Aggression - Quotes

Aggression is a biological response to a life-threatening situation. When there is an immediate threat to life, aggressive energy provides the power to do what needs to be done. Aggression in normal daily interactions is like activating a smoke alarm when there is no smoke. Actually, it is worse. The ringing alarm would be annoying, but it would do no harm. Aggression at best is annoying, and at worst, itself, becomes life threatening. - Gwen Randall-Young

Aggression is an effective form of energy when focused on the right direction and shielded from all others. - John Driscoll

Aggression is different from anger. Anger is an emotion; aggression is a behaviour. There are better ways to deal with anger than behaving aggressively. Aggressive talk, gestures or behaviours belong to the old way of being. Once we tune in to a higher level of consciousness, aggression is as unnecessary as is the hand-held plough in modern day agriculture. - Gwen Randall-Young

Aggression is never as effective as assertiveness. - Robert M Sherfield

Aggression is never to be encouraged in a leader: it implies emotional immaturity and a loss of control and will quickly lose a leader respect and create a climate of fear and blame. - Deborah Gray

Aggression is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. In many ways legitimate aggression contributes vitally to our lives. In aggression we find our drives for life, career, social contact, self-definition, and service. - Douglas Gillette 

Aggression is not universal; indeed, if we judge by the number of species which are non-aggressive and those which are, the scales might balance in favour of a greater number of non-aggressors, denying the classic aphorism that nature is red in tooth and claw. The big fish eat the little fish, it is true, but elephants, moose, camels, alpacas, llamas, deer, elk, horses, mules, buffalo, hippos and giraffes eat leaves and grass. - Sebastian Sisti

Aggression is part of the masculine design, we are hardwired for it … Little girls do not invent games where large numbers of people die, where bloodshed is a prerequisite for having fun. Hockey, for example, was not a feminine creation. Nor was boxing. A boy wants to attack something – and so does a man, even if it's only a little white ball on a tee. - John Eldredge

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy. -Benjamin Tucker

Aggression is the first step on the slippery slope to selfishness and chaos. - Anne Campbell

Aggression only moves in one direction – it creates more aggression. - Margaret J. Wheatley

Aggression, like every other part of human behaviour we take for granted, is a challenging engineering problem! - Steven Pinker

By reacting to aggression with aggression we lose the opportunity to spiritually benefit from the experience. - Kyriacos C. Markides

Childhood aggression is one of the best-known social predictors of future maladjustment. - Dorothy Lynn Espelage

Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose. - Bette Davis

Evolutionary theories, including socio-biology, account for aggression by noting that those most aggressive have an increased likelihood of getting food and mating. Hence the aggressive survive and aggressive genes get passed on to succeeding generations. That is, inasmuch as aggression is a strategy that "works" to perpetuate the genetic pool, it is part of the behavioural repertoire of organisms. - Bernard Weiner

If aggression is innate then all cultures should be equally aggressive, but this is obviously not the case. - Sally Gadsdon

Men are not gentle, friendly creatures wishing for love, who simply defend themselves if they are attacked, but ... a powerful measure of desire for aggression had to be reckoned as part of their instinctual endowment. - Sigmund Freud

The central lesson of our time is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next. - Ross Gregory & Richard Balkin

The first major classroom for the teaching and learning of aggression is the home. In the home, 4 percent of parents physically abuse their children (e.g., burn, fracture, shake to the point of concussion), and 90 percent make at least occasional (and sometimes frequent) use of corporal punishment (e.g., spank, hit, slap). What happens when an adult hits a child? The child ceases the behaviour(s) that resulted in the punishment. Punishment results in the cessation of the aversive event and, thus negatively reinforced, the adult is now more likely to use corporal punishment in response to the child's next transgression. Not only has the adult learned the correctness of the adage "might makes right," so too has the child. - Arnold P. Goldstein

The human capacity for aggression is staggering. It has been estimated that 58 million humans were killed by other humans (an average of nearly one person per minute) during the 125-year period ending with World War II. War, homicide, riots, family violence, assassination, rape, assault, forcible robbery, and other violent acts offer sad testimony to the realities of human aggression. - Dennis coon & John O. Mitterer

The men who are to protect the community against violent aggression easily turn into the most dangerous aggressors. They transgress their mandate. They misuse their power for the oppression of those whom they were expected to defend against oppression. The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty. - Ludwig von Mises

The most important distinction between aggression and assertion is its intent. During assertion, we move ourselves toward another; during aggression, we move ourselves against another. - Georgia Lanoil

The vast majority of the peoples of the world are against war and against aggression. If they make their wishes known and effective, war can be stopped. It all depends on whether they are willing to make the effort necessary for the purpose. For, that it will require an effort, no one who considers the history of the world on these subjects can doubt. - Robert Cecil

To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace. - Morihei Ueshiba

Wars of hate, aggression, and aggrandizement are only productive of more hate and more human suffering. -Joseph Lewis

We are only just beginning to understand the power of love because we are just beginning to understand the weakness of force and aggression. - B. F. Skinner