Self Destructive Quotes

• I am not self-destructive. I am not a person who wants to die.

  Whitney Houston

  Self, Want, Persons

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• I definitely have a real self-destructive streak.

  Florence Welch

  Real, Self, Streaks

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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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• 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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• When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways - either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.

  Dalai Lama

  Fear, Real, Fall

  Interview with Robert Thurman, www.motherjones.com. November 1997.

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• Sometimes seeming happy can be self-destructive even when you're sane.

  Brandi Carlile

  Self, Sometimes, Sane

  Song: My Song, Album: The Story, 2007

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• Spend the most time with your best people. ... Talent is the multiplier. THe more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield. The time you spend with your best is, quite simply, your most productive time. ... Persistence directed primarily toward your non-talents is self-destructive. ... You will reprimand yourself, berate yourself, and put yourself through all manner of contortions in an attempt to achieve the impossible.

  Marcus Buckingham

  Persistence, Yield, Self

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• It's counterproductive and self-destructive to bear grudges with people that are negative.

  Carl Froch

  Motivation, Self, People

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• A lot of my characters in all of my books have a self-destructive urge. They'll do precisely the thing that they know is wrong, take a perverse delight in doing the wrong thing.

  Richard Russo

  Book, Character, Self

  FaceBook post by Richard Russo from May 29, 2011

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• Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting.

  Hubert Selby, Jr.

  Dream, Integrity, Believe

  FaceBook post by Hubert Selby, Jr. from Feb 22, 2012

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• The problem with life is, we often do things that will ultimately be self-destructive and make us unhappy, yet in that moment it seems like the best idea in the world. You have to be careful of moments - they're tricksy things.

  Sophie Dahl

  Self, Ideas, Unhappy

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• Blessed is the healthy nature; it is the coherent, sweetly co-operative, not incoherent, self-distracting, self-destructive one!

  John Keats

  Nature, Blessed, Self

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• I can tell you that I am not self-destructive. I'm not a person who wants to die. I'm a person who has life, who wants to live. And I always have. And I wouldn't mistake it for anything else other than that.

  Whitney Houston

  Mistake, Self, Want

  "Transcript of 'Crack is whack' Interview". Interview with Diane Sawyer, genius.com.

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• Having children is not an act of God. It's not like you're walking down the street and pregnancy strikes you; children are a result of a conscious decision. For the most part, female-headed households are the result of short-sighted, self-destructive behavior of one or two people.

  Walter E. Williams

  Children, Pregnancy, Self

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• I don't think of sex as a self-destructive impulse.

  Thom Gunn

  Sex, Thinking, Self

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• The most self-destructive thought that any person can have  is thinking that he or she is not in total control of his or her life. That’s when, ‘Why me?’ becomes a theme song.

  Roger Dawson

  Song, Thinking, Self

  Roger Dawson (1994). “The 13 secrets of power performance”, Prentice Hall Direct

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• We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

  Jason Whitlock

  Attitude, Self, Hip Hop

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• The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think...Throughout the Mahabharata ... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war.... The Gita is a dishonest book .

  Wendy Doniger

  War, Nice, Book

  Philadelphia Inquirer, November 19, 2000.

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• You spend hours alone, only with your thoughts, and you torture yourself. It's a tendency of many writers to temper the self-destructive act of writing with other self-destructive acts. I certainly was one of those people for a long time.

  Ben Gibbard

  Writing, Self, Long

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• The Clinton paradox: How could a president so intelligent, so compassionate, so public-spirited and so conscious of his place in history act in such a stupid, selfish and self-destructive manner?

  George Stephanopoulos

  Selfish, Stupid, Intelligent

  George Stephanopoulos (1999). “All Too Human: A Political Education”

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• But successful investors tend to be not too self-destructive. They tend to be patient, they tend not to follow the crowd, and they tend not to be too guilty about winning.

  Andrew Tobias

  Successful, Winning, Self

  "'I Have to Take a Call from My Russian Broker': Andrew Tobias Talks About His 'Vast Fortune'". Interview with Deborah Stead, www.nytimes.com. November 2, 1997.

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• A truly moral nation enacts policies that encourage personal responsibility and discourage self-destructive behavior by not subsidizing people who live irresponsibly and make poor choices.

  Benjamin Carson

  Responsibility, Self, People

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• Forgiveness feels most dramatic when some ancient pattern of self-punishment collapses in a torrent of tears. But it is just as effective when practiced daily in tiny doses - relinquishing a pointless worry, getting wise to a self-destructive habit, serving notice on a cruel notion about yourself that has previously seemed justified. The beginning of forgiveness is alertness to false ideas.

  D. Patrick Miller

  Wise, Healing, Ideas

  D. Patrick Miller (2009). “The Way of Forgiveness: Letting Go, Easing Stress, and Building Strength”, p.48, Fearless Books

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• Fossey, Fossey, you cranky difficult strong-arming self-destructive misanthrope, mediocre scientist, deceiver of earnest college students, probable cause of more deaths of the gorillas than if you had never set foot in Rwanda, Fossey, you pain-in-the-ass saint, I do not believe in prayers or souls, but I will pray for your soul, I will remember you for all of my days, in gratitude for that moment by the graves when all I felt was the pure, cleansing sadness of returning home and finding nothing but ghosts.

  Robert M. Sapolsky

  Gratitude, Strong, Prayer

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• I'm amazed that I can sit down, put a guitar in my hands and start playing kind of free style, and it will be four hours later and it will feel like it's been five minutes. I think that adds depth to your being, when something in your life can do that for you. Everybody should try to find something in their life that can do that for them. People find really elaborate self-destructive ways of killing time on this planet. That's why they take drugs or drink, trying to alter their state of being. If you can find something that doesn't destroy you, but deepens your character, you're really lucky.

  John Rzeznik

  Character, Thinking, Guitar

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