Destruction Quotes - Page 25

• The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit.

  Noam Chomsky

  Reflection, Terrible Events, Quests

  Noam Chomsky (2015). “Because We Say So”, p.55, City Lights Books

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• I do not believe that a world without evil, preferable in order to ours, is possible; otherwise it would have been preferred. It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted. The combination of all the tendencies to the good has produced the best; but as there are goods that are incompatible together, this combination and this result can introduce the destruction of some good, and as a result some evil.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Believe, Order, Evil

  Letter to Louis Bourguet in late 1712. "The Shorter Leibniz Texts: A Collection of New Translations" edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 208, 2006.

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• Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.

  Jacob Needleman

  Life, Time, Philosophy

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• Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction.

  Cosmo Gordon Lang

  War, Mean, Thinking

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• Everything is interconnected. My
  interest is linked to everyone else's. Our survival and future are linked. Therefore the destruction of your so-called enemy is actually the destruction of your self.

  Dalai Lama

  Self, Survival, Enemy

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• A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  War, Long, Triumph

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2012). “Democracy in America”, p.159, University of Chicago Press

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• Einstein believed deeply that science should transcend national and ethnic divisions. But he watched physicists and chemists become the purveyors of weapons of mass destruction in the early 20th century.

  Krista Tippett

  Mass Destruction, Division, Weapons

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• It is time to stop personal destruction and prying into private lives

  William J. Clinton

  Stupid, Humorous, Private Life

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• The intelligence community's 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated, in a formal presentation to President Bush and to Congress, its view that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction - a belief in which the NIE said it held a 90% level of confidence. That is about as certain as the intelligence community gets on any subject.

  Laurence Silberman

  Mass Destruction, Views, Community

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• And by the influence of heat, light, and electrical powers, there is a constant series of changes; matter assumes new forms, the destruction of one order of beings tends to the conservation of another; solution and consolidation, decay and renovation, are connected; and whilst the parts of the system continue in a state of fluctuation and change, the order and harmony of the whole remain unalterable.

  Humphry Davy

  Change, Science, Animal

  "The Collected Works: Discourses delivered before the Royal Society".

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• Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

  Barbara Jordan

  Democracy, Today, Constitution

  Barbara Jordan, Shelby Hearon (1979). “Barbara Jordan, a self-portrait”, Doubleday Books

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• When I was younger, I did self-mutilate. I'd be upset, so I'd do it, & it would calm me down. It's a horrible way to feel better. But there are two parts of your brain - one that really wants to destroy the other. & sometimes the idea of self-destruction is very romantic. I got over that.

  Christina Ricci

  Self Harm, Feel Better, Ideas

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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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• I want to say, and this is very important: at the end we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war. We came that close to nuclear war at the end. Rational individuals: Kennedy was rational; Khrushchev was rational; Castro was rational. Rational individuals came that close to total destruction of their societies. And that danger exists today.

  Robert McNamara

  War, Luck, Important

  "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara". Documentary, August 30, 2003.

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• There's no nobility with war. It's tear-'em-up destruction that leaves you frustrated, bitter and angry... If you really knew what it was like for an hour, you wouldn't want anyone to go through it.

  Charles Durning

  War, Frustrated, Tears

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• No value is higher than self-esteem, but you've invested it in counterfeit securities-and now your morality has caught you in a trap where you are forced to protect your self-esteem by fighting for the creed of self-destruction. The grim joke is on you: that need of self-esteem, which you're unable to explain or to define, belongs to my morality, not yours; it's the objective token of my code, it is my proof within your own soul.

  Ayn Rand

  Self Esteem, Fighting, Soul

  Ayn Rand (1963). “For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (50th Anniversary Edition)”, p.143, Penguin

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• Our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into His face, as if they were of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them.

  Wendell Berry

  Betrayal, Stupid, Responsibility

  Wendell Berry (2003). “The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry”, p.308, Counterpoint

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• Can we actually suppose that we are wasting, polluting, and making ugly this beautiful land for the sake of patriotism and the love of God? Perhaps some of us would like to think so, but in fact this destruction is taking place because we have allowed ourselves to believe, and to live, a mated pair of economic lies: that nothing has a value that is not assigned to it by the market; and that the economic life of our communities can safely be handed over to the great corporations.

  Wendell Berry

  Beautiful, Lying, Believe

  Wendell Berry, Daniel Kemmis, Courtney White (2006). “The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays”, p.23, Counterpoint Press

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• We have to create; it is the only thing louder than destruction.

  Andrea Gibson

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• No amount of outer technology, no amount of computers and biotechnology and nanotechnology is going to stop the continuation of warfare and racism and environmental destruction. What's called for on the Earth at this time is really a change of heart ... the question is really not the future of humanity, but the presence of eternity.

  Jack Kornfield

  Heart, Technology, Racism

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• All creative effort - including the making of an omelet - is preceded by destruction.

  Yi-Fu Tuan

  Creativity, Effort, Creative

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• An organic farmer is the best peacemaker today, because there is more violence, more death, more destruction, more wars, through a violent industrial agricultural system. And to shift away from that into an agriculture of peace is what organic farming is doing.

  Vandana Shiva

  War, Agriculture, Today

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• Turn off your televisions. Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick- Barack reality show. It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on “Jersey Shore.” The real debate, the debate raised by the Occupy movement about inequality, corporate malfeasance, the destruction of the ecosystem, and the security and surveillance state, is the only debate that matters.

  Chris Hedges

  Real, Ecosystems, Surveillance State

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• Evil company is always to be shunned; because it leads to lust and anger, illusion, forgetfulness of the goal, destruction of the will (lack of perseverance), and destruction of everything. (Narada Bhakti Sutra)

  Swami Vivekananda

  Perseverance, Anger, Evil

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• Many problems that confront us today are created by man, whether they are violent conflicts, destruction of the environment, poverty or hunger. These problems can be resolved thanks to human efforts by understanding that we are brother and sister and by developing this sense of closeness. We must cultivate a universal responsibility toward each other and extend it to the planet that we have to share.

  Dalai Lama

  Brother, Responsibility, Men

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