Self Defeating Quotes & Sayings

Success - is not about defeating others; but about defeating oneself — Ashok Kallarakkal

A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative. — Martin O'Malley

We can no longer afford to worship the God of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. Love is the key to the solution of the problems of the world. — Martin Luther King Jr.

One quick sidebar on this topic - don't waste any more time trying to make your web pages work for browsers that don't support HTML5 - it's self-defeating and can, in many instances actually harm your position in SERP's. — Michalis Kotzakolios

We must understand how we responded to formative trauma and how that response is perpetuated today. Otherwise, we will remain stuck in self-defeating attitudes and behaviors, all the while blaming them on someone else. — Russell Willingham

Amount of freedom you have in your life is not the measure of the worth of your life. Just as safety is an empty and even self-defeating goal to live for, so ultimately is autonomy. — Atul Gawande

I'm persnickety," I confessed. "Not, incidentally, to the point of being snarly. But still. Delightful and persnickety are not a common blend."
"Do you want to know why I never married?"
"The question wasn't at the top of my list," I admitted.
The old woman made me meet her eye. "Listen to me; I never married because I was easily bored. It's an awful, self-defeating trait to have. It is much better to be too easily interested. — David Levithan

Sitting with a bunch of adults and arguing about what's going to be most effective for kids is just sort of self-defeating. — Jake Barton

Excuses are the explanations we use for hanging on to behaviors we don't like about ourselves; they are self-defeating behaviors we don't know how to change. InExcuses Begone! I review 18 of the most common excuses people use, such as "I'm too busy, too old, too fat, too scared or it's going to take too long or be too difficult." — Wayne Dyer

To write without any awareness of a tradition you are trying to become a part of would be self-defeating. Every artist alive responds to the history of his or her art - borrowing, stealing, rebelling against, and building on what other artists have done. — Dorianne Laux

I am dead against trying to keep religious conservatives out of the political debate. The tactic of exclusion is self-defeating. — Harvey Cox

Revenge is self-defeating. It will eat away you until there is nothing left. — Chris Bradford

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn. — Carol S. Dweck

Gnostic politics is self-defeating in so far as its disregard for the structure of reality leads to continuous warfare. — Eric Voegelin

Some of us have been playing the same self-defeating records over and over again in our heads for so long that we don't know how to think any differently about ourselves. — Steve Harvey

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied. — Vernon Howard

All we have to do is to receive what we are given ... We are given the naturalness to love someone, to be calm in crisis, to ignore self-defeating suggestions, to be pleasant, forgiving, tender, helpful, unworried, brave, energetic. — Vernon Howard

I think women have a hard time not apologizing their way into negotiations. We tend to back in to these conversations in a self-deprecating and ultimately self-defeating way. — Mika Brzezinski

Excuses are contagious, self-defeating bad habits. Where — Tommy Newberry

Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships. — Stephen Covey

Nobody wants to tell a truth which harms himself. — Toba Beta

Far from being tortured, the prisoners [at Guantanamo] are being handled literally with kid gloves (or simulated kid-effect gloves). The U.S. military hands each jihadist his complimentary copy of the Koran as delicately as white-gloved butlers bringing His Lordship the Times of London. It's not just unbecoming to buy in to Muslim psychoses; in the end, it's self-defeating. And our self-defeat is their surest shot at victory...Even a loser can win when he's up against a defeatist. A big chunk of Western Civilization, consciously or otherwise, has given the impression that it's dying to surrender to somebody, anybody. Reasonably enough, the jihadists figure: hey, why not us? — Mark Steyn

we learn the emotional habits that can undermine our best intentions, as well as what we can do to subdue our more destructive or self-defeating emotional impulses. Most important, the neurological data suggest a window of opportunity for shaping our children's emotional habits. — Daniel Goleman

I will say little more. Cugel, you have small acquaintance with the trade, but I take it as a good sign that you have come to me for training, since my nethods are not soft. You will learn or you will drown, or suffer a blow of the flukes, or worse, incur my displeasure. But you have started well and I will teach you well. Never think me harsh, or over-bearing; you will be in self-defeating error! I am stern, yes, even severe, but in the end, when I acknowledge you a worminger, you will thank me."
"Good news indeed," muttered Cugel — Jack Vance

Blame is such a self-defeating choice. It renders one helpless, putting any solution well out of reach, for we rarely can change others. Consider this, a solution well within your reach, someone you can surely change: Yourself. — Russell Kyle

Yet if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, both personally and professionally, it is this: Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road. — Susan Forward

Love what you do and do what you love,
otherwise you will become unhappy and self-defeating. — Alan Sugar

Russians aren't perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians. — Chris Hadfield

In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I think our challenge as parents is to rise above that preference for the child of least resistance and to think beyond short-term success as a criterion - particularly if success is defined by conventional and insipid standards. Don't we want our kids to be inspiring rather than spend their lives just collecting tokens (grades, money, approval)? Don't we want them to think in the plural rather than focusing only on what will benefit them personally? Don't we want them to appraise traditions with fresh eyes and raise questions about what seems silly or self-defeating or oppressive, rather than doing what has always been done just because it's always been done? — Alfie Kohn

Isolation is a self-defeating dream. — Carlos Salinas De Gortari

Her Majesty's government is engaging not merely in Orwellian Newspeak but in self-defeating Orwellian Newspeak. The broader message it sends is that ours is a weak culture so unconfident and insecure that if you bomb us and kill us our first urge is to find a way to flatter and apologize to you. — Mark Steyn

Gun control advocates need to realize that passing laws that honest gun owners will not obey is a self-defeating strategy. Gun owners are not about to surrender their rights, and only the most foolish of politicians would risk the stability of the government by trying to use the force of the state to disarm the people. — J. Neil Schulman

At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing - who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first. — Marya Hornbacher

You have considerable power to construct self-helping thoughts, feelings and actions as well as to construct self-defeating behaviors. You have the ability, if you use it, to choose healthy instead of unhealthy thinking, feeling and acting. — Albert Ellis

Sometimes when we're feeling sad, it's important just to feel the sadness. Like a snake shedding its skin, old feelings of remorse and regret and hurt and anger often have to come up in order to be released. On the other side we're a better person, capable of a happier life ... who we are when we're no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed us down, or the self - defeating patterns that the pain produced. — Marianne Williamson

Love requires that we overcome the traditional and self-defeating fears that place distance between ourselves and others. — Leo Buscaglia

Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating. — Sharon Salzberg

I feel that non-violence is really the only way that we can follow because violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating many more problems for the negro community than it solved. We can through violence burn down a building, but you can't establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can't murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. And what we're trying to get rid of is hate, injustice, and all of these other things that continue the long night of man's inhumanity to man. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Stop validating your victim mentality. Shake off your self-defeating drama and embrace your innate ability to recover and achieve. — Steve Maraboli

Trying to get my music performed live by bar bands was a self defeating experience. It really just distracted me from what I should've been doing all along, writing and recording. — Tom Scholz

Unfortunately for ethical egoism, the claim that we will all be better off if every one of us does what is in his or her own interest is incorrect. This is shown by what are known as "prisoner's dilemma" situations, which are playing an increasingly important role in discussions of ethical theory ... At least on the collective level, therefore, egoism is self-defeating - a conclusion well brought out by Parfit in his aforementioned Reasons and Persons. — Peter Singer

When life appears to be working against you, when your luck is down, when the supposedly wrong people show up, or when you slip up and return to old, self-defeating habits, recognize the signs that you're out of harmony with intention. — Aldous Huxley

As buoyancy is not contrary to other characteristics of leadership, including decisiveness, accountability and performance standards, I don't ever think it can be self-defeating. — Kevin Allen

In the mind, weeds are negative self-defeating beliefs and ideas that repeat quietly, over and over again, unchallenged, until they seem to become self-evident truths. Yet these so-called truths, when brought to light and critically examined, simply fall apart in the midst of their own deceitful falsehood and absurdity. — Asoka Selvarajah

That is why the key to long-lasting success is to develop habits - new, positive habits that replace our self-defeating behaviors. — Rick Warren

Transformation occurs when existing solutions, assumed truths and past decisions are exposed as unrealistic and self-defeating. — Peter Shepherd

As a rule, people who classify art as "irrelevant" are trying to position themselves above the entity; it's a way of pretending they're more in step with contemporary culture than the artist himself, which is mostly a way of saying they can't find a tangible reason for disliking what something intends to embody. Moreover, the whole argument is self-defeating: If you classify something as "irrelevant," you're (obviously) using it as a unit of comparison against whatever is "relevant," so it (obviously) does have meaning and merit. Truly irrelevant art wouldn't even be part of the conversation. — Chuck Klosterman

Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it's also so disappointing and self-defeating. — Chris Hadfield

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we're holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it. Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. — Brene Brown

It's nothing more than a mental habit to idealize another time, another condition, another reality. It is simply a way to avoid the reality of our lives right now. And in avoiding the reality of our present circumstances, we avoid the miracles they offer. Everyone does it because that's the way the ego mind works. But we can stare down this self-defeating habit and cultivate a truer perspective: that wherever we are is the perfect place, and whatever time it is now is the perfect time. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't improve things, particularly ourselves. But indulging the thought that if only we were somewhere else things would be better is a surefire way to experience pain. — Marianne Williamson

When confronted with their fruitless ways, binge writers often proffer a self-defeating dispositional attribution: "I'm just not the kind of person who's good at making a schedule and sticking to it." This is nonsense, of course. People like dispositional explanations when they don't want to change [...] — Paul J. Silvia

There is nothing more foolish or self-defeating than for a Christian to say that he is not interested in doctrines. — David Lloyd-Jones

You don't want to go around willy-nilly suing news organizations. That's probably self-defeating. — Bill Keller

There are three creativities: creativity in technology, in product planning, and in marketing. To have any one of these without the others is self defeating in business. — Akio Morita

It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed. — Marya Hornbacher

Quentin's conversations with his parents were so circular and self-defeating, they sounded like experimental theater. — Lev Grossman

Cities remind us that the desire to escape from the problems of other people by fleeing to a suburb, small town, or a monastery, for that matter, is an unholy thing, and ultimately self-defeating. We can no more escape from other people than we can escape from ourselves. — Kathleen Norris

Imagine the word CANCEL being a huge rubber stamp in your mind. Stamp CANCEL on any self-defeating image you place in your head, and begin to think in a self-enhancing way. — Wayne Dyer

There is nothing worth having that can be obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating. — George Wald

Negativity is not intelligent. It is always of the ego. The ego may be clever, but it is not intelligent. Cleverness pursues its own little aims. Intelligence sees the larger whole in which all things are connected. Cleverness is motivated by self-interest, and it is extremely short-sighted. Most politicians and businesspeople are clever. Very few are intelligent. Whatever is attained through cleverness is short-lived and always turns out to be eventually self-defeating. Cleverness divides; intelligence includes. — Eckhart Tolle

After a while, we start really believing these things are true. People who have had self-defeating behaviors for a long time, such as people who have been overweight since they were children or people with longtime addictions, actually believe there is no other alternative. — Wayne Dyer

My son . . . guilt, in proper measure, can be a useful emotion. However, when indulged to excess it becomes self-defeating, and even worse, tedious. — Lisa Kleypas

Labeling yourself is not only self-defeating, it is irrational. Your self cannot be equated with any one thing you do. Your life is a complex and ever-changing flow of thoughts, emotions, and actions. To put it another way, you are more like a river than a statue. Stop trying to define yourself with negative labels - they — David D. Burns

I've never worn costume jewelry in my life. It's really very self-defeating. Why should a man buy a woman real jewelry when she wears false pieces? — Gloria Guinness

It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history. — Renata Adler

Buddhist epistemologists do argue that rational analysis leads to the conclusion that rational analysis cannot give us infallible access to truth, including that one. That's not self-defeating, though; it only induces an important kind of epistemic humility and a clearer view of what we do when we reason. We engage in one more fallible human activity among many. — Jay L. Garfield

To bar communication between intellectuals, who are always our best hope of peace, is particularly self-defeating and inane. It declares, inter alia, that we have a) made up our minds about what we think, b) closed our minds to what others think, and c) chosen to go on hearing nothing with which we happen to disagree. — Howard Jacobson

Striving for excellence is a positive quality. Striving for perfection is self-defeating. — Melody Beattie

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating. — Henry Flynt

No more self-defeating device could be discovered than the one society has developed in dealing with the criminal. It proclaims his career in such loud and dramatic forms that both he and the community accept the judgment as a fixed description. He becomes conscious of himself as a criminal, and the community expects him to live up to his reputation, and will not credit him if he does not live up to it. — Frank Tannenbaum

By using your heart as your compass, you can see more clearly which direction to go to stop self-defeating behavior. If you take just one mental or emotional habit that really bothers or drains you and apply heart intelligence to it, you'll see a noticeable difference in your life. — Doc Childre

Our imagination is so limited, our arsenal of potential responses so narrow, that the only thing anyone can think to do with an inappropriate shamer like Adria is to punish her with a shaming. All of the shamers had themselves come from a place of shame, and it really felt parochial and self-defeating to instinctively slap shame onto shame like a clumsy builder covering cracks. — Jon Ronson

Fear is the enemy of logic. There is no more debilitating, crushing, self-defeating, sickening thing in the world
to an individual or to a nation. — Frank Sinatra

At the turn of the [21st] century it was really Sergey Brin at Google who just had the thought of, well, if we give away all the information services, but we make money from advertising, we can make information free and still have capitalism. But the problem with that is it reneges on the social contract where people still participate in the formal economy. And it's a kind of capitalism that's totally self-defeating because it's so narrow. It's a winner-take-all capitalism that's not sustaining. — Jaron Lanier

Dedicating some time to meditation is a meaningful expression of caring for yourself that can help you move through the mire of feeling unworthy of recovery. As your mind grows quieter and more spacious, you can begin to see self-defeating thought patterns for what they are, and open up to other, more positive options. — Sharon Salzberg

We have to learn to stand up for our interests. To seek purity is self-defeating and a stereotype in itself: women have to be pure, women are not concerned about money. — Gloria Steinem

In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. — William J. Clinton

Today, to allege corruption seems to be the pastime of most people. All kinds of allegations are leveled. I think it is self-defeating. — P. Chidambaram

I think you'll find that one would be self-defeating." Jace said lightly shoving his feet into his boots. "We are bound, he and I. Cut him and I bleed. — Cassandra Clare

Combining Free Will with Intention In mathematics, two angles that are said to coincide fit together perfectly. The word coincidence does not describe luck or mistakes. It describes that which fits together perfectly. By combining free will with intention, you harmonize with the universal mind. Rather than operating in your own mind outside of this force called intention, your goal may very well be, as you read this book, to work at being in harmony at all times with intention. When life appears to be working against you, when your luck is down, when the supposedly wrong people show up, or when you slip up and return to old, self-defeating habits, recognize the signs that you're out of harmony with intention. You can and will reconnect in a way that will bring you into alignment with your own purpose. — Wayne W. Dyer

Shutting down discussion is self-defeating and impedes progress. We need to talk and listen and debate and refute and instruct and learn and evolve. — Sheryl Sandberg

I never consciously place symbolism in my writing. That would be a self-conscious exercise and self-consciousness is defeating to any creative act. Better to get the subconscious to do the work for you, and get out of the way. The best symbolism is always unsuspected and natural. During a lifetime, one saves up information which collects itself around centers in the mind; these automatically become symbols on a subliminal level and need only be summoned in the heat of writing. — Ray Bradbury

Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think. — Jon Meacham

Every specific tax, as well as the nation's whole tax system, becomes self-defeating above a certain height of the rates. — Ludwig Von Mises

To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating — Robert Greene

Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars? — Edward St. Aubyn

Sure, losing an election hurts, but I've experienced worse. And at an age when every day is precious, brooding over what might have been is self-defeating. In conceding the 1996 election, I remarked that "tomorrow will be the first time in my life I don't have anything to do." I was wrong. Seventy-two hours after conceding the election, I was swapping wisecracks with David Letterman on his late-night show. — Bob Dole

Replace your self-defeating thoughts with self-supporting thoughts. — Deepak Chopra

If we continue to think and live as if we belong only to different cultures and different religions, with separate missions and goals, we will always be in self-defeating competition with each other. Once we realize we are all members of humanity, we will want to compete in the spirit of love. — Muhammad Ali

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment. — James Buchan

Uncritical American boosterism - automatic endorsement of every government action - is myopic and self-defeating. — Camille Paglia

Paradoxically, the United States' determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults. — David Ignatius

God's love is so perfect that He lovingly requires us to obey His commandments because He knows that only through obedience to His laws can we become perfect, as He is. For this reason, God's anger and His wrath are not a contradiction of His love but an evidence of His love. Every parent knows that you can love a child totally and completely while still being creatively angry and disappointed at that child's self-defeating behavior. — Dallin H. Oaks

Where are the exhortations for children to reject the self-defeating stereotypes that reduce black people to violent, oversexed 'gangstas,' minstrel show comedians and mindless athletes? — Juan Williams

Reflecting on various aspects of our lives is essential for a person to grow and adjust to changing phases in their life. Self-analysis entails examining a person's existing level of self-esteem and documenting the inner voice that speaks to a person, which is frequently either affirming of self-defeating. Failure to periodically engage in self-analysis, make crucial revisions in our personas, and modify our thinking patterns when we encounter transformative events in life can lead to mood disorders, burnout, and other emotional maladies. — Kilroy J. Oldster

An excuse is the most expensive brand of self defeat you will ever purchase. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

Life is never boring but some people choose to be bored. The concept of boredom entails an inability to use up present moments in a personally fulfilling way. Boredom is a choice; something you visit upon yourself, and it is another of those self-defeating items that you can eliminate from your life. — Wayne Dyer

There is something self-defeating in the too-conscious pursuit of pleasure. — Max Eastman

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families. — Charles B. Rangel