Destructive Quotes - Page 2

• We produce destructive people by the way we are treating them in childhood.

  Alice Miller

  People, Childhood, Way

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• Early on in my life, I had a broken soul. I was abused by my father, abandoned by my mother and ended up in a destructive first marriage. By the time I was 23, I was broken in my soul. I didn't know how to think right. I felt wrong about everything. But God stepped into my life, and I came out on the other side and didn't even smell like smoke.

  Joyce Meyer

  Mother, Father, Thinking

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• Human nature is potentially aggressive and destructive and potentially orderly and constructive.

  Margaret Mead

  Human Nature, Aggressive, Aggression

  Margaret Mead (2000). “And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America”, p.134, Berghahn Books

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• The most destructive criticism is indifference.

  E. W. Howe

  Envy, Gossip, Criticism

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• But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutality of the means by which the IRA were pursuing change was destructive of the trust upon which new possibilities would have to be based.

  Seamus Heaney

  Mean, Perception, Brutality

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.421, Macmillan

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• I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.

  Stephen Hawking

  Science, Technology, Thinking

  Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in "The Daily News", August 4, 1994.

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• Pretensions to moral superiority are devastatingly destructive.

  Mary Douglas

  Moral, Pretension, Superiority

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• The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

  Ernest Dimnet

  Inspirational, Happiness, Happy

  "What We Live by". Book by Ernest Dimnet, p. 238, 1932.

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• Where is the indignation about the fact that the US and USSR have thirty thousand pounds of destructive force for every human being in the world?

  Norman Cousins

  Peace, War, World

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• Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of "speculation"; but which ought to be called Gambling.

  William Cobbett

  Gambling, Names, Evil

  "Advice to Young Men, and (Incidentally) to Young Women, in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (Letter 2)". Book by William Cobbett, 1829.

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• To understand something changing form as a destructive act is a very modern, Western gut reaction to things, and I get it. But what I'm suggesting is nothing radical, this notion of things constantly changing, and that the change is not inherently destructive.

  Dario Robleto

  Things Change, Modern, Reactions

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For me, acting was a way of taking destructive energy and doing something productive with it, and in that way it was quite a life saver.

  Nicolas Cage

  Acting, Energy, Way

  "'You've got to be able to break the wall'". Interview with Dorian Lynskey, www.theguardian.com. February 16, 2007.

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• I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

  A. S. Byatt

  Book, Writing, People

  "Writing in terms of pleasure". Interview with Sam Leith, www.theguardian.com. April 24, 2009.

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• I've always had this impulse to be destructive.

  Russell Brand

  Impulse

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

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• I never guess. It is a shocking habit destructive to the logical faculty.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Science, Literature, Logic

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “The Sign of the Four”, p.21, Arthur Conan Doyle

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• Nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

  Albert Einstein (1949). “The World as I See it”, Citadel Press

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• This is what I am. I have periods of enormous self-destructive depression, where I go completely off my trolley and lose all sight of reality and reason.

  Siobhan Fahey

  Reality, Sight, Self

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• There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

  William Henry Harrison

  Nature, Military, Exercise

  David A. Durfee, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, United States. President (1841-1845 : Tyler) (1970). “William Henry Harrison, 1773-1841: John Tyler, 1790-1862; chronology, documents, bibliographical aids”, Oceana Pubns

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• I've been in and out of Wall Street since 1949, and I've never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street. And I'm not sure where it comes from, but I suspect it's got to do with a general schism in this society which is really becoming ever more destructive.

  Alan Greenspan

  Wall, Government, Becoming

  "Meet the Press", www.nbcnews.com. August 1, 2010.

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• Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Innovation, Religion, Novelty

  Stephen Jay Gould (1995). “Dinosaur in a haystack: reflections in natural history”, Harmony

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• Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Color, Romance, Taste

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• I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office.

  Newt Gingrich

  Running, Country, Thinking

  "CNN’s John King stands by his first debate question to Newt Gingrich". Interview With John King, cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com. January 20, 2012.

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• I had the honor to meet Nelson Mandela, and I heard him explain his forgiveness of his captors of 27 years by saying hatred and bitterness is destructive - the power is in love and forgiveness.

  Dick Gephardt

  Years, Hatred, Honor

  "Sen. Richard Gephardt's Speech Text". abcnews.go.com. August 16.

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• America's greatness has been the greatness of a free people who shared certain moral commitments. Freedom without moral commitment is aimless and promptly self-destructive.

  John W. Gardner

  Freedom, Commitment, Greatness

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• There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or to be acted out under the guise of virtue.

  Erich Fromm

  Spiritual, Envy, Feelings

  Erich Fromm (2013). “Man for Himself: An Inquiry Into the Psychology of Ethics”, p.235, Routledge

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