Destructiveness Quotes

• l know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

  Douglas MacArthur

  Peace, Military, War

  "Duty, Honor, Country: Two Memorable Addresses".

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• Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Integrity, Selfish, Creativity

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

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• Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Life, Natural, Sadistic

  Wilhelm Reich (1948). “Entdeckung Des Orgons”

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• I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Military, War, Men

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• Destructiveness is the outcome of an unlived life.

  Erich Fromm

  Life, Outcomes

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.222, Open Road Media

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• Everyone in your culture knows this. Man was born to turn the world into paradise, but tragically he was born flawed. And so his paradise has always been spoiled by stupidty, greed, destructiveness, and shortsightedness.

  Daniel Quinn

  Life, Men, Greed

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.83, Bantam

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• Chronic boredom compensated or uncompensated constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.

  Erich Fromm

  Boredom, Recognition, Found

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.400, Open Road Media

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• There is only one answer to destructiveness and that is creativity.

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner

  Creativity, Answers

  Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1986). “Teacher”, p.96, Simon and Schuster

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• I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her. She will be June plus all that I contain.

  Anais Nin

  Crush, Hurt, June

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• The perspective of Love doesn't leave anybody out. Until your vision and compassion is big enough to include those who oppose you, you are simply contributing to the continuation of destructiveness . The end of separation is the salvation for all.

  Adyashanti

  Compassion, Perspective, Vision

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• It is not true that evil, destructiveness , and perversion inevitably form part of human existence, no matter how often this is maintained. But it is true that we are daily producing more evil and, with it, an ocean of suffering for millions that is absolutely avoidable. When one day the ignorance arising from childhood repression is eliminated and humanity has awakened, an end can be put to this production of evil.

  Alice Miller

  Ocean, Ignorance, Evil

  Alice Miller (2012). “Banished Knowledge: Facing Childhood Injuries”, p.139, Anchor

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• Renunciation - non-resistance - non-destructiveness - are the ideals to be attained through less and less worldliness, less and less resistance, less and less destructiveness. Keep the ideal in view and work towards it. None can live in the world without resistance, without destruction, without desire. The world has not come to that state yet when the ideal can be realised in society.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Views, Desire, World

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.2100, Manonmani Publishers

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• It's disturbing at my age to look at a young woman's destructive behaviour and hear the echoes of it, of one's own destructiveness in youth.

  Helen Garner

  Echoes, Age, Looks

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• To hate destructiveness, one must hate life as well: only death is an image of undistorted life ... organic life is an illness peculiar to our unlovely planet.

  Theodor Adorno

  Life, Hate, Peculiar

  Theodor W. Adorno, E. F. N. Jephcott (2005). “Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life”, p.78, Verso

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• There are two primary forces in this world, fear and faith. Fear can move you to destructiveness or sickness or failure. Only in rare instances will it motivate you to accomplishment. But faith is a greater force. Faith can drive itself into your consciousness and set you free from fear forever.

  Norman Vincent Peale

  Faith, Fear, Moving

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• I think I have felt most profoundly that in our disruption of the most basic physical processes of creation, we are engaged not only in the act of suicidal self-destructiveness, but also in an act of thorough-going blasphemy.

  Bill McKibben

  Suicidal, Thinking, Self

  Source: theotherjournal.com

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• Once we begin to appreciate that the apparent destructiveness of the toddler in taking apart a flower or knocking down sand castles is in fact a constructive effort to understand unity, we are able to revise our view of the situation, moving from reprimand and prohibition to the intelligent channeling of his efforts and the fostering of discovery.

  Polly Berrien Berends

  Moving, Flower, Intelligent

  Polly Berrien Berends (1987). “Whole child, whole parent”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Disease is nature's revenge for our destructiveness.

  Charles Frazier

  Revenge, Disease

  Charles Frazier (2006). “Thirteen Moons: A Novel”, p.86, Random House

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• If we continue to set human borders and the economy as our highest priorities, we will never come to grips with the destructiveness of our activities and institutions.

  David Suzuki

  Priorities, Borders, Economy

  David Suzuki, Ian Hanington (2012). “Everything Under the Sun: Toward a Brighter Future on a Small Blue Planet”, p.142, Greystone Books

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• The Bush administration has now provided three case studies in arrogance, isolation and destructiveness: Michael Brown during Hurricane Katrina, Ambassador Jerry Bremer in Baghdad and Secretary Paulson at Treasury. It is a tragic and very expensive legacy. No conservative and no Republican should doubt how much it has hurt our cause and our party.

  Newt Gingrich

  Hurt, Party, Arrogance

  "Dawn of a Newt Age" by David Corn, www.motherjones.com. March/April 2009.

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• I read a book in the late 1990s called The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, by Erich Fromm, and it had a profound impact on me. Fromm takes Descartes' statement, "I think, therefore I am" and changes it to "I effect, therefore I am."

  Frances Moore Lappé

  Book, Thinking, Impact

  Source: www.yesmagazine.org

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• For me, the entire journey of Lost has been walking that fine line between discovering Sawyer's humanity and, yet, keeping his edge of anger and destructiveness. He's been through every situation possible, emotionally and physically. Sometimes, it's been scary to get in touch with his growth, especially his relationship with Juliet. I really thought the audience might reject the softer side of Sawyer we saw in that. As for what will happen with him and Kate, all I can say is they have a love that is undeniable, but maybe it must be denied.

  Josh Holloway

  Journey, Scary, Humanity

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• Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Emotional, Democracy, Source

  Theodor W. Adorno, Samuel H. Flowerman (1964). “The Authoritarian Personality: Studies in Prejudice”

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• Look hard for ways to make little moves against destructiveness.

  Andre Trocme

  Moving, Looks, Littles

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• The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon [the 'Super', i.e. the hydrogen bomb] makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light. For these reasons, we believe it important for the President of the United States to tell the American public and the world what we think is wrong on fundamental ethical principles to initiate the development of such a weapon.

  Enrico Fermi

  Believe, Thinking, Light

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