Defence Mechanism Quotes

“It’s so easy to lose faith and become lost in all of the politics of the world. That’s why we need the arts. To sublimate our frustration and anger into something beautiful. Freud called sublimation a virtuous defence mechanism because it is in the arts that we can find our humanity.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“The degradation of love here serves merely as a social defence mechanism. The stability of medieval feudal society and even that of the courtly society of the seventeenth century was not threatened by the dangers of love; they needed no such defence against the excesses of prodigal sons. But now, when the frontiers between the social castes are crossed more and more frequently and not only the nobility but also the bourgeoisie has to defend a privileged position in society, the excommunication of the wild, incalculable love-passion, which threatens the prevailing social order, begins, and a literature arises which finally leads to the Dame aux camélias and to our Garbo films.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism

“Those who persecute others are warding off knowledge of their own fate as victims.”
― Alice Miller