Invulnerability Quotes

• A people that has remained convinced of its greatness and invulnerability, that has chosen to believe such a myth in the face of all the evidence, is a people in the grip of a kind of sleep, or madness.

  Salman Rushdie

  Believe, Sleep, Greatness

  "The Satanic Verses". Book by Salman Rushdie, September, 1988.

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• There is nothing that I so greatly admire as purposefulness. I have an enormous respect for people who know exactly what they are doing and where they are going. Such people are compact and integrated. They have clear edges. They give an impression of invulnerability and balance, and I wish I were one of them.

  Louise Dickinson Rich

  Giving, People, Wish

  Louise Dickinson Rich (1963). “The forest years: containing in one volume We took to the woods [and] My neck of the woods”

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• Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.

  Patrick Lencioni

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Patrick M. Lencioni (2010). “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable”, p.58, John Wiley & Sons

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• The ordinary man is as courageous and invulnerable as a hero when he does not recognize any danger, when he has no eyes to see it.Conversely, the hero's only vulnerable spot is on his back, and so exactly where he has no eyes.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Courage, Hero, Eye

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• You haven't yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability--to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I've shown you by example that a warrior's life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior's sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.

  Dan Millman

  Heart, Warrior, Cutting

  Dan Millman (2006). “Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives”, p.178, H J Kramer

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• When politics and religion are intermingled, a people is suffused with a sense of invulnerability, and gathering speed in their forward charge, they fail to see the cliff ahead of them

  Frank Herbert

  People, Gathering, Cliffs

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• Most of us hide behind egocentric biases that generate the illusion that we are special. These self-serving protective shields allow us to believe that each of us is above average on any test of self-integrity. Too often we look to the stars through the thick lens of personal invulnerability when we should also look down to the slippery slope beneath our feet.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Stars, Integrity, Believe

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• A piece of simple goodness--a letter gushing from the heart; a beautiful unstudied vindication of the worth and untiring sweetness of human nature--a record of the invulnerability of man, armed with high purpose, sanctified by truth.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Beautiful, Heart, Simple

  Douglas William Jerrold (1853). “Punch's letters to his son, Punch's complete letter writer, and Sketches of the English”, p.211

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• The police officer who puts their life on the line with no superpowers, no X-Ray vision, no super-strength, no ability to fly, and above all no invulnerability to bullets, reveals far greater virtue than Superman - who is only a mere superhero.

  Eliezer Yudkowsky

  Superhero, Police, Vision

  "Superhero Bias" by Eliezer Yudkowsky, lesswrong.com. December 1, 2007.

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• A warrior is not about perfection or victory or invulnerability. He's about absolute vulnerability.

  Nick Nolte

  Warrior, Perfection, Victory

  "Fictional character: Socrates". "Peaceful Warrior", www.imdb.com. 2006.

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• The fact is, the contest has always been invulnerability, and even when you win, you still lose.

  Brenna Yovanoff

  Winning, Facts, Contests

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• No matter how much lip service those committed to power (psychopaths) may pay to the principle of equality (empaths), they can never approach their fellow human beings on an equal footing; their relationships with others are defined solely in terms of power and weakness. Therefore, they must accumulate as much power as possible, with the aim of becoming invulnerable and proving this invulnerability.

  Arno Gruen

  Matter, Relationships With Others, Becoming

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• When you go to China and the developing world, people understand more clearly the dangers that are coming at them because they're living closer to the margin. They don't have any of the false sense of invulnerability that Americans have. People from developing countries also feel that it's their right, if you're talking in terms of justice, to use fossil fuels like we did for a hundred years to get rich. It's hard for them to give up that vision.

  Bill McKibben

  Country, Giving Up, Talking

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• In fact, Bill Clinton's an excellent example of what he should be doing when he realizes that he's not invulnerable. He realized two things: his invulnerability was contextualized in two things: junk food, and he had a problem with certain kinds of women.

  Walter Mischel

  Two, Example, Bills

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Achieving vulnerability-based trust (where team members have overcome their need for invulnerability) is difficult because in the course of career advancement and education, most successful people learn to be competitive with their peers, and protective of their reputations. It is a challenge for them to turn those instincts off for the good of the team, but that is exactly what is required.

  Patrick Lencioni

  Teamwork, Successful, Careers

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• Depending on the year or the therapist he was seeing, he'd learned to ascribe just about every facet of his character as a psychological reaction to his parents' fighting: his laziness, his overachieving, his tendency to isolate, his tendency to seduce, his hypochondria, his sense of invulnerability, his self-loathing, his narcissism.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Character, Fighting, Self

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.235, Macmillan

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