Destructive Quotes - Page 29

Guilt is the most destructive of all emotions. It mourns what has been while playing no part in what may be, now or in the future.

Penelope Leach

Guilt, May, Emotion

Penelope Leach (2013). “Your Baby and Child”, p.12, Knopf

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Language is one of the thin walls humanity has built up over centuries against its own bestial and destructive impulses.

Storm Jameson

Wall, Humanity, Language

Storm Jameson (2011). “Parthian Words”, p.24, A&C Black

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... I don't think anybody should avoid mistakes. If it is within their nature to make certain mistakes, I think they should make them, make the mistakes and find out what the cost of the mistake is, rather than to constantly keep avoiding it, and never really knowing exactly what the experience of it is, what the cost of it is, you know, and all the other facets of the mistake. I don't think that mistakes are that bad. I think that they should try and not do destructive things, but I don't think that a mistake is that serious a thing that one should be told what to do to avoid it.

Anne Bancroft

Mistake, Thinking, Knowing

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As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self. But this is a destructive and fragmenting way to live.

Audre Lorde

Meaningful, Acceptance, Self

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No wonder all the great comedians had such destructive private lives. ... After you get the audience into that kind of frenzy, and you are being worshiped like the false idol you are, how do you leave the stage and transition back into real life? ... What is there left to do but set yourself on fire?

Margaret Cho

Real, Fire, Idols

Margaret Cho (2007). “I'm the One That I Want”, p.85, Ballantine Books

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But I think that sometimes, when one's behaved like a rather second-rate person, the way I did at breakfast, then in a kind of self-destructive shock one goes and does something really second-rate. Almost as if to prove it.

Alison Lurie

Thinking, Self, Doe

Alison Lurie (2012). “Real People: A Novel”, p.146, Open Road Media

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Enlightenment is a destructive process.

Adyashanti

Enlightenment, Process

Adyashanti (2010). “The End of Your World: Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment”, p.104, Sounds True

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To dislocate the functioning of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot because it can be longer-lasting, costly to the society but not wantonly destructive, moreover, it is more difficult for Government to quell it by superior force.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Government, Cities, Destroying

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Sandy was particularly destructive because it was prevented from moving back out to sea by a "blocking pattern" associated with the jet stream. There's debate about this, but one recent study suggested that melting sea ice in the Arctic may lead to such blocking.

Nicholas D. Kristof

Block, Moving, Ice

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It's been said to me that I'm self-destructive because I'll walk away from things that are good.

Ariel Rechtshaid

Self, Said, Walks

"Ariel Rechtshaid: the producer behind Vampire Weekend, Haim and Sky Ferreira" by Dorian Lynskey, www.theguardian.com. December 27, 2013.

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There are two kinds of power. One is power over, which is always destructive, and the other is power from within, which is a transcendent and creative power.

Starhawk

Two, Creative, Kind

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It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in mirrors and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable.

Josephine Tey

Real, Thinking, Vanity

Josephine Tey (1952). “The singing sands”, Vintage

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One of the most wicked destructive forces, psychologically speaking, is unused creative power ... If someone has a creative gift and out of laziness, or for some other reason, doesn't use it, the psychic energy turns to sheer poison. That's why we often diagnose neuroses and psychotic diseases as not-lived higher possibilities.

Marie-Louise von Franz

Creativity, Power, Psychics

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media saturation is probably very destructive to art. New movements get overexposed and exhausted before they have a chance to grow, and they turn to ashes in a short time. Some degree of time and obscurity is often very necessary to artists.

Joyce Johnson

Art, Media, Degrees

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a weak and irresolute disposition is often more destructive than determined vice.

Lady Caroline Lamb

Weakness, Vices, Determined

Lady Caroline Lamb (1822). “Graham Hamilton”, p.6

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I was always performing, doing silly voices. The teachers realized I could go one of two ways: be creative or destructive.

Benedict Cumberbatch

Teacher, Silly, Voice

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You don't have freedom unless you have the freedom to do stupid self-destructive things.

Penn Jillette

Stupid, Self, Self Destructive

"The Situation with Tucker Carlson", www.nbcnews.com. August 16, 2005.

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Our culture has a tendency to pigeonhole people and to try to tear down anybody who's breaking out of our comfort zone. That's why we get into these cultural ruts that end up being destructive prejudices. But breaking out of that comfort zone is the most rewarding thing you can do, in your life. I do my best to push myself, when I can.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

People, Trying, Tears

"Joseph Gordon-Levitt Talks HITRECORD ON TV, How the Idea Came about, His Collaborative Company, Inspiring People to Contribute, and Plans for Season 2". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. January 15, 2014.

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Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

Martha Ostenso

Idols, Religion, Thorns

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It is the principle of sin, rebellion against God and His truth which has brought about birth defects and other destructive natural occurrences.

E.W. Jackson

Birth Defects, Principles, Sin

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Anger can serve a useful purpose if it is justified and directed appropriately. But when it's only a substitute for self-loathing and a justification for cruelty to others, the trigger in your brain can become horribly destructive and addicted to that emotion. It's like a tornado that blows away all of your pleasure and replaces it with emotional poison.

G. Frank Lawlis

Anger, Emotional, Blow

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According to a recent study, depression is described as being the disease most destructive to humankind, largely because of the devastation it wreaks on our lives.... Yes, we could set up our minds to ignore our feelings and barricade ourselves from the winds and dust of the brain pattern. And we could become like robots, refusing to consider the passion and joys that could be ours. But then, we also might as well be dead.

G. Frank Lawlis

Passion, Dust, Wind

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Just remember enough never to be vulnerable again: total forgetting could be as self-destructive as complete remembering.

Helen Clark MacInnes

Self, Remember, Forget

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We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent - people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.

Erich Fromm

Lonely, People, Unhappy

Erich Fromm (2013). “To Have or To Be?”, p.15, Open Road Media

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Familiarity is the most destructive of all iconoclasts.

Bill Vaughan

Familiarity

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