Meditations on Violence Quotes

“Here's a rule of life: You don't get to pick what bad things happen to you”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Someone is going to read this and think, “I have a right to go anywhere I want. Just because something is dangerous doesn’t take away my rights.” Let’s get this over with now. Defending yourself is not and never has been about rights—rights are those things that the civilized members of society agree everyone deserves. When you hit the ground and taste blood in your mouth, when a steel-toed boot slams your head into a curb, when a knife slips under the waistband of your skirt and a hand is wrapped around your throat, the civilized agreement on how people should be treated is not an issue.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence

“Do not interpret anything I say here to mean “don’t fight back.” I’m also not going to patronize you with half-truths or platitudes. This is ugly on many levels: the level of the incident and the level of social conditioning to “get along,” which can make it so much harder to decide not to be a victim. This means that if and when a woman chooses to fight, it must be a total effort. In many cases, there is no level of force that will simply discourage a male attacker. He must be incapacitated. This is my advice and I think this mindset is critical, but the actual statistics are less grim—many assailants do run away and do not escalate when they encounter unexpected resistance.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence

“Do you want to get over this?” This is her contract that will be used over and over again to remind her that SHE wanted to change and she was willing to pay the price. There is great power in the victim identity. Instructors and other students go out of their way to be accommodating and gentle. The survivor can often get out of any drill or derail the entire class by admitting her discomfort. This sentence allows the instructor to point it out when this happens, to point out that the benefits of victim status must be given up to outgrow the victim status. This is hard, but critical. The subtle power in the victim status often seems like the only good thing and the only survival tool to come out of the event. Many are reluctant, very reluctant, to give up a useful “victim identity” for a possible stronger self.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence

“Just as women do not have the ritual of dominance-based violence, they also lack the built-in safety. In other words, if you are dealing with a female threat, she will be seeking to do damage, not to show who is boss. In my experience, women gouge for eyes, bite, and try to cut the face with their fingernails far more often than men. Second, if you are a woman dealing with a male threat, he can still Monkey Dance at you and perceive you to be challenging him. A significant percentage of the males who prey on women are seeking to safely establish dominance over somebody. In that case, when a woman fights back the man will react very violently. In his mind, a victim specially chosen to be weak enough to guarantee his validation as a dominator has seen him as weak enough to challenge. A man fighting another man for dominance will try to beat him, but a man who thinks that he is fighting a woman for dominance will be seeking to punish her. Punishment is much worse. Third, there are specific reactions to violence that most women have absorbed at a very young age that profoundly affect their ability to defend themselves. You see this in victims who flirt with or compliment their attacker: “You’re so handsome you don’t need to rape.” And you see it in women who struggle instead of fight. Women are used to handling men in certain ways, with certain subconscious rules—social ways, not physical ones. These systems are very effective within society and not effective at all when civilization is no longer a factor, such as in a violent assault or rape. On a deep level, most women feel at a gut level that if they fight a man he will escalate the situation to a savage beating, punishment for her challenge to his “manhood.” They feel this way because it is true. This is a hard thing to write. Years ago, before I learned to just listen, a friend told me her story. It had been several days and most of the swelling had gone down. She told me about the rape and the beating. I asked her if she had fought. Not my business and decades of experience later I would have just listened, but I was young and believed that there were more right and wrong answers than there are. She shook her head and said, “I was afraid he’d hurt me if I fought.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence

“Fitness is objectively the most important effect of martial arts training. The physical skills and self-defense aspects of training will never save as many people from violence as the conditioning will save from early heart attacks.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Assault isn’t just for criminals. Elite military teams, hostage rescue, SWAT, and entry teams use this mindset as much as criminals do. They don’t want to be tested or find out what their limitations are, they want to get the job done and go home. The mindset is implacable and predatory. They use surprise, superior numbers, and superior weapons—every cheat they can, and they practice. On the rare, rare occasions when my team made a fast entry and someone actually fought, the only emotion that I registered was that I was offended that they resisted, and we rolled right over the threat(s) like a force of nature.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Martial arts and martial artists often try to do it all. They teach self-defense and sparring and streetfighting and fitness and personal development, as if they were the same thing. They aren’t even related.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Self-defense is clearly my focus in this book. What is it? It is recovery from stupidity or bad luck, from finding yourself in a position you would have given almost anything to prevent. It is difficult to train for because of the surprise element and because you may be injured before you are aware of the conflict. The critical element is to overcome the shock and surprise so that you can act, to “beat the freeze.” Self-defense is about recovery. The ideal is to prevent the situation.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“The very essence of self-defense is a thin list of things that might get you out alive when you are already screwed.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Spiritual growth is very difficult to define. If it is a depth of understanding of the human condition, you will grow more by living and serving and talking to people than you will ever learn in a class of any kind. If it is understanding of yourself, you will learn the most by challenging your fears and dislikes, and few people stick with a class that they fear and dislike. If it is a happy feeling that all is right with the world and there is a plan and everything is wonderful and good…you can get it from heroin cheaper and faster.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“If you can truly flip the switch from surprised, overwhelmed, and terrified to the assault mindset, I can’t teach you much.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Violence is a big animal and many people who have seen only a part of it are more than willing to sell you their expertise. Does someone who has been in a few bar brawls really know any more about violence than the guy who grabbed the elephant’s ear knows about elephants? Bar brawling experience is real and it is exactly what it is, but it won’t help you or even provide much insight into military operations or rape survival.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Never, ever, ever delegate responsibility for your own safety.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Violence is bigger than me. There’s more out there and more kinds of violence than I’ll ever see…and certainly more than I could survive.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“Fair doesn’t happen in real life, not if the bad guys have anything to say about it and not if the professional good guys do, either.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence

“The minute you don a black belt, the minute you step in front of a class to teach, you are seen as an expert on violence. It doesn’t matter if you have absorbed a complete philosophical system with your martial art. It doesn’t matter if the art gave you, for the first time, the confidence to view the world as a pacifist. It doesn’t matter if you studied as a window to another age and culture. It doesn’t matter that you have found enlightenment in kata or learned to blend in harmony with the force of your attacker. It doesn’t matter because you are about to teach a martial art, an art dedicated to Mars, the God of War. A MARtial art. Even if somewhere over the years you have lost sight of this, your students have not.

Miller, Rory. Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence . YMAA Publication Center. Kindle Edition.”
― Rory Miller, Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence