Quotes about defense
page 9

John Steinbeck photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“[This work] would be inexcusable to suppose it to be exhaustive. It is not even defensive. It is a projectile, and projectiles do not apologize.
It intends to be followed.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Preface"
Why I Am a Vegetarian: An Address Delivered before the Chicago Vegetarian Society (1895)

Antoinette Brown Blackwell photo

“The warlike duty of defense is also borne chiefly by males, and must often be an immense tax on the energies.”

Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) American minister

September 1874, Popular Science Monthly Vol. 5, Article: The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction , p. 608
The Alleged Antagonism Between Growth and Reproduction (1874)

Marianne Williamson photo
Raewyn Connell photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Marianne Williamson photo
Wendell Berry photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Ernest King photo

“(1) Defensive phase... a boxer covering up.
(2) Defensive-offensive phase... a boxer covering up while seeking an opening to counterpunch.
(3) Offensive-defensive phase... blocking punches with one hand while hitting with the other.
(4) Offensive phase... hitting with both hands.”

Ernest King (1878–1956) United States Navy admiral, Chief of Naval Operations

King's predicted four phases of World War II for the United States and the Allies, made while conversing with reporters in Alexandria, Virginia on 30 November 1942. As quoted by Thomas B. Buell in his book Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (1980), p. 265
1940s

Ibram X. Kendi photo

“Part of the reason so many Americans are so defensive is because we’ve been led to believe that racist is a fixed category, that it’s a tattoo, it’s a label. Of course they’re going to say, I’m not a racist, I’m not a bad person.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

But racist is describing what you’re saying in the moment.

On why racist is a crucial descriptive term in “How to Be an Antiracist Author Ibram X. Kendi on What We Get Wrong About Racism” https://time.com/5647303/how-to-be-antiracist-author-interview/ in Time Magazine (2019 Aug 8)

Steven Best photo
Kenneth Arrow photo
Warren Farrell photo

“Love doesn’t eliminate defensiveness, because love creates vulnerability, and defensiveness is vulnerability’s mask.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 308

Wesley Clark photo
Mary Church Terrell photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

John F. Kennedy photo
Ernest Becker photo

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Thomas Jackson photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Surrender is forbidden. Sixth Army will hold their positions to the last man and the last round and by their heroic endurance will make an unforgettable contribution toward the establishment of a defensive front and the salvation of the Western world.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

In a message to General Paulus https://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/defeat/catastrophe-stalingrad.htm, 24 January 1943
1940s

J. C. Kumarappa photo

“The Western nations have four arms-defensive and offensive-the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Church.”

J. C. Kumarappa (1892–1960) Jōsaph Celladurai; b. 01/04/1892; economist; mem., Indian Planning Comm.; protagonist of Gandhian principle…

Shri J. C. Kumarappa. Can Indira Accept this Challenge? Dadoomiyan, S. Vijayanand Bharathi. Vora, 1966. as Quoted in Madhya Pradesh (India)., Goel, S. R., Niyogi, M. B. (1956, [1998 reprint]). Vindicated by time: The Niyogi Committee report on Christian missionary activities.

Andy Ngo photo

“The word ‘violence’ is being systematically remade to conform to their worldview. Looting and arson aren’t violence, they argue. And yet physical violence directed at their opponents is also not violence but rather ‘self-defense.’”

Andy Ngo (1986) American conservative journalist and social‐media personality

Source: Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy (2021), p. 17

Leo Tolstoy photo
Isaac Mashman photo
Natalie Wynn photo
Prevale photo

“In this wicked and selfish world, with no essential values… being asshole is self-defense.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: In questo mondo malvagio ed egoista, senza valori essenziali... essere stronzi è legittima difesa.
Source: prevale.net

Robert Kocharyan photo
Eric Hobsbawm photo

“'Europe' had been on the defensive for a millennium. Now, for half a millennium, it conquered the world. Both observations make it impossible to sever European history from world history.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

Chap. 17 : The Curious History of Europe
On History (1997)

“In Islam, it is an obligation to prepare yourself for defense and to train. This is no different than any nation having its young people train to defend the nation.”

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith (1965) One of Al-Qaeda's official spokesmen

Source: Kronos US v Sulaiman Abu Ghayth Statement https://kronosadvisory.com/Kronos_US_v_Sulaiman_Abu_Ghayth_Statement.1.pdf (1st March 2013)

Carl von Clausewitz photo

“What is the object of defense? To preserve. To preserve is easier than to acquire.”

Source: On War (1832), Book 6, Chapter 1.

Carl von Clausewitz photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Carl von Clausewitz photo
Ro Khanna photo

“Our demand for restraint in foreign policy must be stronger than defense contractor lobbyists. Our demand for criminal justice reform must be stronger than the prison-industrial complex.”

Ro Khanna (1976) U.S. Representative from California

Source: Twitter post https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/1078674237311860736 (28 December 2018)

John McCain photo

“I play defense as much as anything down there.”

Mike Cierpiot (1953) American politician

New Missouri House Floor Leader Cierpiot on Issues and John Diehl https://www.missourinet.com/2015/08/03/new-missouri-house-floor-leader-cierpiot-on-issues-and-john-diehl/ (3 August 2015)

Joseph Fiorenza photo
Gerald Barbarito photo
Larry Niven photo
Donald Rumsfeld photo
Joe Biden photo

“So often, our Armed Forces and the Department of Defense staff are how the rest of the world encounters America. And you all know as well as anyone that our country is safer and stronger when we lead not just with the example of our power, but with the power of our example.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, February 2021, Remarks by President Biden to Department of Defense Personnel, February 10, 2021

Nguyễn Tấn Dũng photo

“The history of national defense and building with untold sweat and bloods has forged a Vietnam's vitality, a distinct cultural identity, a resilient internal strength for development, and a capability to adapt herself to the times and harmoniously co-exist with other nations in the world.”

Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (1949) Prime Minister of Vietnam

"Deputy Pm Nguyen Tan Dung Speaks At John Hopkins University" https://vietnamembassy-usa.org/relations/deputy-pm-nguyen-tan-dung-speaks-john-hopkins-university (10 December 2021)

Auguste Vaillant photo

“Are we not acting on the defensive when we respond to the blows which we receive from above?”

Auguste Vaillant (1861–1894) French anarchist

Speech before the French Chamber of Deputies, 1894