Deescalation Quotes

“Clever move. Using humour to deflate my murderous intent.”
― Nicholas Briggs, Dalek Empire I: Chapter Three -Death to the Daleks!

“A man in disheveled clothing approaches you with a knife and tells you to give him your belongings.

Imagine...

You take a deep breath and blow your community assistance horn, and the local de-escalation enthusiast arrives on his unicycle. He drapes him with the comfort blanket and gives him a hug, whispering in his ear that things will be okay.

You are stabbed 37 times and he uses the Subway gift card that was in your purse to buy himself a sweet onion chicken teriyaki sandwich from the $3.99 Sub of the Day menu

Isn't this public safety?”
― stained hanes, 94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat

“In her search for solutions [to high conflict], [Amanda] Ripley shows that the process of escaping these situations usually involves five steps. Participants in the conflict, she suggests, need to “investigate the understory” that made them so invested in the first place. They should “reduce the binary,” recognizing that they may share more values and interests with their adversaries than they realize. They must “marginalize the fire starters,” ceasing to listen to those who seem to get a thrill out of the fight. They should “buy time and make space,” stopping themselves from escalating when they feel triggered. Most important, they need to “complicate the narrative,” recognizing that any story in which one side consists of pure heroes and the other of cartoonish villains is unlikely to be altogether accurate.”
― Yascha Mounk