You cannot win a battle in any arena merely by defending yourself.
You don't need to justify your rights as a citizen - that inverts the model of responsibility. The government must justify its intrusion into your rights. If you stop defending your rights by saying, "I don't need them in this context" or "I can't understand this," they are no longer rights.
Good relations with Russia are great news. Putting a stop to the [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] is great news. Defending American industry against the invasion of Chinese products. Renegotiating the role of NATO. And a similar approach on the issue of immigration. This is all great news.
History leaves no doubt that among of the most regrettable crimes committed by human beings have been committed by those human beings who thought of themselves as civilized. What, we must ask, does our civilization possess that is worth defending? One thing worth defending, I suggest, is the imperative to imagine the lives of beings who are not ourselves and are not like ourselves: animals, plants, gods, spirits, people of other countries, other races, people of the other sex, places and enemies.
Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.
The Americans are trying to expand their influence in the world, particularly in Europe. They are defending their own interests, not ours. I am in favor of a multi-polar world in which France once again takes its position as the leader of non-aligned states, not with the US, not with Russia and not with Germany. One should strive to be neither slave nor master.
Americans have always held firm, because we have always believed in certain truths. We know that if evil is not confronted, it gains in strength and audacity and returns to strike us again. We know that when the work is hard, the proper response is not retreat, it is courage. And we know that a great ideal of human freedom entrusted to us in a special way and that the ideal of liberty is worth defending.
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.
Umpires are most vigorous when defending their miscalls.
You think defending this nation [americans] is expensive, try not defending it. That's a lot more expensive.
Defending birthright citizenship is about being on the right side of liberty. The 14th Amendment is a great legacy of the Republican Party.
Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.
With me it was that defending the Communist Party was something worse than naming the names.
Some kinds of nails, such as those used for defending the soles of coarse shoes, called hobnails, require a particular form of the head, which is made by the stroke of a die.
A country is strong which consists of wealthy families, every member of whom is interested in defending a common treasure; it is weak when composed of scattered individuals, to whom it matters little whether they obey seven or one, a Russian or a Corsican, so long as each keeps his own plot of land, blind in their wretched egotism, to the fact that the day is coming when this too will be torn from them.
The people of America are in agreement in defending their liberties at any cost, and the first line of that defense lies in the protection of economic security.
Idea-assassins rush forward to kill any new suggestion on the grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, no matter how absurd.
Adult gorillas will fight to the death defending their families. This is why poachers who may be seeking only one infant for the zoo trade must often kill all the adults in the family to capture the baby.
Freedom is indivisible. Whites can't enjoy their separate freedoms. They spend too much time and resources defending those freedoms instead of enjoying them.