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Destructive Quotes

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Destructive Quotes

“Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the Tea Party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The Tea Party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern.”

WritingSelfCareRunningWinningPartyConcernVoteIndependentElectionDemocratSpendingBunchReformTeaHealth CareDestructiveRacistVotersSwingsDeficitFringeEntitlementOutrageTea PartySelf DestructiveHealth Care ReformDeficit Spending
Author:Juan Williams
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“Surely by now there can be few here who still believe the purpose of government is to protect us from the destructive activities of corporations. At last most of us must understand that the opposite is true: that the primary purpose of government is to protect those who run the economy from the outrage of injured citizens.”

BelieveStillsGovernmentRunningLastsPurposeEconomyCitizensActivityProtectOppositesPrimariesCorporationsDestructiveInjuredOutragePurpose Of Government
Author:Derrick Jensen
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“Watching him during the first several minutes of his delivery, Cecilia felt a pleasant sinking sensation in her stomach as she contemplated how deliciously self-destructive it would be, almost erotic, to be married to a man so nearly handsome, so hugely rich, so unfathomably stupid. He would fill her with his big-faced children, all of them loud, boneheaded boys with a passion for guns and football and aeroplanes.”

MenFirstsChildrenSelfBigsWould BePassionFeltBoysRichMinutesStupidFootballMarriedGunLoudPleasantDestructiveSensationsStomachHandsomeEroticBeing MarriedDeliverySinkingAeroplanesSelf Destructive
Author:Ian Mcewan
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“I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage--self destructive, destroy the world rage--and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.”

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Author:Sidney Poitier
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“True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.”

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Author:Pope John Paul II
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“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“Good teachers don't approach a child of this age with overzealousness or with destructive conscientiousness. They're not drill-masters in the military or floor managers in a production system. They are specialists in opening small packages. They give the string a tug but do it carefully. They don't yet know what's in the box. They don't know if it's breakable.”

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Book:Ordinary Resurrections: Children in the Years of Hope
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“To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter that these people's dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I -- or does anyone else -- have to destroy them. At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?”

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Author:Derrick Jensen
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“…being an atheist required discipline very like that of being Catholic. One could never yield to the idea of a supernatural authority, no matter how often one might be tempted. To think that a personal God had made the world was to yield to a demonic and superstitious and destructive belief.”

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Book:Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession
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“That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.”

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Book:The Liveship Traders Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny
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“Human beings are so destructive. I sometimes think we're a kind of plague, that will scrub the earth clean. We destroy things so well that I sometimes think, maybe that's our function. Maybe every few eons, some animal comes along that kills off the rest of the world, clears the decks, and lets evolution proceed to its next phase.”

ThinkingWorldHumansWellsKindSometimesEarthNextHuman BeingsAnimalEvolutionFunctionCleanDestructivePhasesPlagueDeck
Book:Michael Crichton's Jurassic World
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“A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.”

WantYearsPersonsTwoShowsHappensActionLife IsWalksAcceptingHabitCrossesDrinkingLegsWoodsQuittingStreamsClimbsDestructiveBusCoastChipsSermonsOur ActionsDriftingOarLife And ChangeQuit Drinking
Book:Pontoon: A Lake Wobegon Novel
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“Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.”

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Author:Paulo Coelho
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“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn't motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn't enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”

IfsWayDoeEnoughWould BeSufferingDiesAnimalNumbersPlanetsSeriousConscienceThreatBillionsMiserableGlobal WarmingDestructiveCulinaryAnimal RightsPreferenceTemptedContributingHorrificContributorsMiserable LifeAnimal Food
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.”

IfsWayActionNamesIgnoranceCommunicationProtectUltimateGuiltResponseProtectionDestructiveDevicesImpotenceContinuationNot GuiltyDefensivenessFeeling Guilty
Book:Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
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“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

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Author:Stanley Milgram
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“It seems to me there is less meanness in atheism, by a good measure. It seems that the spirit of religious self-righteousness this article deplores is precisely the spirit in which it is written. Of course he's right about many things, one of them being the destructive potency of religious self-righteousness. (p. 146)”

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Author:Marilynne Robinson
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“Surely, if it is the right of the people to "alter or abolish," it is their right to criticize, even severely, policies they believe destructive of the ends for which government has been established. This principle, in the Declaration of Independence, suggests that true patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic.”

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Book:A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
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