Retaliate Quotes

Don't retaliate.

When we've been wronged, we usually have an urge to punish the person who wronged us. We want them to feel the pain that they have caused us, but this kind of thinking hurts everyone involved and damages trust even more. It's been said, "Holding a grudge is like drinking poison and then hoping the other person dies!" When you've been wronged in a relationship, give clear and specific guidelines for how trust can be restored, but don't punish the other person. ~ Dave Willis

I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith. The gentle figure of Christ, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek - I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

There was once a spirited feral mustang broken in by her stern rider. It was a harmonious relationship for the most part but, like any relationship, she tested the boundaries he placed on her and threw him ... Would the rider, having suffered his own wound, retaliate, discipline or forgive? ~ Donna Lynn Hope

This is my career. I have children to raise. I have to retaliate. He butted me. Look at me. My kids will be scared of me. ~ Mike Tyson

essence of nonviolence was a refusal to retaliate against evil, a refusal based on the realization that "the law of retaliation is the law of the multiplication of evil. ~ David J. Garrow

Someone else knows," I said. "The three most dangerous words in the secrecy business. But there it is. I know, and Ms. Nice knows. Which is why we came back with the RAF. Because where would your plane have landed? Guantanamo, maybe. But it didn't, and we're back in America, free and clear. And we know. I'm sure you could crush Ms. Nice's career, but you'll never find me. I'll always be out there. And you know me, General. You've known me a long time. I don't forgive, and I don't forget. And I won't have to do much. Talking might be enough. Suppose the SVR found out it was you who got Khenkin killed? Some of those IOUs might get canceled. And they might retaliate. Rumors might start, about poor old Tom O'Day, who got so desperate he came up with a cockamamie scheme. ~ Lee Child

See, Josh, that's what you do when someone slaps you in the face. So the next time it happens to you, try to retaliate. ~ CM Punk

Israel has a sizeable nuclear arsenal and could retaliate if it were attacked. ~ Stephen M. Walt

I hated when my dad gendered the stupid truck. To retaliate, I called my boobs Brock and Chad, which my dad hated with equal fervor. ~ Maurene Goo

You do not know me for sure, yet you feel yourself better than me.
But if you ever deliberately provoke me, in a way trying to hurt me,
I'm so worried that you will die, or injured with heart full of revenge.
The kind of revenge which you will never be able to fully retaliate,
a revenge that will only add to next innocent victims..in between you and me. ~ Toba Beta

They must first judge themselves, that presume to censure others: And such will not be apt to overshoot the Mark. We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. And yet we could hurt no Man that we believe loves us. Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the [Laurel]. If I am even with my Enemy, the Debt is paid; but if I forgive it, I oblige him for ever. [From Fruits of Solitude, 1693] ~ William Penn

All that is bad and dreaded is projected into the other, and all the anxiety is seen as the product of external attack rather than one's own subjective state . . . [which] the fear of the other's omnipotence as well as the need to retaliate by asserting one's own omnipotence. ~ Jessica Benjamin

Our capacity to retaliate must be, and is, massive in order to deter all forms of aggression. ~ John Foster Dulles

My people have been sucked into the violence because some feel they have to retaliate, and some feel they have to protect themselves. ~ Mangosuthu Buthelezi

It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life. ~ Laurie Colwin

When others seem to take advantage of you, do not retaliate by trying to take advantage of them. Use your power in improving yourself, so that you can do better and better work. That is how you are going to win in the race. Later on, those who tried to take advantage of you will be left in the rear. Remember, those who are dealing unjustly with you or with anybody are misusing their mind. They are therefore losing their power, and will, in the course of time, begin to lose ground; but if you, in the mean time, are turning the full power of your mind to good account, you will not only gain more power, but you will soon begin to gain ground. You will gain and continue to gain in the long run, while others who have been misusing their minds will lose mostly everything in the long run. That is how you are going to win, and win splendidly regardless of ill treatment or opposition. ~ Christian D. Larson

I don't initiate violence, I retaliate. ~ Chuck Norris

Our insecurities cause us to retaliate in outrageously greater proportions to whatever it was that came at us. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

We cannot be secure by limiting our liberties, as some of our political leaders are demanding, but only by expanding themWe should take our example not from the military and political leaders shouting 'retaliate' and 'war' but from the doctors and nurses and firemen and policemen who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem, whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing, and not vengeance, but compassion. ~ Howard Zinn

No one punishes the evil-doer under the notion, or for the reason, that he has done wrong
only the unreasonable fury of a beast acts in that way. But he who desires to inflict rational punishment does not retaliate for a past wrong, for that which is done cannot be undone, but he has regard to the future, and is desirous that the man who is punished, and he who sees him punished, may be deterred from doing wrong again. ~ Plato

Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough. ~ Criss Jami

Profits are related to customer retention. Customer retention is related to employee retention. Employee retention may or may not be related to benefits, but benefits could be part of the package that causes people to stay and
by the way
engage in discretionary effort.. If you go into any organization that's customer-facing, you can tell in five minutes when the employees are feeling abused. They retaliate on the customers. ~ Jeffrey Pfeffer

The call to love our enemies is, without a doubt, the most difficult thing Jesus invited us to do. . . For gang members, the decision to not retaliate can be a life and death decision. It is a ridiculous call, and yet, as the cycle of violence is broken and Love spreads, the ripples of Love change the world. ~ Jamie West Zumwalt

When our flesh stops trying, when it is thoroughly crushed and broken, His purposes for our lives are unhindered, and we bring true glory to His name. First Peter 2:23 (NIV) tells us, When they hurled their insults at [Jesus], he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. ~ K.P. Yohannan

To retaliate against the relatives of the co-religionists of the wrong-doer is a cowardly act. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A sound theory of value demands something different. It demands that good should be original and evil a mere perversion; that good should be the tree and evil the ivy; that good should be able to see all round evil (as when sane men understand lunacy) while evil cannot retaliate in kind; that good should be able to exist on its own while evil requires the good on which it is parasitic in order to continue its parasitic existence. ~ C.S. Lewis

The most important thing is not to think very much about oneself. To investigate candidly the charge; but not fussily, not very anxiously. On no account to retaliate by going to the other extreme
thinking too much. ~ Virginia Woolf

If you keep on retaliating what you receive, you'll be stuck in a infinite abyss of revenge and vendetta. ~ Pushkar Saraf

Be like the Sun; it is too great to retaliate when small men throw stones at it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The boy was strong, and wanted to retaliate, but he was in a foreign country. ~ Paulo Coelho

Every single American can exclaim, 'Nothing justifies what they did in New York and Washington,' not even the bombs that our government has dropped on them for ten years or the embargo that has caused the deaths of so many children. That's of course true ... The issue is simply an acceptance of reality and a fundamental fact of life: When governments do bad things to people, people sometimes retaliate. ~ Jacob G. Hornberger

Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams. ~ Tsunetomo Yamamoto

SOCRATES: For doing evil to another is the same as injuring him? CRITO: Very true. SOCRATES: Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered from him. ~ Plato

My satyagrahi spirit tells me that I may not retaliate. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

A man's character is most evident by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or reciprocate. ~ Paul Eldridge

Society, to be sure, does not like this very well; it saith, Whoso goes to walk alone, accuses the whole world; he declares all to be unfit to be his companions; it is very uncivil, nay, insulting; Society will retaliate. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Discipline of others isn't punishment. You discipline to help, to improve, to correct, to prevent, not to punish, humiliate, or retaliate. ~ John Wooden

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The Palestinians fight for their rights and their land using stones and catapults but the Israelis retaliate with disproportional and overwhelming power by using bullets and bombs thus killing so many innocent civilians ~ Bernard Membe

Forgiveness always comes at a cost to the one granting the forgiveness. To not retaliate is to absorb the cost. ~ Timothy Keller

We cannot know the whole truth, which belongs to God alone, but our task nevertheless is to seek to know what is true. And if we offend gravely enough against what we know to be true, as by failing badly enough to deal affectionately and responsibly with our land and our neighbors, truth will retaliate with ugliness, poverty, and disease. ~ Wendell Berry

Neither civilized reason nor Christian love would cause any of those people to treat you as they presumably wanted to be treated; only the fear of your power to retaliate would cause them to do that, or to seem to do it, which was (and is) good enough. ~ James Baldwin

The fae went down, and before he could retaliate, I went all Van Helsing on his ass. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

What's tragic isn't that we can't retaliate...
What's truly tragic is...
...being consumed with vengeance and not being able to live your life. ~ Sui Ishida

Even if this is the end of humankind, we dare not take away the chances some other life-form might have to succeed where we failed. If we retaliate, there will not be a dog, a deer, an ape, a bird or fish or lizard to carry the evolutionary torch. In the name of justice, if we must condemn and destroy ourselves, let us not condemn all life along with us! We are heavy enough with sins. If we must destroy, let us stop with destroying ourselves! ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Not only do we mock the Eurovision Song Contest itself, but we lampoon other European countries for taking it so seriously, and they all retaliate by voting for each other every year and ignoring our (sometimes) palpably superior songs. Accordingly, Britain has become the Millwall FC of Eurovision: we are hated, we know we are hated, and we pretend we are happy to be hated. It's actually quite a sad state of affairs. ~ Marcus Berkmann

You forgive what you can, when you can. That's all you can do.
To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense, the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Buck found it to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate. ~ Jack London

Consider again the mated pair with which we began the chapter. Both partners, as selfish machines, 'want' sons and daughters in equal numbers. To this extent they agree. Where they disagree is in who is going to bear the brunt of the cost of rearing each one of those children. Each individual wants as many surviving children as possible. The less he or she is obliged to invest in any one of those children, the more children he or she can have. The obvious way to achieve this desirable state of affairs is to induce your sexual partner to invest more than his or her fair share of resources in each child, leaving you free to have other children with other partners. This would be a desirable strategy for either sex, but it is more difficult for the female to achieve. Since she starts by investing more than the male, in the form of her large, food-rich egg, a mother is already at the moment of conception 'committed' to each child more deeply than the father is. She stands to lose more if the child dies than the father does. More to the point, she would have to invest more than the father in the future in order to bring a new substitute child up to the same level of development. If she tried the tactic of leaving the father holding the baby, while she went off with another male, the father might, at relatively small cost to himself, retaliate by abandoning the baby too. Therefore, at least in the early stages of child development, if any abandoning is going to be done, it is likely ~ Richard Dawkins

Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs. ~ Alan Greenspan

If Saddam's regime and survival are threatened [by invasion], he will have nothing to lose, and may use everything at his disposal ... If weapons of mass destruction land on Israeli soil, killing innocent civilians, the experts I have consulted believe Israel will retaliate, and possibly with nuclear weapons ... Nor can we rule out the possibility that Saddam would assault American forces with chemical or biological weapons. ~ Edward Kennedy

Beware in the presence of cats: they never give, they do not even retaliate
they only reply, and purr in doing so. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Lily asked Calvin to play dolls with her. He reluctantly joined her on the floor, but it soon became Chuck Norris meets Joy doll and she was going down repeatedly. Lily, scandalized, pouted, but began to retaliate. Oh no you don't, Chuck! I'm Piper, psycho Barbie! ~ Shelly Crane

Kriss gives me a sibling-punch. Anyone who has a sibling will know what that is - a punch that really hurts quite a lot, and that is meant to, but that you cannot take offense at, or retaliate against, because you went out of your way to get it - because sometimes you want your sibling to punch you. No one knows why this is. ~ Caitlin Moran

Even when people act nastily to you, don't condemn them or retaliate. ~ Albert Ellis

It was strange to us that none of these three victims made any attempt to resist the attack. Indeed, not one inhabitant in any of these worlds considered for a moment the possibility of resistance. In every case the attitude to disaster seemed to express itself in such terms as these:
To retaliate would be to wound our communal spirit beyond cure. We choose rather to die. The theme of spirit that we have created must inevitably be broken short, whether by the ruthlessness of the invader or by our own resort to arms. It is better to be destroyed than to triumph in slaying the spirit. Such as it is, the spirit that we have achieved is fair; and it is indestructibly woven into the tissue of the cosmos. We die praising the universe in which at least such an achievement as ours can be. We die knowing that the promise of further glory outlives us in other galaxies. We die praising the Star Maker, the Star Destroyer. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Playing the part of a charitable soul was only for those who were afraid of taking a stand in life. It is always far easier to have faith in your own goodness than to confront others and fight for your rights. It is always easier to hear an insult and not retaliate than have the courage to fight back against someone stronger than yourself; we can always say we're not hurt by the stones others throw at us, and it's only at night - when we're alone and our wife or our husband or our school friend is asleep - that we can silently grieve over our own cowardice. ~ Paulo Coelho

When you're not at the top of your game and you feel like the other team is laughing and embarrassing you by doing certain things, it's time to retaliate. ~ Bert Blyleven

Wake up, wake up!' He said to me
'No, I'm still sleepy,
do not disturb me'
Wake up me child, see the beauty

Don't cry, wipe your tears, He said to me
'No, I'm so lonely,
Nobody understands me'
Don't cry my child, embrace the beauty

Don't panic, be calm, He said to me
'No, you don't understand,
I need to earn money'
Don't struggle my child, connect to the beauty

Don't blame or attach, He said to me
'How can I be loving,
When they hurt me?'
Don't retaliate my child, show them the beauty

Don't withhold your love, He said to me
'How can I give Father
When they only take from me?'
Don't fear my child, I replenish the beauty ~ Elise Icten

Non-violence confronts systematic injustice with active love, but refuses to retaliate with further violence under any circumstances. In order to halt the vicious cycles of violence, it requires a willing acceptance of suffering and death rather than inflicting suffering or death on anyone else. ~ John Dear

It is supposed to be in very bad taste to discuss a person behind his back; and to discuss a dead person behind his back is most unfair, for he cannot even retaliate. ~ Ruskin Bond

Some guidelines for a successful 'Grand Tour' of Europe: 1. Energy! Never be 'too tired' or 'not in the mood'. 2. Avoid conflict with Albie. Accept light-hearted joshing and do not retaliate with malice or bitter recriminations. Good humour at all times. 3. It is not necessary to be seen to be right about everything, even when that is the case. 4. Be open-minded and willing to try new things. For example, unusual foods from unhygienic kitchens, experimental art, unusual points of view, etc. 5. Be fun. Enjoy light-hearted banter with C and A. 6. Try to relax. Don't dwell on the future for ~ David Nicholls

Age doesn't matter. Family doesn't matter. Rules don't matter. Only you and I matter. And this ... It feels right. Better than right. Meant to be. He lost the ability to retaliate as my hands cupped him harder. ~ Pepper Winters

What is the difference between Utilitarianism and Communitarianism? Let me explain to you based on my modest and humblest understanding by using an analogy of Ham Sandwich and Egg Sandwich. To prepare and serve a Ham Sandwich, a poor pig's life must be sacrificed to serve the majority of the consumers - that is Utilitarianism. To serve an Egg Sandwich, on the other hand, a cheerful hen must dutifully lay an egg every day to serve the majority of the consumers - that is Communitarianism. In utilitarianism, the means is not important, as long as it produces the beneficial result (consequentialism) for the majority, then it is ethically and morally justifiable. It does not matter if you bomb the enemy's innocent women and children, so long as it maims the enemy's capability to retaliate, then your act is defensible for the greater good of your country. In communitarianism, however, individual life and individual contribution to the community are both important. As long as you continue laying eggs willingly and happily, you contribute to the common good of the community as a dependable and responsible hen, I mean, individual. (Danny Castillones Sillada, Inusara Journal, October 8, 2016). ~ Danny Castillones Sillada

Did you just tweak my nipple?"
"Is that rhetorical?"
"Beware, chatty girl, I can retaliate."
"Promise? Ooh, I like that smolder, it's very Flynn Ryder."
"You're comparing me to cartoon characters now?"
"Animated characters. Huge difference. And it's cute that you know who he is. ~ Kristen Callihan

We all know it's safer to beat up on people who won't retaliate,' he told her, 'but it's a quick way to lose friends. You need to find ways of dealing with confrontation when it happens. ~ Minette Walters

When he came to fear and detest you, it was worse. He ordered three hits on you that I know of."
Roarke continued to stroll. "There were five, actually."
"Why didn't you ever retaliate?"
"I don't need the blood of my competitors. Or even my enemies. He was, for some years, nothing to me. But he should never have touched my wife. I'd have done him for that, if you're interested. For putting a mark on her."
"You didn't, and he lives."
"Because doing so would've put another mark on her, as that's who she is."
"You let him live to protect your wife?"
Roarke paused, looked Alex in the face. "If you think the lieutenant needs protection, mine or anyone's, you've severely misjudged her. I let him live out of respect to her. And I became convinced living, as he is condemned to live now, was worse than death. ~ J.D. Robb