Top 100 Defensive Quotes
#1. Look at me, I'm getting defensive about something that happened so many years ago, somebody said. I'll have to find out who that was and if he's still alive.
Paul Reubens
#2. It is hard to be defensive toward a danger which you have never imagined existed.
John Christopher
#3. Everything has changed. An interview has become such a confrontational thing. It makes you very defensive.
Francesca Annis
#4. I really have to be watching my back all the time; always be on the defensive? Trusting no one but myself was a cold cross to bear, but at that moment, I wore it.
Courtney Giardina
#5. Even today few businessmen understand that research, to be productive, has to be the "disorganizer," the creator of a different future and the enemy of today. In most industrial laboratories, "defensive research" aimed at perpetuating today, predominates.
Peter F. Drucker
#6. A German attack on Russia's ally France would, in reality, be defensive - but the English talked as if Germany was trying to dominate Europe.
Ken Follett
#7. We are to vigorously and violently demolish all the fortifications of the foe, winning the battle and talking him captive for Christ. The Church is not to assume a defensive posture, but may take aggressive action to overcome evil by means of good.
Jay E. Adams
#8. I didn't feel like myself around Caine. Not at all. I was defensive and scared and vulnerable.
Anonymous
#9. This document describes progress to date in establishing a defensive network capable of repelling wide-scale incursions by reconfiguring the national closed-circuit television surveillance network as a software-controlled look-to-kill multiheaded basilisk. To
Charles Stross
#10. Linebacker is a lot more detail oriented and you have to know a lot more than a defensive end necessarily would on any given play.
Justin Cole
#11. There's a tendency in many politicians to become inward-looking, more protectionist, more nationalistic and more defensive, in the bad sense of the word.
Jose Manuel Barroso
#12. It's important for us, if we're going to be a good team, to be a good defensive team in the fourth quarter.
Steve Nash
#14. Canzeroni is the only defensive catcher that can't catch.
Casey Stengel
#15. The first reaction is, get defensive. Second reaction is, what are we going to do about it?
Henry Blodget
#16. Jenny decided that all manifestations of her innocence were futile and appeared defensive.
John Irving
#17. A hardship mentality can make us narrow and defensive. A success and prosperity mentality can make us selfish. An attitude of thankfulness to God, for what He gives us, can make us truly generous.
Charles R. Ringma
#18. When something's wrong, even though you're the one doing it, you shouldn't feel defensive about it. It's hard because you have to protect yourself as a person in your life, but you can't protect yourself as an actor. You have to just take criticism.
Jess Weixler
#19. We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as the way in which they should break, so be it.
C.S. Lewis
#20. Because in order to beat Jimmy, I had to get around the ball a little bit quicker so I wasn't always on defensive and catching the ball on last stride, that I had little more time. Once I was able to get little bit quicker, then it has helped me a lot.
Ivan Lendl
#21. An angry frontal attack puts even the most invulnerable person on the defensive.
Sue Patton Thoele
#22. When you're dealing with Switzerland, Mr. Allon, it's best to keep one thing in mind. Switzerland is not a real country. It's a business, and it's run like a business. It's a business that is constantly in a defensive posture. It's been that way for seven hundred years.
Daniel Silva
#23. To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction.
Nikola Tesla
#24. A judgmental attitude helps neither ourselves nor others. Arguing or preaching rarely changes other people. Even if our opinions are justified, criticizing others usually makes them wary and defensive. And it takes our attention away from our own lives, which we can change.
Diane Dreher
#25. At the point when adding people into the company feels like more work than the work that you can offload to the new employees, the defensive lineman has run around you and you probably need to start giving ground grudgingly.
Ben Horowitz
#26. Any defensiveness is a sign of failure. You can't move forward if you are defensive.
Bryant McGill
#27. Having recovered from an inexplicable moment of weakness Claire was on the defensive, ready to bite. I had the impression that she was now looking for a chance to demonstrate her strength, or her hard-heartedness.
Jean De Berg
#28. He was no defensive fighter; even in the teeth of overwhelming odds he always carried the war to the enemy.
Robert E. Howard
#29. Me, I walk along and feel quietly defensive, a recluse in the Land of We. That's quite the loaded word, 'we.'
Caroline Knapp
#30. and many people are ego-defensive, meaning they can't admit when they've done something wrong because it makes them feel bad about themselves. So I thought instead of emphasizing self-esteem,
Elise Ballard
#31. Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, if my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me?
Charles Stross
#32. Parents sometimes feel that if they don't criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn't make people wantto change; it makes them defensive.
Laurence Steinberg
#33. There are days we all live with defensive thoughts in our mind. Without losing these thoughts we can't totally be ourselves, and enjoy life's freedom of the heart.
Ron Baratono
#34. The idea that a war can be won by standing on the defensive and waiting for the enemy to attack is a dangerous fallacy, which owes its inception to the desire to evade the price of victory.
Douglas Haig
#35. My submission to you is we're fighting the war on terror not overseas but in our own streets, and we'd be spending vast more fortunes to try to be a defensive country to protect ourselves rather than an offensive country to spread democracy wherever people yearn for it.
Johnny Isakson
#36. When we're playing a good scoring center, we tell our team that it is not our defensive man's job to stop the center. It's the responsibility of our perimeter people to stop the ball from going inside.
Bobby Knight
#37. I'm thirty-six years old and I've been married once and he left and I don't want to feel this way anymore. Like I can't be vulnerable. Can't relax. It's exhausting, always being on the defensive, keeping my guard up. I feel like Cuba.
Noah Hawley
#38. We need to learn how to give a defense for our belief in Christ without getting defensive.
Beth Moore
#39. I don't like defensive shots-you can only get threes
W. G. Grace
#40. The Istiqlal was powerful, which did not at all coincide with his conception of it, nor with the picture the organization painted of itself: a purely defensive group of selfless martyrs who were willing to brave the brutality of the French in order to bring hope to their suffering countrymen.
Paul Bowles
#41. I'm a little territorial and defensive. I don't like having my space invaded.
Shia Labeouf
#42. There's a famous saying: "If you pass the square ball in your own defensive third it must not be intercepted."
Graham Taylor
#44. When the door opened, the three goons from the hall found me braced in a defensive stance, holding a full-sized horseman's glaive in front of me. As expected, all three of them stopped and stared. Eight-foot long polearms had that effect on people.
Seanan McGuire
#45. It is apparent that Christianity and Islam must come, and come immediately, to a closer understanding, and it is equally apparent that their unity if achieved, will be the most effective defensive measure against Communist expansion.
Aly Khan
#47. Children have an unerring instinct for knowing when they are being patronized. They go immediately on the defensive against head-patting adults who treat them like strange beings.
Art Linkletter
#48. Iran has little capacity to deploy force. Its strategic doctrines are defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to set it.
Noam Chomsky
#49. Normally, I could hit hard enough, as anyone who studied my fights might have known. But the impression was that I was essentially defensive, the very reverse of a killer, the prize fighter who read books, even Shakespeare.
Gene Tunney
#50. Even defensive portfolios should be changed from time to time, especially if the securities purchased have an apparently excessive advance and can be replaced by issues much more reasonable priced.
Benjamin Graham
#51. Willows produce the defensive compound salicylic acid, which works in much the same way. But not on us. Salicylic acid, is a precursor of aspirin, and tea made from willow bark can relieve headaches and bring down fevers. Such defense mechanisms, of course, take time.
Peter Wohlleben
#52. 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.
John Gerzema
#53. We've been a bit too defensive about the European Union rules. We don't want to become protectionist and nationalist in the way we buy things but we think we could do a lot more to promote British business through procurement.
Vince Cable
#54. Science fictions are suppressed only when likely to contribute more knowledge and freedom than the defensive orthodoxies they challenge.
Timothy Leary
#55. Acknowledging the lucky breaks are paramount to enjoying life. Not being defensive about our successes/failures. So, in short.
Dan Mangan
#56. Much of the time, the things we feel guilty about are not our issues. Another person behaves inappropriately or in some way violates our boundaries. We challenge the behavior, and the person gets angry and defensive. Then we feel guilty.
Melody Beattie
#57. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#58. With their broad chests and muscular bodies, maine coons are the defensive tackles of the cat world.
Miranda James
#59. One of the turning points in the look of the Guardian is when we decided Logan Thackeray would be a Guardian as opposed to a Warrior. Logan's own protective nature and the fact that the humans have been knocked back into defensive positions informed a lot of what the Guardian became.
Jeff Grubb
#60. The atheist must abandon his defensive positions, take up the cudgels and go forward, rather than into the retreat of apathy.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair
#61. Relationship between human beings is based on the image-forming, defensive mechanism. In our relationships each of us builds an image about the other, and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves ...
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#62. Our whole philosophy was to intimidate the quarterback. We were able to do it. We were pioneers. People still recognize us as, maybe, the best defensive line of all time.
Merlin Olsen
#63. Dex winks. JJ Watt does it, so I do it too. No way am I going to be caught with my dick in the wind facing one of those defensive linemen coming at me like a tank.
Kristen Callihan
#64. That's right, Potter," Noah nodded, seeing James' untouched plate. "The less you eat, the less you'll have to throw up when you're in the air. Of course, some of us see a little well-aimed sick as a great defensive technique. You've had your f irst broom lesson with Professor Ridcully, right?
G. Norman Lippert
#65. The public response to feminism has been ferociously defensive precisely because feminism touches such a deep nerve of truth and the denial that keeps us from it. If feminism were truly ridiculous, it would be ignored. But it isn't ridiculous, and so provokes a vigorous backlash.
Allan G. Johnson
#66. It's natural for people to protect what they know instead of leaping into the unknown, and managers are no exception. Managers might even be worse, as the politics they rely on to survive can make them more entrenched and defensive.
Scott Berkun
#67. Aikido ain't a defensive nor offensive martial art.
It proactively halts the enemy's intention to attack.
Toba Beta
#68. This country cannot afford the deceptive luxury of waging defensive warfare.
James Forrestal
#69. Foreign nations have begun to include information warfare in their war college curricula with respect to both defensive and offensive applications.
George Tenet
#70. It's so much easier for me to talk about my life in front of two thousand people than it is one-to-one. I'm a real defensive person, because if you were sensitive in my neighborhood you were something to eat.
Richard Pryor
#71. Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, works only as long as it works; it does not know what to do if deterrence fails, for it envisions no defensive capabilities. A deterrent works until it is needed; then one needs defenses.
Jerry Pournelle
#72. Obama and his Democrats need to be placed on the defensive. They are the primary drivers of this spending; they are the obstructers of entitlement reform and the national debt continues to burn while they fiddle.
David Limbaugh
#73. Photography is my method for defining the confusing world that rushes constantly toward me. It is my defensive attempt to reduce our daily chaos to a set of understandable images.
Arthur Tress
#74. I don't know about habit, we've had a practice of it for as long as I've been doing this program [the Rush Limbaugh show], and a lot of the motivation for it is defensive.
Rush Limbaugh
#75. Knowing the enemy enables you to take the offensive, knowing yourself enables you to stand on the defensive.
Sun Tzu
#76. Marketing isn't done by computers, it's done by people. And people who sense opportunity and have the confidence to be remarkable will always defeat defensive actions by people who have given up.
Seth Godin
#77. Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.
Lauren Willig
#78. 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
Jonathan Raymond
#79. If Michaelangelo made a marble sculpture of a defensive end it would look like Mario Williams.
Dan Dierdorf
#80. Whether he gets hit early or in the middle or late, he gets in his seven innings it seems like every time. There are also great defensive plays made behind him and it's not a coincidence. Guys are in the game. He works quick.
Paul Konerko
#81. I feel defensive about my character because I really love Andrea, and we share the same heart.
Laurie Holden
#82. You want bold? Ask the hundreds of defensive backs I ran over during my career if they think I'm bold.
Jerome Bettis
#83. He's a rather brilliant defensive tactician," Grimm said. "I agree," Bayard said. "The problem is that he's an inept defensive strategist.
Jim Butcher
#84. All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#85. The U.K. and the U.S. could not have been built today without Africa's aid. It is all the resources that were taken from Africa, including human, that built these countries today! So when they try to give back, we shouldn't be on the defensive.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
#86. But the guarding of our desires is more than fighting a rear-guard defensive action against temptations from the world, the flesh, and the devil. We must take the offensive. Paul directs us to set our hearts on things above, that is, on spiritual values (Colossians 3:1).
Jerry Bridges
#87. Hats divide generally into three classes: offensive hats, defensive hats, and shrapnel.
Katharine Whitehorn
#88. I have my meals delivered ... you know what I like? Chicken and rice ... But the problem with being a defensive lineman is, if we get out of hand with our eating, we balloon up to, like, 300-some pounds. So I really got to watch what I eat.
Hugh Douglas
#89. The key to healthy communication is having a willingness to lay aside our defensive tendencies and accept responsibility for our part of the relationship
Asa Don Brown
#91. It appears the Kochs are among the most defensive billionaires, preferring the comfy confines of their callous and intellectually dishonest world view.
Robert Greenwald
#92. In a world of wolves one should go armed, and one of the most powerful defensive weapons within the reach of Negroes is the practice of race first in all parts of the world.
Marcus Garvey
#93. My advice to defensive players: Take the shortest route to the ball and arrive in a bad humor.
Bowden Wyatt
#94. The American School of Paris is one of those strange places in foreign cities where expatriates huddle together in a defensive circle and try to pretend they're still back at home.
I saw it as a place for lost souls.
Amy Plum
#96. When actors are being defensive and defending their position, that is when you get less than good acting.
John Boorman
#97. I am a midfielder who is mainly involved in the defensive phases, even if I also like to help build moves - I would say that my foremost quality is my generosity.
Yaya Toure
#98. I think that it definitely makes the transition easier being able to know linebacker and having also played on the defensive line. You can kind of know what they're expecting on the back end and what you are kind of expecting from them.
Justin Cole
#99. When you become aggressive in arguments, you force the other person to become defensive which means they'll either get ready to fight you or ready to flee from you.
Sam Owen
#100. My style is like Bruce Lee, I'm like water. It's everything from defensive, to counters, to offense.
Nonito Donaire
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