Most Destructive Quotes & Sayings

Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts. — Charles Caleb Colton

Commerce is the cure for the most destructive prejudices. — Bill Vaughan

The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God. — Herrick Johnson

Appeasers will always try to get the least dangerous person to bend to the most dangerous person. This is one of the main problems in dysfunctional relationships. The more mature and rational you are the more you are victimized because, they are aware that you're not going to be as aggressive, destructive, or possibly as abusive and so you are the one who has to bend. You're the one who has to change and this constant rapping of rational people's souls around the prickly irrationalities of other people are what appeasers are constantly doing. — Stefan Molyneux

It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. — Graham Greene

I find most famous Christians to be full of themselves and of prejudice and self-loathing, masquerading as devout religious belief. I find all fundamentalism to be terrifying and very destructive. — Anne Lamott

The idea of going to school and getting a job is the most destructive one in your brain. — Robert Kiyosaki

It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing it of destructive misinformation, so that creativity can be liberated. — David Bohm

I want a drink. I want fifty drinks. I want a bottle of the purest, strongest, most destructive, most poisonous alcohol on Earth. I want fifty bottles of it. I want crack, dirty and yellow and filled with formaldehyde. I want a pile of powder meth, five hundred hits of acid, a garbage bag full of mushrooms, a tube of glue bigger than a truck, a pool of gas large enough to drown in. I want something anything whatever however as much as I can. — James Frey

If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive. — Paul Johnson

I'm a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world. — John Cassavetes

Perhaps the most overrated virtue in our list of shoddy virtues is that of giving. Giving builds up the ego of the giver, makes him superior and higher and larger than the receiver. Nearly always, giving is a selfish pleasure, and in many cases it is a downright destructive and evil thing. One has only to remember some of our wolfish financiers who spend two-thirds of their lives clawing fortunes out of the guts of society and the latter third pushing it back. It is not enough to suppose that their philanthropy is a kind of frightened restitution, or that their natures change when they have enough. Such a nature never has enough and natures do not change that readily. I think that the impulse is the same in both cases. For giving can bring the same sense of superiority as getting does, and philanthropy may be another kind of spiritual avarice. — John Steinbeck

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

Love is at once the most creative and yet simultaneously destructive force in the world, and thus, in our lives. And I don't mean the Hallmark sentimental type of love, although that is part of it. But a deeper obligation that we have to each other: the obligation to reflect our humanness at each other, to reflect back the things others show us and we, them. — Chris Abani

This led Montesquieu to become one of the earliest proponents of the trade theory of peace when he observed that hunting and herding nations often found themselves in conflict and wars, whereas trading nations "became reciprocally dependent," making peace "the natural effect of trade." The psychology behind the effect, Montesquieu speculated, was exposure of different societies to customs and manners different from their own, which leads to "a cure for the most destructive prejudices." Thus, he concluded, "we see that in countries where the people move only by the spirit of commerce, they make a traffic of all the humane, all the moral virtues. — Michael Shermer

The really destructive feature of their relationship is its inherent quality of boredom. It is quite natural for Peter often to feel bored with Otto - they have scarecely a single interest in common - but Peter, for sentimental reasons, will never admit that this is so. When Otto, who has no such motives for pretending, says, "It's so dull here!" I invariably see Peter wince and looked pained. Yet Otto is actually far less often bored than Peter himself; he finds Peter's company genuinely amusing, and is quite glad to be with him most of the day. Often, when Otto has been chattering rubbish for an hour without stopping, I can see that Peter really longs for him to be quiet and go away. But to admit this would be, in Peter's eyes, a total defeat, so he only laughs and rubs his hands, tacitly appealing to me to support him in his pretense of finding Otto inexhaustibly delightful and funny. — Christopher Isherwood

What NYU tried to teach had no relation whatsoever with the reality of what making a film is like. You cannot teach someone aesthetics. What you can do is say, "If you were in this situation and this is the kind of story you wanted to tell, here are a couple of ways you could try to make things work." But they didn't really do that. I did my three years there, and I have said at times that besides my childhood, going to NYU was the single most destructive experience of my life. It took me eight years to recover.
~Tom Dicillo — Nicholas Jarecki

One of the most durable and destructive legacies of discrimination is the way we've internalized a sense of limitation; how so many in our community have come to expect so little from the world and from themselves. — Barack Obama

The world is beset by many problems, but in my opinion, this hijacking of our brain's reward centers by electronic media is potentially one of the most destructive. — Andrew Weil

Let's face it, gossip is one of the world's most destructive habits, and we're exposed to it practically everywhere we go and in much that we see - work, recreation, sports, home, in magazines, on television. There is absolutely nothing beneficial about gossip - it hurts everyone involved — Lori Palatnik

Both the teardrop and the tempest are made of water, making it the most yielding and most destructive force on Earth. — Fiona Paul

Excessive or irrational schedules are probably the single most destructive influence in all of software — Capers Jones

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. — John Gardner

He pondered his turmoil, wondering which he feared most - losing his father or being alone in the world. Both were inevitable. Neither could be stopped or slowed down. All he could do now was brace for impact. — Brent Jones

The most destructive thing we can possibly do in life is to make another person doubt his worth and identity as a child of God. The very most productive thing we can do is to help ourselves and others realize that as children of God, our worth is infinite. — Toni Sorenson

The main reason we are held hostage by the most destructive technology on earth is simple: the complete lack of international resolve to ban nuclear weapons and banish them from the arsenals of the world. — C. G. Weeramantry

To know one's future is the single most destructive way of ending your life before you've lived it. - Altheon (Betrayal- Fey Court Trilogy) — Cyndi Goodgame

Selfishness is one of the most destructive forces in man that is why life demands for its death. — Sunday Adelaja

Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart. — Stephen King

All he really cared about was Nexi energy, and the possibilities the magical science presented him. And right now, he needed to ensure his employer would be able to keep control over the most destructive monster the world had ever seen. — Aaron McGowan

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another
physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. — Toni Morrison

There are, and always have been, destructive pseudo-scientific notions linked to race and religion; these are the most widespread and damaging. Hopefully, educated people can succeed in shedding light into these areas of prejudice and ignorance, for as Voltaire once said: 'Men will commit atrocities as long as they believe absurdities. — Martin Gardner

Violence is always an effort toward greater freedom or love. Openness is freedom and love. Even the most violent or self-destructive emotions are rooted in the heart's need for openness, to be free, to give and receive love. — David Deida

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, there, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. — Kurt Vonnegut

I think we're going to move forward because I think at the end of all of this, everybody is going to ultimately realize that if the Democrat Party that is the most destructive force in this country. It's not one of these Republicans. And they have to be stopped and they have to be stopped in this election if this country is to be restored to its founding principles and the ideals that the majority of Americans associate with this country. — Rush Limbaugh

We believe that the most terrifying and destructive feeling that a person can experience is psychological isolation. This is not the same as being alone. It is a feeling that one is locked out of the possibility of human connection and of being powerless to change the situation. In the extreme, psychological isolation can lead to a sense of hopelessness and desperation. People will do almost anything to escape this combination of condemned isolation and powerlessness. The — Brene Brown

A great fire at night always has a thrilling and exhilarating effect. This is what explains the attraction of fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass of champaign. A real conflagration is a very different matter. Then the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, together with the exhilarating effect at night, produce on the spectator (though of course not in the householder whose goods are being burnt) a certain concussion of the brain and, as it were, a challenge to those destructive instincts which, alas, lie hidden in every heart, even that of the mildest and most domestic little clerk ... .This sinister sensation is almost always fascinating ... of course, the very man who enjoys the spectacle will rush into the fire himself to save a child or an old woman ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The most practical of all methods for controlling the mind is the habit of keeping it busy with a definite purpose, backed by a definite plan."
And
"A man whose mind is filled with fear not only destroys his own chances of intelligent action, but he transmits these destructive vibrations to the minds of all who come in contact with him, and destroys, also, their chances. — Napoleon Hill

The ritual sacrifice of children has been taboo for thousands of years. Yet tragically it is practiced every day across our world. We sacrifice children on the altars of our most destructive sins. When the sickness of pornography has run to its most evil and destructive end, it takes the form of child pornography. When prostitution reaches its sickest, most depraved form, it becomes child prostitution. — Wess Stafford

But the strength that remains, which is principally destructive, is the film's dialectical relationship to most of the other movies that we see, its capacity to make their most time-honored conventions seem tedious, shopworn, and unnecessary. This originality often seems to be driven by hatred and anger, emotions that are undervalued in more cowardly periods such as the present... — Jonathan Rosenbaum

What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question. — Michael Crichton

A civilization built on dualism and war within and between persons, one that puts its most creative minds and its best engineers to sadistic work building more and more destructive weapons, is no civilization at all. It needs a radical transformation from the heart outwards. It needs to outgrow and outlaw war just as in the last century it outlawed slavery. The human race has outgrown war, but it hardly knows it yet. — Matthew Fox

But just as it sometimes happens that the most temperate people, who have never acquired the habit of drinking alcohol, or even a taste for it, are tormented by the fear that somehow or other they will one day find themselves drunk, so Isabelle perpetually feared that she might be betrayed into an impulsive act that was destructive to such order as reason had imposed on life. Therefore she was forever running her faculty of analysis over in her mind with the preposterous zeal of an adolescent running a razor over his beardless chin. — Rebecca West

Revere your senses; don't degrade them with drugs, with depression, with willful oblivion. Try to notice something new every day, Eustace said. Pay attention to even the most modest of daily details. Even if you're not in the woods, be aware at all times. Notice what food tastes like, notice what the detergent aisle in the supermarket smells like and recognize what those hard chemical smells do to your senses; notice what bare feet feel like; pay attention every day to the vital insights that mindfulness can bring. And take care of all things, of every single thing there is - your body, your intellect, your spirit, your neighbors, and this planet. Don't pollute your soul with apathy or spoil your health with junk food any more than you would deliberately contaminate a clean river with industrial sludge. You can never become a real man if you have a careless and destructive attitude, Eustace said, but maturity will follow mindfulness even as day follows night. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The ... destructive ... message is that the parents don't trust their children to do what they are supposed to do whether it be learning to fall asleep on their own, figuring out how to safely climb a tree, or remembering to do the homework assignment. This message is especially harmful. Children cannot believe in themselves if the most important people in their lives don't believe in them.1 — Lysa TerKeurst

Worry is one of the most destructive scourges of mankind. — Maxwell Maltz

Maybe we ought to consider that sometimes the most destructive outcomes in our lives are the ones that we've created. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature - when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all. — Michael Faraday

Though there can be other causes, most self-destructive behavior is the result of the fact that we have two minds that don't communicate very well. — Richard O'Connor

Ultimately the most profound problems with psychotherapy have always been that instead of possessing any contrarian or transcendent values to enable it to produce insights countervailing against our dysfunctional and incoherent and humanly destructive culture, its "therapists" have been virtually all shills or agents for this culture, trying to accommodate their patients to a fundamentally unhealthy and insane way of life. — Kenny Smith

The only excuse for even a single ounce of victory in my life is the supernatural delivering power of Jesus Christ. I was in the clutches of a real, live devil, living in a perpetual cycle of defeat. Only a miracle-working God could have set me free, then dared to use me. You may remark, "That's not a real miracle!" but Scripture suggests that no greater work exists. The most profound miracles of God will always be those within the hearts and souls of people. Moving a mountain is nothing compared to changing a selfish, destructive human heart into something He can use. — Beth Moore

It wasn't courage that motivated this casual, impersonal manner of treating so much pain; it was a special brand of cowardice, a destructive defense mechanism, forcing others to listen to the most horrendous experiences and yet denying them the moment of empathy: don't feel sorry for me; nothing is too big for me to handle. This is nothing, nothing really. — Azar Nafisi

The three most destructive words that every man receives when he's a boy is when he's told to 'be a man' ... — Joe Ehrmann

The insatiable need for heartless power and ruthless control is the telltale sign of an uninitiated man - the most irresponsible, incompetent and destructive force on earth. — Michael Leunig

The writer Richard Manning has argued that 'the most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command. — Phillip Connors

One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse. — Alexander McCall Smith

Modern society is large and complex, with institutions wielding great power over the lives of many. This is why Johnson and Fowler added a dire parting shot in their predictions. Since you are programmed to become increasingly overconfident the less you understand about any given scenario, you can expect to find the most destructive overconfidence in places that are exceedingly complicated and unpredictable. — David McRaney

If you want a commercial success - it's the confusion of commerce with art. A successful play is not considered to be the best written. It is the one that sells the most tickets. Those standards are destructive [to theatre]. — Edward Albee

Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different. — Paulo Coelho

The devil is the ultimate pervert. He is a master at twisting Scriptures to imprison, disempower, deceive and destroy people. The most destructive weapon in the world is the Word of God in the hands of the devil. The Bible misapplied is worse than a lie - it is religion. Religion starts wars, divides believers and oppresses people. The devil even used the Bible to tempt Jesus in the wilderness. — Kris Vallotton

The Cunning Little Vixen, in which a fox is caught by a hunter and kept in a farmyard with the other animals. He keeps her because he loves her, despite the fact she is destructive, and there is a value for her too in his attention, though its consequence is her captivity. But her nature drives her to seek the wild, and one day she escapes the farmyard and finds her way back into the forest; but instead of feeling liberated she is terrified, for having lived in the farmyard most of her life she has forgotten how to be free. — Rachel Cusk

Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive. — Barry Eisler

Jealousy is a terrible thing. I know all the psychological triggers. The fear of losing control, the fear of loss, the fear of abandonment, neglect and loneliness ... But the most destructive thing about jealousy is that it kills what it values-the love you want to save won't survive the constraints of jealousy. There is no entitlement. Love is either equal or a tragedy. — Michael Robotham

Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world. — James Frey

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

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

Fear is the most subtle and destructive of all hueman diseases. Fear kills dreams! — Les Brown

We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means
all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity. — Derrick Jensen

Negative thoughts and emotions are what obstruct our most basic aspiration - to be happy and to avoid suffering. When we act under their influence, we become oblivious to the impact our actions have on others: they are thus the cause of our destructive behavior both toward others and to ourselves. — Dalai Lama XIV

One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term 'duty. — Ayn Rand

Instead of having a set of policies that are equipping people for the globalization of the economy, we have policies that are accelerating the most destructive trends of the global economy. — Barack Obama

We need leadership books that offer information as well as inspiration. Pop leadership is one of the most destructive forces today. — Paul Gibbons

The concept of physical beauty as a virtue is one of the dumbest, most pernicious and destructive ideas of the Western world, and we should have nothing to do with it. — Toni Morrison

Psychiatry is probably the single most destructive force that has affected American Society within the last fifty years. — Thomas Szasz

Anger is one of the most common and destructive delusions, and it afflicts our mind almost every day. To solve the problem of anger, we first need to recognize the anger within our mind, acknowledge how it harms both ourself and others, and appreciate the benefits of being patient in the face of difficulties. — Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

temper is the most destructive of human faults. It supplants trust with fear; it poisons love; it breeds aversion or indifference; it sterilizes emotion. — Susan Hertog

Agriculture is the most destructive industry that we have. More than coal mining and other extractive industries. — Allan Savory

The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. — Dorothy Thompson

No Blame: The most liberating and empowering day of my life was the day I freed myself from my own self-destructive nonsense. — Steve Maraboli

Human activity is destroying the natural systems that we depend upon for our survival. Our most basic instinct as humans is to survive; yet we continue to destroy our life-support machine. Connected humans understand this terrible contradiction; disconnected humans are not able to.

Not all humans are responsible: just those who are part of Industrial Civilization. Industrial Civilization depends on economic growth and the unsustainable use of natural resources, so it has developed a complex set of tools for keeping people disconnected from the real world and living a life that keeps civilization running. Humans have been manipulated in order to be part of a destructive system.

The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization. — Keith Farnish

The human population is too large, and the earth too small, to sustain us in the ways our ancestors lived. Most of the land that is good for farming is already being farmed. Yet 80 million more humans are being added to the population each year. The challenge of the coming decades is to limit the destructive effects of agriculture even as we continue to coax ever more food from the earth. — Nina V. Fedoroff

We have thought of peace as passive and war as the active way of living. The opposite is true. War is not the most strenuous life. It is a kind of rest cure compared to the task of reconciling our differences ... From War to Peace is not from the strenuous to the easy existence; it is from the futile to the effective, from the stagnant to the active, from the destructive to the creative way of life ... The world will be regenerated by the people who rise above these passive ways and heroically seek, by whatever hardship, by whatever toil, the methods by which people can agree. — Mary Parker Follett

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

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

Early on in my life I comprehended that death is the most tragic event in our life. Events of early Monday July 14, 1958 [Coup in Iraq] had convinced me that hate is the most destructive force in our life. — Ala Bashir

Sociability belongs to the most dangerous, even destructive inclinations, since it brings us into contact with beings the great majority of whom are morally bad and intellectually dull or perverted. — Arthur Schopenhauer

She has told me that what she found most destructive about minority-group psychology "is that one comes to share the conviction of the majority: that one is less able, less intelligent, less educable, less worthy of responsibility." My sentiments, exactly. — Katharine Graham

At some time in their careers, most good historians itch to write a history of the world, endeavor to discover what makes humanity the most destructive and creative of species. — Paul Johnson

Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name ... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body. — Lord Chesterfield

The nations, of course, that are most at risk of a destructive digital attack are the ones with the greatest connectivity. Marcus Ranum, one of the early innovators of the computer firewall, called Stuxnet 'a stone thrown by people who live in a glass house'. — Kim Zetter

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. — Cory Doctorow

Radical feminism is the most destructive and fanatical movement to come down to us from the Sixties. This is a revolutionary, not a reformist, movement, and it is meeting with considerable success. Totalitarian in spirit, it is deeply antagonistic to traditional Western culture and proposes the complete restructuring of society, morality, and human nature. — Robert Bork

At this most crucial time in the course of evolution we are all faced with the appalling fact that we may, at any moment, destroy our precious material lives and our wonderful little earth through advanced technological means. With the advance of civilization has developed the ghastly power to destroy all of humanity at the push of a button. We are now on the verge of destroying ourselves utterly from the face of the earth! We have become mere slaves to subhuman types of destructive thinking and action! We are out of control in every direction! More than any other time on earth we are all faced with the potential dangers of political anarchy and ruin, and we are all exposed to the terrific possibility of a Third World War, more hideous than any other war in the history of our planet. What we do at this most crucial time will determine the destinies of humanity for many generations, even centuries, to come. — David Cherubim

It's been written about as "the overview effect." All I can give you is my perspective, but most all of the people who have been in space start to see the world without boundaries. You start to think about how we can keep doing these things we're doing that are destructive of the environment and destructive of the planet. It causes you to start to think things in a quite different way than we had before. — Edgar Mitchell

It's been one of the most painful things I've ever been through in my whole life: trying to understand the degree to which behaviors that I thought were totally appropriate were destructive. — Newt Gingrich

I kind of came from the Townes Van Zandt school of throwing yourself off a cliff and then that's what you write about, and that rule number one of creative writing is you have to have conflict. But if you write about yourself mostly, then if you don't have conflict, then you create it. And the older I get, the more I realize that that's not a very smart way to do this. Not to say I'm the most self destructive person on earth, but it's easy to do. — John Fullbright

Whoever had known sexual jealousy, that most destructive of emotions-and this would be so for men no less than women-had known madness and had now to know sympathy for someone who had been carried by jealousy this one terrible step too far, to murder. — Diana Trilling

Inflation is not a benign element in the economy's operation. It is, as it has always been, the most dangerous and destructive form of taxation. — Robert Higgs

In short, the right given to one man to inflict corporal punishment on another is one of the ulcers of society, one of the most powerful destructive agents of every germ and every budding attempt at civilization, the fundamental cause of its certain and irretrievable destruction. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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