I Am Destructive Quotes & Sayings

Throughout my life, I have always felt torn between my dual contradictory natures. I'm the obedient daughter and devoted friend, but also a self-destructive rebel. I thrive on structure and treasure spontaneity. I am smart, but ignorant. Depressed, but optimistic. Confident but insecure. I have often asked myself which "me" is the true version. — Elyse Schein

The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point - and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior - smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians. — Thomas Szasz

Life has taught me to release my ears from hearing negativity, destructive remarks, false rumors and stupid ways. I learn to open my eyes and my mind to think ahead of my life, to learn more of who I am. — Auliq Ice

I am absolutely and inherently self-destructive in that I am always making sure I'm doing what I want to do. — Dan Harmon

The passion for vengeance is a terrifyingly strong one, very easily and probably inevitably wrought up by such evidence [of atrocities], even at our distance. But however well aware I am of its strength, and that in its full immediate force and expression it is in some respects irrelevant to moral inquiry, I doubt that it is ever to be honored, or regarded as other than evil and in every direction fatally degrading and destructive; even when it is obeyed in hot blood or in a crisis of prevention; far worse when it is obeyed in cold blood and in the illusion of carrying out justice. — James Agee

I am convinced now that virtually every destructive behavior and addiction I battled off and on for years was rooted in my (well-earned) insecurity. — Beth Moore

You and I can profit by asking ourselves: What do I see when I look through the lens of my attitude toward myself? Am I more a critic than a friend? Do I look beyond the surface blemishes to find the truly beautiful and unique person that I am? Or do I play the destructive "comparison game"? What verdict does the juror of my mind pass on me: "good at heart" or "guilty on all counts"? — John Powell

I am persuaded our discontents, and murmurings with out unpleasing condition, and our covetous desires after more, are not so provoking to God, nor so destructive to the sinner, as our too sweet enjoying, and rest of spirit in a pleasing state ... Our rest is our heaven, and where we take our rest, there we make our heaven(457). — Richard Baxter

A large proportion of my best friends are a little bit crazy ... I try to be cautious with my friends who are too sane. Depression is itself destructive, and it breeds destructive impulses: I am easily disappointed in people who don't get it ... — Andrew Solomon

From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today's literature is, for instance, largely destructive. — Martin Heidegger

I am here for readers to see parts of themselves during my dark days, but also for a better way of living in my triumphs and gained wisdom. — Theia Mey

Well it's been about 100 years and every attempt at a comics writers' union has failed miserably. There is, sadly, a long history of short-term thinking and self-destructive behavior among my fellow comic book creators. No matter how many horror stories they have heard they won't even go so far as to hire themselves a lawyer when they need it. It breaks my heart. I am a very proud union member of the Writers Guild. And I can't imagine my fellow comic creators being able to pull something like this together. — Brian Michael Bendis

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

It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.
It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
The possibility of life between us. — Adrienne Rich

The opposite of liberal is stingy. The opposite of radical is superficial. The opposite of conservative is destructive. So I declare that I am a radical conservative liberal. Beware of men who use words to mean their opposites. — R.A. Lafferty

I am convinced that policies meant to reduce alleged carbon dioxide-induced global warming will be destructive. — Christopher Monckton

Feminists who say that I switched sides because I am an opportunist should know that exactly the opposite is true. It's cost me a lot of money. I've gone from being well-to-do to being $70,000 in debt. I have done something self-destructive financially. I could only do it because I don't have to support a wife and child. — Warren Farrell

I release all fears and doubts. I accept myself and create peace in my mind and heart. I now choose to free myself from all destructive fears and doubts. I am loved and I am safe. — Louise Hay

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

I am actually incredibly contented and jolly. But, and I have no idea why this is, I have a really strong empathy with all kinds of warped and destructive modes of thinking. I don't know why, but those things co-exist. — Sophie Hannah

Since ideology, particularly in it's shallower versions, is peculiarly destructive of the capacity to apprehend and appreciate irony, I suggest that the recovery of the ironic might be our fifth principle for the restoration of reading ... But with this principle, I am close to despair, since you can no more teach someone to be ironic than you can instruct them to become solitary. And yet the loss of irony is the death of reading, and of what had been civilized in our natures. — Harold Bloom

I am the god of dreams, but not even I would dream of speaking for Hades," Morpheus replied with a mischievous look in his eyes. "But if I had to guess, I would say it's because he knows how destructive his little brother is. Hades, unlike most of the other gods, cares for mortals and doesn't want to see them at war. Probably because he has to tend their souls when they die. He has had to judge millions of souls and that has given him a strong sense of justice. Leaving you to fight Zeus with no training is something he would consider unjust. — Josephine Angelini

I used to fight back the inner resistance within me before when for a while I thought this keeps me from living the life I was born to enjoy. But then I realized that this "madness" inside me is not at all a destructive force but a raging "storm" which needs to come out for me to fully discover my potential. This wondrous "storm" helped me to unravel the secrets of my being - of my purpose and true calling. Now, I come to embrace wholeheartedly who I am and why I was born." - "My Storm", Author/Poet Elizabeth Esguerra Castillo — Elizabeth E. Castillo

I'm not against extracting a modest amount of wildlife out of the ocean for human consumption, but I am really concerned about the large-scale industrial fishing that engages in destructive practices like trawling and longlining. — Sylvia Earle

Forgiveness gives me boundaries because it unhooks me from the hurtful person, and then I can act responsibly, wisely. If I am not forgiving them, I am still in a destructive relationship with them. — Henry Cloud

The longer I am in this work, the more I realize that intellectual struggles are merely the hazardous waste of life, blocking the heart from truth. The task of apologetics is to carefully remove that hazardous material and keep it from igniting into a destructive fire. Once that is done, the way to the heart is always through the way of the Cross, God's love for each and every one of us. — Ravi Zacharias

Ours is a bourgeois civilization. I am not using this term in its Marxian sense. Chicken! In the vocabularies of modern art and religion it is bourgeois to consider that the universe was made for our safe use and to give us comfort, ease, and support. Light travels at a quarter of a million miles per second so that we can see to comb our hair or read in the paper that ham hocks are cheaper than yesterday. De Tocqueville considered the impulse toward well-being as one of the strongest impulses of a democratic society. He can't be blamed for underestimating the destructive powers generated by this same impulse. — Saul Bellow

It's important for me to fight for principles. But I am not willing to cope with the nastiness of politics anymore and the endless destructive confrontations that it leads to. — Ingrid Betancourt

I have sometimes wondered also whether in people like me who come to the boil fast (soupe au lait, the French call this trait, like a milk soup that boils over) the tantrum is not a built-in safety valve against madness or illness ... The fierce tension in me, when it is properly channeled, creates the good tension for work. But when it becomes unbalanced I am destructive. How to isolate that good tension is my problem these days. Or, put in another way, how to turn the heat down fast enough so the soup won't boil over! — May Sarton

I lay back against the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. I hated myself. I thought, I am just a destructive force in the world. Look at all the bodies I leave behind me. * — Augusten Burroughs

Word-sniffing ... is an addiction, like glue
or snow
sniffing in a somewhat less destructive way, physically if not economically ... As an addict, I am almost guiltily interested in converts to my own illness ... — M.F.K. Fisher

The popular distinction between 'constructive' and 'destructive' criticism is a sentimentality: the mind too weak to perceive in what respects the bad fails is not strong enough to appreciate in what the good succeeds. To be without discrimination is to be unable to praise. The critic who lets you know that he always looks for something to like in works he discusses is not telling you anything about the works or about art; he is saying 'see what a nice person I am. — Brigid Brophy

Reuben nails my fantasies everytime, with iron rods of reality. He asserts that I am going to die, but probably not for a while, and that maybe I should try getting married and having a life first. He is 70 and knows things, which is why I go to him. But it's sad to leave my romantic illusions at the door of this passage. Although false and destructive and useless, they've been tremendous company. — Suzanne Finnamore

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

In respect to Drower, and still more with Biruni and his medieval contemporaries, I am reminded of the praise given to Sir William Jones, the proponent of the idea that European and Indian languages had one common source. 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' commented political economist James Anderson, 'who by painful researches, tend to remove those destructive veils which have so long concealed mankind from each other. — Gerard Russell

I am a Maoist sympathiser. I'm not a Maoist ideologue, because the communist movements in history have been just as destructive as capitalism. — Arundhati Roy

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

I am your handiwork made flesh. You took beauty and created hideousness, and out of this monstrosity your child will be born ... . I am the meaning of your deeds. I am the meaning of your so-called love; your destructive, selfish, wanton love ... your love looks just like hatred. — Salman Rushdie

They are also, both in origin and effect, religious. I am uneasy with the term, for such religion as has been openly practiced in this part of the world has promoted and fed upon a destructive schism between body and soul, Heaven and earth. It has encouraged people to believe that the world is of no importance, and that their only obligation in it is to submit to certain churchly formulas in order to get to Heaven. And so the people who might have been expected to care most selflessly for the world have had their minds turned elsewhere - to a pursuit of "salvation" that was really only another form of gluttony and self-love, the desire to perpetuate their lives beyond the life of the world. — Wendell Berry

I am not self-destructive. I am not a person who wants to die. — Whitney Houston

My birth sign is Scorpio and they eat themselves up and burn themselves out. I swing between happiness and misery. I am part prude and part nonconformist. I say what I think and I don't pretend, and I am prepared to accept the consequences of my actions. — Vivien Leigh

I am a model of positivity compared to the kinds of vitriol, the kinds of destructive criticisms that Labor members of parliament have been making of each other. — Tony Abbott

First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A Tragic Honesty, like the Ian Hamilton biography of Lowell that I read recently, is a sad and occasionally terrifying account of how creativity can be simultaneously fragile and self-destructive; it also made me grateful that I am writing now, when the antidepressants are better, and we all drink less. Stories about contemporary writers being taken away in straitjackets are thin on the ground - or no one tells them to me, anyway - but it seemed to happen to Lowell and Yates all the time; there are ten separate page references under 'breakdowns' in the index of A Tragic Honesty. — Nick Hornby

There are times in my life when I have been medicine for some while poison for others. I used to think I was a victim of my story until I realized the truth; that I am the creator of my story. I choose what type of person I will be and what type of impact I will leave on others. I will never choose the destructive path of self and outward victimization again. — Steve Maraboli

More times than I'm willing to admit I am my own worst enemy, which suggests that more times than I'm willing to admit I should allow God to be my own best friend. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined ... It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us. — Adrienne Rich

To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. — Tariq Ramadan

I suspect almost every day that I'm living for nothing, I get depressed and I feel self-destructive and a lot of the time I don't like myself. What's more, the proximity of other humans often fills me with overwhelming anxiety, but I also feel that this precarious sentience is all we've got and, simplistic as it may seem, it's a person's duty to the potentials of his own soul to make the best of it. We're all stuck on this often miserable earth where life is essentially tragic, but there are glints of beauty and bedrock joy that come shining through from time to precious time to remind anybody who cares to see that there is something higher and larger than ourselves. And I am not talking about your putrefying gods, I am talking about a sense of wonder about life itself and the feeling that there is some redemptive factor you must at least search for until you drop dead of natural causes. — Lester Bangs

He heaps up riches by himself and thinks How strong I am now and how secure and in his madness he does not understand that the more he heaps up, the more he sinks into self-destructive impotence — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Emotions are destructive, Ms. Dillinger. One of two things will happen to you. You will either be hurt and wish you were dead, or you will end up dead."
Katie stopped in front of the next cooler and checked inside. "I'm human. What am I supposed to do? Just ... be?"
"Welcome to the world. — Mary Abshire

The emphasis and the reason for a pure humility is to result in love for others; not always necessarily the belittlement of self. When there is pride and self-righteousness and being pretentiously too far above, generally, one has a difficult time reaching the compassionate side of love for others, the side that understands (or at least attempts to understand): 'I am aware that I am not so far from falling in the same way.' Humility seeks to understand, and sometimes even relate; and in result, the love lovingly, properly, effectively wills the removal of the destructive sins of another as from oneself. — Criss Jami

Parents are in a position to forgive when they remember two things. One, the child that I am rearing is God's child. God loved the child before I did; He will continue this love long after I am gone. Two, God's method of dealing with sin, even the most destructive kind, is forgiveness. I am not going to be able to improve on God's methods. — Eugene H. Peterson

I think people have always misinterpreted my self-destructive nature as nihilistic, because if you don't care about the world, you can't create art. I am misanthropic and self-loathing, but never nihilistic. And I think I act far worse off-stage than onstage. — Marilyn Manson