Destructive Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• The more settled I've become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.

  Nick Cave

  Song, Writing, Character

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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 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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• 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 don't find any kind of tension very productive, I find it destructive, actually.

  Shirley Manson

  Kind, Tension, Productive

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• Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.

  Audre Lorde

  Writing, Circles, Racism

  Audre Lorde, Joan Wylie Hall (2004). “Conversations with Audre Lorde”, p.85, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.

  Hugh Laurie

  Thinking, Should Have, Done

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

  Christopher Lasch

  Loyalty, Different, Logic

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• I'm trying to find a way to eat up time without being destructive, 'cause that's my go-to, it seems.

  Shia LaBeouf

  Trying, Way, Causes

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• Greed is so destructive. It destroys everything.

  Eartha Kitt

  Greed

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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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• Ethnic stereotypes are boring and stressful and sometimes criminal. It's just not a good way to think. It's non-thinking. It's stupid and destructive.

  Tommy Lee Jones

  Stupid, Thinking, Criminals

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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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• 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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