Quotes & Sayings About Vicious Circle

I think what we are seeing is a vicious circle: by covering the controversies and the conflicting realities, it creates a much distorted perception of Islam and Muslims. When a minority is being taken as a majority, it creates a wrong image. — Tariq Ramadan

That is the great danger of meritocracy: the people who reach the top of the system are precisely the people who have most completely identified with the system and its demands, creating a vicious circle preventing any actual change. It is no accident that conservatives tend to employ the rhetoric of social mobility so readily, as social climbers generally do not ask questions about the ladder. — Adam Kotsko

As we have seen so clearly demonstrated in Europe, hate breeds hate and the vicious circle revolves with all its attending madness. — Emanuel Celler

We always stand to gain, whether it be an influential politician to further our interests - which is the most frequent and almost easiest case to fabricate - or a great businessman, most of whose money we administer through our own networks. It is therefore our interest to create as many such 'vicious circles' as possible. And it is on this foundation that we have built modern society and the so-called 'cell of society,' that is, the family which we have chained to an infinite set of dependences: jobs, houses, comfort, cars, bank loans, and long-term contractual obligations that sometimes extend over one or two generations of the respective family. The role of a 'vicious circle' is to make people dependent because, when this happens, they are no longer free. — Radu Cinamar

Here is the vicious circle: if you feel separate from your organic life, you feel driven to survive; survival -going on living- thus becomes a duty and also a drag because you are not fully with it; because it does not quite come up to expectations, you continue to hope that it will, to crave for more time, to feel driven all the more to go on. — Alan W. Watts

I had always wanted to write a song called, The Vicious Circle. I always thought it was like, the kids are born there, they grow up there, they die there. — Mac Davis

Yes, and then it's these things that cause the whites to say we're not worthy of first-class citizenship." "Ah ... " He dropped his hands to his sides hard in frustration. "Isn't it so? They make it impossible for us to earn, to pay much in taxes because we haven't much in income, and then they say that because they pay most of the taxes, they have the right to have things like they want. It's a vicious circle, Mr. Griffin, and I don't know how we'll get out of it. They put us low, and then blame us for being down there and say that since we are low, we can't deserve our rights. — John Howard Griffin

I've been associated with Macmillan for over 45 years. I'd like to thank them for their continued commitment to my backlist and I look forward to continuing to work with them as they publish my next novel, 'Vicious Circle' in 2013. — Wilbur Smith

Describe a circle, stroke its back and it turns vicious. — Eugene Ionesco

What one side considers a defense the other considers a threat. In the vortex of the struggle, each is trapped by his own fearful outlook and by his fear of the other; each moves and is moved within a circle both vicious and lethal. — C. Wright Mills

Ultimately, fear of failure generates a vicious circle that creates what is most feared. To break this cycle, you need to make peace with failure. It isn't enough to merely tolerate it; you need to appreciate the failure and use it ... — Dan Millman

The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect. — Alexis De Tocqueville

We were vicious and violent but elegant and discreet. There was a dance to all of this, one that kept all things flowing in the right direction, a circle that ensured the smartest and brightest would stay on top, not the man with the most guns and the smallest dick. — Karina Halle

There is a triangular relationship between poverty, child labour and illiteracy who have a cause and consequence relationship. We will have to break this vicious circle. — Kailash Satyarthi

I Rather Quit from a Bad Environment regardless if it's a job or an situation that puts you on a vicious circle than blindly pressing on, ignoring the inner feeling that is inside you.

Don't just say "I'll never quit", take the time to think about what you want to do in your life. And decide if you should quit or not, Do not force yourself to keep going or let people pressure to stay in a bad environment where you are not growing and developing as an person.

Be your person, You will end up quitting at some point but don't quit if you decide to try another way in life — Leland Lewis

At Camfed, we have focused on transforming the vicious cycle of poverty in many rural African communities into a cycle of opportunity. Alumnae of Camfed's programs go on to become role models and mentors for future generations of young students. We call this the 'virtuous circle,' and we know this is a model that works. — Ann Cotton

You're walking into the garden little girl with your belly just rumblin' for an apple."
"My belief happen to be other than your own but I've always thought the Garden of Eden story would have been much better if Eve wasn't portrayed as such a mindless character manipulated by suggestion. I mean if she were a little bolder more resourceful and confident she and Adam might've had snake for dinner instead. — Linda Robertson

Every question "runs in a vicious circle" because political life as a whole is an endless chain consisting of an infinite number of links. The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain. — Vladimir Lenin

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

Throughout it all, I loved her as much as I always had, and I found myself aching for those simpler times of the past. I knew what was happening, of course. As we were drifting apart, I was becoming more desperate to save what we once had shared; like a vicious circle, however, my desperation made us drift apart even further. — Nicholas Sparks

The vicious circle has been shattered. Canadians now enjoy the benefits of the virtuous circle. — Paul Martin

Our approach is to reject the old vicious circle of the '80s-rising debt, higher long-term interest rates, higher debt repayment costs, lower growth, higher unemployment, then enforced cuts in public spending. That was the old boom and bust. — Gordon Brown

Gautama found that there was a way to exit this vicious circle. If, when the mind experiences something pleasant or unpleasant, it simply understand things as they are, then there is no suffering. If you experience sadness but you do not suffer from it. There can actually be richness in the sadness. If you experience joy without craving that the joy linger and intensify, you continue to feel joy without losing your peace of mind. — Yuval Noah Harari

You're talking like a Stalinist!' I cried. 'People don't get jobs to achieve things and learn values! They do it because they have to, and then they use whatever's left over to buy themselves things that make them feel less bad about having jobs! Can't you see, it's just a terrible vicious circle! — Paul Murray

It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle ... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. Children are like that. Adults have a fearful responsibility. When they fail to live up to what children expect of them, the children give up themselves. So each generation keeps failing the next. — Dorothy Whipple

I'd need rest to refresh my brain, and to get rest it's necessary to travel, and to travel one must have money, and in order to get money you have to work ... I am in a vicious circle ... from which it is impossible to escape. — Honore De Balzac

The wrong people will do everything in their power to guarantee that the wrong political climate will continue. It seems, then, that the wrong people ensure the wrong political climate and the wrong political climate ensures the wrong people. How then to break free of this vicious circle? — William A. Dembski

The spiral is a spiritualized circle. In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, has ceased to be vicious; it has been set free. — Vladimir Nabokov

Mind is the wielder of muscles. The force of a hammer blow depends on the energy applied; the power expressed by a man's bodily instrument depends on his aggressive will and courage. The body is literally manufactured and sustained by mind. Through pressure of instincts from past lives, strengths or weaknesses percolate gradually into human consciousness. They express as habits, which in turn ossify into a desirable or an undesirable body. Outward frailty has mental origin; in a vicious circle, the habit-bound body thwarts the mind. If the master allows himself to be commanded by a servant, the latter becomes autocratic; the mind is similarly enslaved by submitting to bodily dictation. — Paramahansa Yogananda

And I thought to myself, What am I doing? Am I reaching them at all? They are acting exactly as the old men did earlier. They are fifty years younger, maybe more, but doing the same thing those old men did who never attended school a day in their lives. Is it just a vicious circle? Am I doing anything? — Ernest Gaines

Then, when shame strikes, it is so nasty you have to numb yourself, and what better anesthetic than your addiction? It is the perfect vicious circle. — Edward T. Welch

The wretcheder one is, the more one smokes; and the more one smokes, the wretcheder one gets - a vicious circle. — George Du Maurier

Our society is turning toward more and more needless consumption. It is a vicious circle that I compare to cancer ... Should we eliminate suffering, diseases? The idea is beautiful, but perhaps not a benefit for the long term. We should not allow our dread of diseases to endanger the future of our species ... In order to stabilize world population, we need to eliminate 350,000 people a day. It is a horrible thing to say, but it's just as bad not to say it. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender lonely crowds. — Guy Debord

I have often thought that Walter Mitty had it in him to be more than a hen-pecked loser. Instead of living it up as a flamboyant daredevil in his dreams, he could have chosen to be a responsible man in real life, going about his work with dignity, and people may just have treated him with respect. Did his failures in life lead him to seek solace in daydreams or did his wandering mind stand in the way of his potential success? One must have triggered the other, and then it would have been both working together. An empty life drives you to fantasies of fulfilment, which then form a deadly, vicious circle which can turn you into a cartoon, as it did poor Mitty. Or lead you to ruin like Madame Bovary. — Indu Muralidharan

We were caught in a vicious circle of unpleasantness and sorrow. Not a very happy period for either us, but at leasst it's coming to an end. — Anne Frank

And the more he treated her as though she were really very nice, the more Lotty expanded and became really very nice, and the more he, affected in his turn, became really very nice himself; so that they went round and round, not in a vicious but in a highly virtuous circle. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Inflation is probably the most important single factor in that vicious circle wherein one kind of government action makes more and more government control necessary. For this reason all those who wish to stop the drift toward increasing government control should concentrate their effort on monetary policy. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

The vicious circle of life is employment — Sunday Adelaja

Sometimes life was a vicious circle. The things we love can draw us nearer to the things we hate. — Lynn Cahoon

For many, the regressive belief in superstitions and miracles is an escape from the hardships of life. Once trapped into irrationalism, they become more incapable of mastering reality. It is a vicious circle, like an addiction. They become vulnerable to exploitation by astrologers, godmen, dubious pseudo-psychologists, corrupt politicians and the whole mega-industry of irrationalism. — Sanal Edamaruku

We must understand the role of human rights as empowering of individuals and communities. By protecting these rights, we can help prevent the many conflicts based on poverty, discrimination and exclusion (social, economic and political) that continue to plague humanity and destroy decades of development efforts. The vicious circle of human rights violations that lead to conflicts-which in turn lead to more violations-must be broken. I believe we can break it only by ensuring respect for all human rights. — Mary Robinson

What shocks me is that so many people leave care and become homeless, and when you're homeless you get into crime, prostitution and drugs, and it is a vicious circle. That's what we need to change. — Samantha Morton

George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all.
But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. Then back to anger.
Every once in a great while, he felt a moment of peace, usually when he caught a glimpse of Beatrice and Marit together.
He loved them both in different ways. But that could not be.
He turned away, and the cycle began again. — Mette Ivie Harrison

In order to turn around and do something better, we must first escape the vicious circle of self-righteousness and denial. And that calls for the humility to say "I'm sorry. Please forgive me." — Desmond Tutu

Frequently avoidance of the present leads to idealization of the future ... When an event does not live up to your expectations you can get out of the depression by idealizing again. Do not let this vicious circle become your life-style. Interrupt it now with some strategic present-moment fulfillment. — Wayne W. Dyer

A vicious circle, this thing with Zane. It was like she was living in two worlds' simultaneously; that of a teenage girl and that of a woman. — Cat Johnson

Our rulers, who rule our symbols, and so rule a symbolic class of life, impose their own infantilism on our instituitions, educational methods, and doctrines. This leads to maladjustment of the incoming generations which, being born into, are forced to develop under the un-natural (for man) semantic conditions imposed on them. In turn, they produce leaders afflicted with the old animalistic limitations. The vicious circle is completed; it results in a general state of human un-sanity, reflected again in our instituitions. And so it goes, on and on. — Alfred Korzybski

I sell my time to get enough money to buy it back. — James Richardson

The only thing they [government] want is better data. But data doesn't tell people someone is well educated. It's a vicious circle. There is some myth involved. Some of this attitude has a long history. — Deborah Meier

Poverty is everywhere, Zarish. People should have the courage to get out of the vicious circle of it. — Sara Naveed

In vain the young man gave him details of all his obscenities with his women, M. de Charlus was only struck by how little they amounted to. For that matter that was not only the result of insincerity, for nothing is more limited than vice. In that sense one can really use a common expression and say that one is always turning in the same vicious circle. — Marcel Proust

Of all such appeals to sensory recollection, none are more powerful, none open a wider door in the brain than an appeal to the nose. It is a sense that every lover of the elemental world ought to use, and, using, enjoy. We ought to keep all senses vibrant and alive. Had we done so, we should never have built a civilization which outrages them, which so outrages them, indeed, that a vicious circle has been established and the dull sense grown duller. — Henry Beston

Speed is no advantage round a vicious circle. — Marty Rubin

Eating a peach is like eating a newborn baby's head. In that it's all soft and fuzzy. Not that peaches taste like babies. I don't eat babies. Or peaches, actually. Because they remind me of eating babies. Vicious circle, really. — Jenny Lawson

That's the worst of sorrow . . . it's always a vicious circle. It makes one tense and hard and disagreeable, and this means that one repels and antagonises people, and then they dislike and avoid one--and that means more isolation and still more sorrow. — Vera Brittain

Logotherapy focuses rather on the future, that is to say, on the meanings to be fulfilled by the patient in his future. (Logotherapy, indeed, is a meaning-centered psychotherapy.) At the same time, logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus, the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced. To be sure, this kind of statement is an oversimplification; yet in logotherapy the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. And to make him aware of this meaning can contribute much to his ability to overcome his neurosis. — Anonymous

I'd been in a vicious cycle and circle of people and couldn't see my way out. So I picked myself up one day about 15 years ago and moved where I didn't know anyone. — Chaka Khan

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism.

He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment.

This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life. — Eric Liu

Of course, looking tough on inflation is part of any central banker's job description: if investors believe that inflation is going to get out of control, you end up with higher interest rates and capital flight, and a vicious circle quickly ensues. — James Surowiecki

Another source of fallacy is the vicious circle of illusions which consists on the one hand of believing what we see, and on the other in seeing what we believe. — Thomas Clifford Allbutt

It hapens very often that parents think they are worred about the progress a boy is making. they do not realise that all boys are numskulls with o branes which is not surprising when you look at the parents really the whole thing goes on and on and there is no stoping it it is a vicious circle. — Geoffrey Willans

And that is how unhappiness persists. We blame ourselves far too much, and make ourselves more miserable. Then we defend ourselves ineffectively, and perpetuate a vicious circle. We have to try something radically different. — Anonymous

The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jedda, in Babylon. — Cormac McCarthy

This mutual dependencies no longer the dialectical relationship between master and servant, which has been broken in the struggle for mutual recognition, but rather a vicious circle which encloses both the master and the servant. Do the technicians rule, or is their rule that of the others, who rely on the technicians as their planners and executors? — Herbert Marcuse

McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men - (the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary) - must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened.
So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can't punish the military because that would make him weak? It's the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses. — Maureen Dowd

Thus the story describes a full circle ... a vicious circle as all circles are, despite their posing as apples, or planets, or human faces. — Vladimir Nabokov

We always come back to the same vicious circle - an extreme degree of material or intellectual poverty does away with the means of alleviating it. — Simone De Beauvoir

It was a vicious circle, though. The more gratification we found in our own geniuses, the more isolated we grew. Our home was like an artists' colony. We ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate pursuits. And in this isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion. — Alison Bechdel

It's a vicious circle. If you feel hideous, you convey it to people. A couple of male friends from university have said, 'I quite fancied you, but I wouldn't have dared ... ' and I was like, 'Oh really?' I was completely amazed that anyone had ever fancied me, and also that I'd obviously given an impression of 'Don't touch me.' — Miranda Hart

Worrying about what does not yet exist, is that a gesture of love or the worst kind of argument putting pressure on the living, an excess of scrupulous conscience? For fear of soiling our hands, we prefer to cut them off right now. [...] How far can responsibility go without turning into an abstraction? To extend it to all coming generations is to empty it of its meaning, to put a titanic weight on our shoulders. By being accountable for everything, we are accountable for nothing. We can receive no pardon for our errors, since those who would be in a position to grant it have not yet been born! A vicious circle: isn't sacrificing people today for the benefit of those to come also a way of penalizing the latter [...]? — Pascal Bruckner

Ideally, Competition should be a wonderful vicious circle of being inspired and inspiring others to achieve excellence and being the best version of themselves. — Tina Sequeira

Examples of vicious courses practiced in a domestic circle corrupt more readily and more deeply when we behold them in persons in authority. — Juvenal

When I began, the guitar was en-closed in a vicious circle. There were no composers writing for the guitar, be-cause there were no virtuoso guitarists. — Andres Segovia

ANGUISH EMERGES FROM craving for life to be other than it is. In the face of a changing world, such craving seeks consolation in something permanent and reliable, in a self that is in control of things, in a God who is in charge of destiny. The irony of this strategy is that it turns out to be the cause of what it seeks to dispel. In yearning for anguish to be assuaged in such ways, we reinforce what creates anguish in the first place: the craving for life to be other than it is. We find ourselves spinning in a vicious circle. The more acute the anguish, the more we want to be rid of it, but the more we want to be rid of it, the more acute it gets. Such — Stephen Batchelor

Mutual fund managers are trapped in this rather deadly vicious circle: the more successful they are, the more money flows into their mutual fund. Then, it is more difficult for them to beat the market averages or even to match their own past performance. — Ron Chernow

Still, he felt lonely and fell into the trap of pretending to prefer being alone, thus leading to further loneliness in a vicious circle of solitude that young men of a certain temperament build for themselves and then inhabit. But — E.E. Knight

We're in the same position as any scientist. All we have to go on is experiential evidence. And sooner or later we have to trust our own experience, because that's all we really have. Otherwise it's a vicious circle. If I fundamentally distrust my experience, then I must distrust even my capacity to distrust, since that is also an experience. So sooner or later I have no choice but to trust, trust my experience, trust that the universe is not fundamentally and persistently going to lie to me. Of course we can be mistaken, and sometimes experiences are misleading, but on balance we have no choice but to follow them. It's a type of phenomenological imperative. And especially mystical experiences - if anything, as you say, they are more real, not less real, than other experiences. I — Ken Wilber

"Plaza de la Soledad" is a documentary about Carmen, Lety, Raquel and Esther, four strong women - middle-aged and older - who want to break a vicious circle that began with abuse and abandonment suffered from an early age. They simply want to have a better life. The film follows their quest to find true love and their capacity to transform themselves. — Maya Goded

nothing is more limited than vice. In that sense one can really use a common expression and say that one is always turning in the same vicious circle. "How — Marcel Proust

I sat and asked God a question, never before now had I felt he was truly listening; Or was it i, that disrupted his appearance ...
Why God, must the treasures of our world be hard done by and the enemies of life become greater in their scheme of manipulation?
Oh dear one, I chose the strong ones to hand the deepest lessons, because I know they can handle it and soon enough they will too.
The ones that twiddle their thumbs and become ignorant to what's their truth; will attract what they are and continue in the circle of vicious greed. They'll eventually grow, like you did too.
It may just take time, and your time now is bettering your existence from the struggle you've faced. — Nikki Rowe

There is, indeed, a viewpoint from which this "rationalization" of life is not rational. The brain is clever enough to see the vicious circle which it has made for itself. But it can do nothing about it. Seeing that it is unreasonable to worry does not stop worrying; rather, you worry the more at being unreasonable. — Alan W. Watts

Each of these imperatives has a tendency to degenerate into an excuse for greed and materialism in the absence of the other. Without the call to generosity, the call to productivity makes people feel entitled to live materialistic lives - as long as they accumulate their wealth by working productively. But without the call to productivity, the call to generosity makes people feel entitled to live materialistic lives - as long as they pay off God by tithing their 10 percent. The only way to root out materialism is to reorient people's attitudes about their entire economic lives. If you only lead people to do good work (productivity), they'll use their wealth selfishly. If you only lead them to get their use of wealth right (generosity), they won't orient their lives to good work. The whole life of a person has to turn away from selfishness and serve God and neighbor. As someone once said, the only effective place to intervene in a vicious circle is everywhere at once. — Greg Forster

Time. It takes control over us and when we realize this, it's often too late. That's again the power of time. See? It's sort of a vicious circle. Take control of your precious time and live life to the fullest. — Tessa Vanluchene

As soon as the patient stops fighting his obsessions and instead tries to ridicule them by dealing with them in an ironic way - by applying paradoxical intention - the vicious circle is cut, the symptom diminishes and finally atrophies. — Viktor E. Frankl

If we want world peace, we must break the vicious circle of violence and reprisal, of an eye for an eye, of endless hate. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

A vicious circle develops in which the people around you expect you to be there for them all the time and comply with their wishes. — Auliq Ice

He was weary of the uncertainty of the vicious circle of that eternal war that always found him in the same place, but always older, wearier, even more in the position of not knowing why, or how, or even when. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez