When Violence Is the Answer Quotes

“Ninety-nine times out of one hundred, the answer will not be violence. It will be avoidance or de-escalation. But that one time when violence is the answer, make no mistake, it will be the only answer.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Anything we can do to be more alert makes us less likely to become a target.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“First, that random violence happens. We don’t need to embrace it, condone it, or even understand what drives it, but we must accept that it is an inevitable part of being alive.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Here’s the simple litmus test I use: if there’s communication going on—if the other person is talking to you, even if it’s aggressively or insultingly—you’re still in social aggression mode, which means you should run away, or use your social skills to negotiate your way out of the confrontation. If there’s no communication, or the other person is already in the process of taking physical action, and there’s no available exit, the situation is asocial. You’re facing imminent grievous bodily harm and your only option at that point is to fight back.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Your size, your speed, your strength, your gender—all the factors that untrained people think make the difference when it comes to violence—all matter far less than your mindset and your intent.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“You can have years of “training,” but if you lack the intent, you’ll lose every time.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“We’re so used to equating “good guy” and “victim” that imagining ourselves on the winning end of a real, life-or-death fight seems impossible, almost forbidden. With that attitude, if you ever find yourself in a fight for your life, it’s basically over before it has even begun. CRIMINALS NEVER SEE THEMSELVES AS THE VICTIM”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“It is essential we understand this distinction between social aggression and asocial violence right now. Social aggression is about competition; asocial violence is about destruction. Competition has rules; destruction has none.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“I wish our world worked that way, but unfortunately it doesn’t. It’s a fantasy perpetuated by way too many bad self-defense classes. In the real world, I have learned that blocking, countering, “using his energy against him,” and a whole host of other martial-arts-based techniques are all dangerous conceits that do little more than make us feel good about our relationship to violence—we feel prepared but we still get to wear the white hat—while doing almost nothing to solve the essential problem. They do nothing to shut down the attacker and degrade his ability to function. At best,”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“A way to protect themselves against violence without having to use it.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Sadly, there is no such thing. There is no “in between.” If you want to prevent violence and avoid life-or-death situations, be smart and use your social skills to de-escalate, deflect, and disengage. If you want to survive violence once it’s begun, to quote the poet Robert Frost, the best way out is always through. The only reliable path to survival is to use the very same tool of violence your attacker is trying to use against you, but to use it better.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“So why do so few of us have a plan for unexpected violence? For some reason, we see training for self-defense as a Herculean effort reserved for the physically elite, so we dismiss it. That means there are just two main groups who study and prepare for violence. One group is the predators (we’ll talk more about them later). The other group is the professional protectors, like the police and military. Many people are content to bank on those protectors to be there in times of need. But pinning all your hopes on the possibility that one of those professionals will be on the very spot at the very moment you’re in danger is a lot like throwing out your fire extinguisher in the hopes that a fire truck will be turning the corner onto your block the very moment the flames touch the drapes. I don’t want to live like that, and this book is for those who don’t want to live like that, either. Obviously, I hope violence never visits you. But we don’t always control whether we experience violence. That’s never entirely up to us, because violence is an equal opportunity offender. It cuts across all demographic lines—race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, socioeconomic status. There is no amount of privilege or social standing that can make you immune to, or allow you to opt out of, violence when someone has identified you as their target. The choice you do have is whether you’re going to be ready for it. I believe that the wisest thing we can do is ready ourselves for the kind of moment we hope never happens. The solution to fear is”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“When it comes to trauma to the human body, all men and women really are created equal.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Achieving those ends is based on striking with a singular goal: incapacitation and survival.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“A reactive, hesitant person locked into a victim’s mindset does not see the empowerment that can be derived from the understanding of how injury works.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“As military technology improves, our bombs and munitions haven’t gotten bigger—they’ve gotten smaller. It’s our targeting that has gotten better.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Targets are the entry point for a vector of force. Most people imagine a target as a point, a circle or dot that could be drawn on the skin that means “hit here.” A target is not simply a dot on the skin around the critical, injury-prone area. It’s not the pointy part of the Adam’s apple or the round part of the kneecap or the iris of the eye. This is really, really important. If you get nothing else from this section, remember this: a target is an aim-point through which you are going to visualize putting all your body weight, with the goal of creating an entry wound. And every decent entry wound has an exit wound, with a tunnel of wreckage between the two.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“A target is an anatomical structure that can be crushed, ruptured, broken, or otherwise rendered useless, thereby rendering your opponent useless.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Here is all you need: the confidence to de-escalate conflict whenever possible, the confidence that comes from taking basic precautions in your life, and the confidence that comes from knowing you can use the tool of violence as a last resort.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“wherever possible, the smart play is politeness, accommodation, and de-escalation.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“When the brain is focused on injury, it can’t perform any other actions. It’s impossible for a person in the throes of that kind of reaction to plan, to make decisions, or to think about anything other than the trauma.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“They were more concerned with disarming than incapacitating, and in this case, it cost them severely.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“If you think you’re the guy on the ground, you’ll end up being the guy in the ground. Identifying with the downed man is to identify with the loser, the victim, the one getting done in. In the zero-sum nature of the prison experience, that means identifying with the dead.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“In civilized society, the economy runs on money and credit. In the prison system, the baseline currency is the effective use of criminal violence.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“using criminals’ own techniques against them, to debilitate and neutralize them, when the choice to de-escalate has been removed and there is no exit in sight.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“they’re not timid, they don’t dance around, they don’t worry about being countered or even killed—they just plow in with clear intent, like the result is a foregone conclusion, focused above all on causing that injury and not stopping until it’s achieved.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“In a life-or-death situation, you have to operate in Cause State all the time.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“when you make a decision, you’re either creating a new situation or reacting to an existing one.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“Now, even though the bad guy has a knife, the two men are more evenly matched, since they’re each finally employing their greatest tactical advantage—a mindset with clarity and purpose. At that point, it’s simply a race to first injury and then incapacitation. Here’s the truth: using real violence is binary. You’re either doing it, or you’re not. It’s either on, or it’s off. There is no middle ground, no halfway, no modulating levels of severity when it comes to protecting yourself in a life-or-death situation.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake

“The mind needs clarity to be effective, because it can really only process one thing at a time.”
― Tim Larkin, When Violence Is the Answer: Learning How to Do What It Takes When Your Life Is at Stake