Destructive Quotes - Page 36

• I definitely see the good in people. Certainly in my own life I strive to be somebody who is functional and well adjusted and can face conflict in a non-emotional and non-destructive way, and those are the people I try to surround myself with in my life. But as characters, they bore me.

  Alan Ball

  Character, Emotional, People

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Fire is a fragile lover, court her well, neglect her not; her faith is like a misty smoke, her anger is destructive hot.

  Cate Tiernan

  Fire, Hot, Lovers

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• Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Pursuit Of Happiness, Government, People

  Declaration of Independence (1776).

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• Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

  Toni Morrison

  Romantic Love, Ideas, Envy

  "The Bluest Eye". Book by Toni Morrison, 1970.

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• Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.

  Jonathan Kozol

  Teacher, Children, Military

  Jonathan Kozol (2012). “Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope”, p.10, Crown

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• To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?

  Derrick Jensen

  Dream, Civilization, People

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• …being an atheist required discipline very like that of being Catholic. One could never yield to the idea of a supernatural authority, no matter how often one might be tempted. To think that a personal God had made the world was to yield to a demonic and superstitious and destructive belief.

  Anne Rice

  Atheist, Thinking, Ideas

  Anne Rice (2013). “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession”, p.129, Random House

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• The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. The destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenates, because it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, of his own condition.

  Walter Benjamin

  Character, Age, Cheerful

  "Selected Writings: 1927-1934".

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• When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.

  Dalai Lama

  Fear, Real, Fall

  Interview with Robert Thurman, www.motherjones.com. November 1997.

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• The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.

  William Blake

  Eye, Men, Sea

  William Blake (1975). “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, p.18, Oxford Paperbacks

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• How can both Nics, the loving and considerate and generous one, and the self-obsessed and self-destructive one, be the same person?

  David Sheff

  Self, Obsessed, Considerate

  David Sheff (2009). “Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction”, p.96, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.

  Robin Hobb

  Self, Events In Life, Challenges

  Robin Hobb (2014). “The Liveship Traders Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny”, p.1940, Del Rey

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• Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.

  Michael Crichton

  Animal, Thinking, World

  Michael Crichton (1997). “Michael Crichton's Jurassic World”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to "spiritual" subjects. If one is living by the tithes of history's most destructive economy, then the disembodiment of the soul becomes the chief of worldly conveniences.

  Wendell Berry

  Spiritual, Soul, Wonder

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.96, Counterpoint

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• A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

  Garrison Keillor

  Drinking, Years, Two

  Garrison Keillor (2011). “Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel”, p.96, Faber & Faber

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• Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Smart, Book, Criticism

  Flannery O'Connor (1988). “The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor”, p.407, Macmillan

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• Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

  Annie Dillard

  Giving, Ashes, Safe

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.88, Canongate Books

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• When you're at peace with yourself and love your self, it is virtually impossible to do things to yourself that are destructive.

  Wayne Dyer

  Inspirational, Peace, Self

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• Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.

  Paulo Coelho

  Wall, Self, Two

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• I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us!

  Garth Stein

  Zebras, Fear, Self

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• Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Animal, Numbers, Suffering

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• Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.

  Audre Lorde

  Communication, Ignorance, Names

  Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.130, Crossing Press

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• Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

  Stanley Milgram

  Jobs, People, Ordinary

  "The Perils of Obedience," Harper's Magazine, 1974.

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• Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different.

  Paulo Coelho

  Pride, People, Judging

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• There is no glory in honesty if it is destructive. And no shame in dishonesty if its goal is to offer grace.

  M.J. Rose

  Life, Honesty, Lying

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