front figure pause, and then - it's the only word that actually describes it - ooze on again on its via dolorosa. And at that the hind figure seemed to summon all its strength. It seemed to open out a fringe of arms or tentacles, a sort of corona of black rays spread out. It gaped with a full expansion, and even I could feel that there was a perfectly horrible attraction, or vacuum drag, being exerted. That was horrible enough, with the face of the super-suffering man now almost under me resonating my own terror. But the worst thing was that, as the tentacles unwrapped and winnowed out toward their prey, I saw they weren't really tentacles at all. They were spreading cracks, veins, fissures, rents of darkness expanding from a void, a gap of pure blackness. There's only one way to say it - one was seeing right through the solid world into a gap, an ultimate maelstrom. And from it was spreading out a - I can only call it so - a negative sunrise of black radiation that would deluge and obliterate everything. Of course it was still only a fissure, a vent, but one realized - This is a hole, a widening hole, that has been pierced in the dike that defends the common-sense, sensuous world. Through this vortex-hole that is rapidly opening, over this lip and brink, everything could slip, fall in, find no purchase, be swallowed up.

Gerald Heard

You must not let yourself be misled, in your solitude, by the fact that there is something in you which wants to escape from it. This very wish will, if you use it quietly and preeminently and like a tool, help to spread your solitude over wide country. People have (with the help of convention) found the solution of everything in ease and the easiest side of easy; but it is clear that we must hold to the difficult; everything living holds to it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself according to its own character and is an individual in its own right, strives to be so at any cost and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must hold to the difficult is a certainty that will not leave us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; the fact that a thing is difficult must be one more reason for our doing it. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever defends his own rights defends the rights of all. ~ Ayn Rand

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?

Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one o ~ Edwin A. Abbott

Government originated in the attempt to find a form of association that defends and protects the person and property of each with the common force of all. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

For example, computer defends well, but for humans its is harder to defend than attack, particularly with the modern time control. ~ Boris Spassky

What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities. ~ Walter Scott

Every nation makes decisions based on self-interest and defends them on the basis of morality. ~ William Sloane Coffin

Well, I've seen porn!" Evan defends and Dan just looks at him.
"Okay, captain Pornie, walk me through it," Dan challenges. "I'll be the pizza guy, and Jeff can be the plumber. You can be ... hey, why don't you be the high-powered young executive?"
Evan grins at him with a glint in his eye. "Okay, fine." He laces his fingers together and flexes them in front of him as if he's warming up. He sits back in chair and his eyes focus on the eaves of Jeff's roof then begins.
"The young executive come home after a hard day ...
[five pages of detailed porn]
" ... and all fall asleep together on the executives huge bed. The End." Evan is pretty clearly proud of himself, and Dan really blame him.
After an appreciative silence, Dan says, "Okay, yeah, so maybe there's some merit to the whole threesome thing. ~ Kate Sherwood

A friend never defends a husband who gets his wife an electric skillet for her birthday. ~ Erma Bombeck

A thorn defends the rose, harming only those who would steal the blossom. ~ Anonymous

A true teacher defends his students against his own personal influences. ~ Amos Bronson Alcott

You must be fearless. It is the coward who fears and defends himself ~ Swami Vivekananda

The girl knew that quarrels would come because their lives were intertwined - how passionately one defends a heart that is vulnerable. ~ Martine Leavitt

And a noble life is one ordered by, and oriented to, a transcendent moral code, not just one's own concept of existence and meaning and truth ... if we want a society that reveres life, that defends the family, and that discourages delinquency and promotes decency, we cannot force a privatization of religion; we must allow the truth-claims of religious faith to be uttered aloud in the public square. ~ Rick Santorum

It is clear that we must trust what is difficult; everything alive trusts in it, everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition. We know little, but that we must trust in what is difficult is a certainty that will never abandon us; it is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult must be one more reason for us to do it. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Ecuador is a country which defends the right to life. ~ Rafael Correa

Muslim women, and critics, male and female, of Western models of sex and sexuality, are silenced. The price of speech for a Muslim woman in the West is the disavowal of Islam. Books condemning Islam are picked by publishers and featured on talk shows. Their authors are commended for their courage. Speech in defense of Islam is read as the speech of subjection. Islam oppresses women. Any woman speaking in its favor must be deluded or forced to speak against her will. If she defends the hijab or speaks in defense of polygamy, she cannot be believed. No woman in her right mind could defend these. Any woman who does must be deluded or coerced. The more Muslim women object to Western efforts to "help" them, the more need there is to liberate them. ~ Anne Norton

The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country's and ultimately that of the whole of mankind. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Our Party's Songun-based revolutionary leadership, Songun-based politics, is a revolutionary mode of leadership and socialist mode of politics that gives top priority to military affairs, and defends the country, the revolution and socialism and dynamically pushes ahead with overall socialist construction by dint of the revolutionary mettle and combat capabilities of the People's Army. ~ Kim Jong Il

Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. We have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights. ~ Mark McKinnon

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old. ~ Richard Dawkins

Government planning not only fails; it tends to produce outcomes that are the opposite of what its proponents say that they favor. The only stable and productive social system is one that embraces human liberty in its totality, and defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

Following Christ, the Church seeks the truth, which is not always the same as the majority opinion. She listens to conscience and not to power, and in this way she defends the poor and the downtrodden. ~ Pope John Paul II

Thought reflexes get conditioned very strongly, and they are very hard to change. And the also interfere. A reflex may connect to the endorphins and produce an impulse to hold that whole pattern forther. In other words, it produces a defensive reflex. Not merely is it stuck because it's chemically so well built up, but also there is a defensive reflex which defends against evidence which might weaken it. Thus it all happens, one reflex after another after another. It's just a vast system of reflexes. And they form a 'structure' as they get more rigid. ~ David Bohm

I sense in you a true heart. A faithful heart. And by your wounds and scars, I can tell that you are fearless. So I shall call you Caleb, the faithful, fearless warrior who defends what he believes with everything he has. That is what I see when I look upon you. Not a demon. An ever-courageous, noble warrior. One day, I suspect, you shall look into a mirror and see the same noble man I do. Lilliana ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

God loves and defends those with the least economic and social power, and so should we. ~ Timothy Keller

Some souls think that the Holy Spirit is very far away, far, far, up above. Actually he is, we might say, the divine Person who is most closely present to the creature. He accompanies him everywhere. He penetrates him with himself. He calls him, he protects him. He makes of him his living temple. He defends him. He helps him. He guards him from all his enemies. He is closer to him than his own soul. All the good a soul accomplishes, it carries out under his inspiration, in his light, by his grace and his help. ~ Concepcion Cabrera De Armida

The Queen of England is Defender of the Faith but the President of the United States is Defender of the Constitution, which defends all faiths. ~ Walter F. Mondale

The Apology (of Socrates) is Plato's version of the speech given by Socrates as he defends himself against the charges of being a man "who corrupted the young, did not believe in the gods, and created new deities". "Apology" here has its earlier meaning (now usually expressed by the word "apologia") of speaking in defense of a cause or of one's beliefs or actions (from the Greek απολογία). ~ Voltaire

Innocence is like polished armor; it adorns and defends. ~ Robert South

Or they laughed at Indiana, because the people there proudly call themselves Hoosiers even though they have no idea what Hoosier means. Some historians believe it comes from the Shawnee expression "ho'o-sa'ars," or "people who cannot explain their nickname." - from Best. State. Ever.: A Florida Man Defends His Homeland ~ Dave Barry

The wall defends itself. ~ George R R Martin

No matter what cause one defends, it will suffer permanent disgrace if one resorts to blind attacks on crowds of innocent people. ~ Albert Camus

In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem. ~ Ben Horowitz

One defends when his strength is inadequate, he attacks when it is abundant. ~ Sun Tzu

There is a determined though unseen bravery that defends itself foot by foot in the darkness against the fatal invasions of necessity and dishonesty. Noble and mysterious triumphs that no eye sees, and no fame rewards, and no flourish of triumph salutes. Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields that have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes. ~ Victor Hugo

I cannot remember much, I cannot feel much. Maybe erasure is necessary. Maybe the human spirit defends itself as the body does, attacking infection, enveloping and destroying those malignancies that would otherwise consume us. ~ Tim O'Brien

This doctrine (justification) is the head and the cornerstone. It alone begets, nourishes, builds, preserves, and defends the church of God and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour. ~ Martin Luther

Of course I'd been long enough on land to know earthly love, and it had always ended in a battle, in each wanting to be the stronger, the superior in the relation. It is commonly called 'the battle of the sexes,' but I don't know if that is the right term. In truth it's a question of a power struggle, of a battle not to lose oneself, to maintain one's sovereignty - one's property rights. Only the very strong can live with no fear of losing their autonomy. Still, this is the precondition for loving: not to want power - not to want to own someone.
There can be talk of love only when one gives up one's self-assertion, when one lays down arms and capitulates fully. When one no longer defends oneself. Love is the absolute yielding, the total surrender – unconditionally. It knows no reservations, no defense. Love creates no need to be the strongest; it knows no lust for power, no personality struggle. Love is pure devotion, absolute self-surrender. Only one who is strong enough not to fear losing his personality can love. To love, one must be able to forsake oneself, to make the other free. And it is this which we're not strong enough to do. ~ Jens Bjørneboe

Thus ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come.
The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of levelling. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably ~ William Penn

Go into emptiness, strike voids, bypass what he defends hit him where he does not expect you. ~ Sun Tzu

Dickens defends what he has written in terms of its truth. This is not the last time that the 'true' and the 'real' were to be opposed unfruitfully. The same terminological mismatch was to feature throughout the rest of the century in debate about the nature of literary realism and the moral function of realist art. ~ Charles Dickens

The piano - that, too, was an adventure. A little girl tried to learn to play it. Her mother insisted, forced her to sit there and practice. Nothing came of it; stubbornness won out in the end, the stubbornness that protects us from the will of others, that defends our right to live our life the way we want. Even if it means life will turn out worse than anyone planned, will turn into a poor life - but it'll be one's own, however it is, even without music, even without talent. ~ Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

The machine which at first blush seems a means of isolating man from the great problems of nature, actually plunges him more deeply into them. As for the peasant so for the pilot, dawn and twilight become events of consequence. His essential problems are set him by the mountain, the sea, the wind. Alone before the vast tribunal of the tempestuous sky, the pilot defends his mails and debates on terms of equality with those three elemental divinities. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The task of the political philosopher can only be to influence public opinion, not to organize people for action. He will do so effectively only if he is not concerned with what is now politically possible but consistently defends the "general principles which are always the same." In this sense I doubt whether there can be such a thing as a conservative political philosophy. Conservatism may often be a useful practical maxim, but it does not give us any guiding principles which can influence long-range developments. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

This is the picture of a woman cast in the role of a learner, a pupil, even a rabbinic student. Quite obviously this is a prohibited role for women in those days and in that culture. Yet Jesus affirms Mary in that role. Martha, however, rebukes her. Martha demands that Jesus order Mary to abandon the pupil role for the more acceptable domestic role of assisting with the dinner preparations. Jesus supports Mary and defends her consciousness-raising act by stating that she has elected a higher choice. ~ John Shelby Spong

Whether the woman shares the man's passion or not, whether she is willing or unwilling to satisfy it, she always repulses him and defends herself, though not always with the same vigour, and therefore not always with the same success. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We may see how miraculously God defends our people, and makes us hope that, in spite of the malice of our enemies, He will bring our cause to a good and happy end, to the advancement of His glory and the deliverance of so many Christians from unjust oppression. ~ William The Silent

ACCOMPLICE, n. One associated with another in a crime, having guilty knowledge and complicity, as an attorney who defends a criminal, knowing him guilty. This view of the attorney's position in the matter has not hitherto commanded the assent of attorneys, no one having offered them a fee for assenting. ~ Ambrose Bierce

All official and liberal science defends wage-slavery, whereas Marxism has declared relentless war on that slavery. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin