Destructiveness Quotes

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“When I was a young man and very well thought of,
I couldn't ask aught that the ladies denied.
I nibbled their hearts like a handful of raisins,
And I never spoke love but I knew that I lied.

But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them know
The secret I shelter and savor and save
I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'

The years drifted over like clouds in the heavens;
The ladies went by me like snow on the wind.
I charmed and I cheated, deceived and dissembled,
And I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned, and I sinned.

But I said to myself, 'Ah, they none of them see
There's part of me pure as the whisk of a wave.
My lady is late but she'll find I've been faithful,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave.'

At last came a lady both knowing and tender,
Saying, 'you're not at all what they take you to be.'
I betrayed her before she had quite finished speaking,
And she swallowed cold poison and jumped in the sea.

And I say to myself when there's time for a word,
As I gracefully grow more debauched and depraved,
'Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger
And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“We think we know."
"Know? That's worse than an atom bomb, and always was.”
― William Golding, Darkness Visible

“What if the heart, for its own unfathomable reasons, leads one willfully and in a cloud of unspeakable radiance away from health, domesticity, civic responsibility and strong social connections and all the blandly-held common virtues and instead straight toward a beautiful flare of ruin, self-immolation, disaster?…If your deepest self is singing and coaxing you straight toward the bonfire, is it better to turn away? Stop your ears with wax? Ignore all the perverse glory your heart is screaming at you? Set yourself on the course that will lead you dutifully towards the norm, reasonable hours and regular medical check-ups, stable relationships and steady career advancement the New York Times and brunch on Sunday, all with the promise of being somehow a better person? Or…is it better to throw yourself head first and laughing into the holy rage calling your name?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“As the generations pass they grow worse. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last, when no man is angry any more at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would rise and put down rulers that oppress them.”
― Greek myth on the Iron Age

“Nothing is as horrendous as imagining the times of happiness from an environment which is that of hell.”
― Lynne Sharon Schwartz, The Emergence of Memory: Conversations With W. G. Sebald

“Excessive self-criticism is a bad habit and extraordinarily self-destructive. Don't be your own worst enemy!”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“Hostility, malice, and sadism are the result of helplessness and self-loathing; that they are all produced by adaptation to a hypercritical social reality and are not attributable to innate aggression.”
― Arno Gruen

“There was something, a driving destructive thing in life, in all relationships between people.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Sherwood Anderson: Short Stories

“Alcoholism, as a disease that ravages the mind and body, often becomes intertwined with domestic violence, heightening its destructive impact.”
― Rove Monteux, What is Wrong with Society Today

“The natural tendency of man is war. The world is dominated by patriarchy, capitalism and war. Man hankers for any excuse to fight, to destroy and to be destructive. If he cannot find a real excuse, he will invent an excuse, because he cannot live without war. In modern times, there has been a war every 5-10 years. 
And what has man achieved? What has man achieved through all this violence, bloodshed and destructivity? The whole past of man has been pathological, and the reason is that we go on listening to the mind. The mind has grown out of man's animal heritage. Man is part of evolution. Man may be the highest animal, but he is still an animal. And through the evolution, the mind has become conditioned to function in a particular way. The mind knows only how to fight. The mind knows only the way of violence. 
Unless man learns how to go beyond the mind, he will never become truly human. Then he will remain an animal. To be truly human, man has to stop the way of fight, violence, destructivity and war. He has to move beyond the animal in him, and for the first time reach for the human. 
The human has tremendous potential for love, joy, silence, intelligence and beauty, The human is also the beginning of the divine. But the first step is to get rid of the animal heritage.”
― Swami Dhyan Giten, Man is Part of the Whole: Silence, Love, Joy, Truth, Compassion, Freedom and Grace

“I am trying to understand what it means to own a thing, especially a wild and living being. To have exclusive rights to its fate? To dispose of it at will? To deny others it’s use? Ownership seems a uniquely human behavior, a social contract validating the desire for purposeless possession and control.
To destroy a wild thing for pride seems a potent act of domination. Wildness cannot be collected and still remain wild. Its nature is lost the moment it is separated from its origins. By the very act of owning, the thing becomes an object, no longer itself.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses