Motivation Quote by Morihei Ueshiba

Ueshiba’s line reads like a paradox until you remember he’s not talking about winning so much as rearranging the terms of a fight. “Move in and greet him” takes the enemy’s forward pressure and refuses to treat it as a threat. Greeting is intimate language: you close distance, you acknowledge the other person’s momentum, you meet it on purpose instead of flinching. It’s a psychological move as much as a physical one. The opponent expects resistance; Ueshiba offers contact, timing, and calm - which can feel disorienting, even humiliating, to someone charging in with certainty.

Then comes the second half: “if he wants to pull back, send him on his way.” No chase, no ego, no need to prove dominance by pursuit. In Aikido’s logic, running after a retreating opponent is how you get dragged into their rhythm, their traps, their panic. Let them go and you keep your center. It’s also a philosophy of conflict that avoids the addictive loop of escalation: don’t reward aggression with the kind of opposition it can feed on, and don’t turn de-escalation into a new battlefield.

Context matters: Ueshiba founded Aikido in a Japan shaped by militarism, war, and postwar reconstruction. His art positioned itself as “budo” with a conscience - technique built around blending, redirecting, and minimizing harm. The subtext is control without obsession: meet what comes, release what leaves, and deny violence the emotional fuel it’s counting on.