Explore the wonderful quotes under this tag
We've seen a lot of people self-destruct because of a small taste of success.
Sep 10, 2025
As John Adams said, all democracies will eventually self-destruct. We seem to be doing it very quickly.
Even when you self-destruct, you want to fail more, lose more, die more than others, stink more than others.
As long as we can tell stories about our ability to survive, the more we will hope, not self-destruct.
There are not many beginnings but there is a single Beginning, prior to multitude. But if you were to say that the beginnings are plural apart from their partaking of the One, that statement would self-destruct. For, surely, these plural beginnings would be both alike, by virtue of their not partaking of the One, and not alike, by virtue of their not partaking of the One.
The days of the digitals are numbered. The metaphor is built into them like a self-destruct mechanism.
When the pain that the little me creates for itself becomes intense enough, the ego will self-destruct. It has a self-destruct mechanism built in, fortunately, so eventually every ego dies.
I was heading in a self destructive direction. My priority wasn't together, wasn't in order. So me getting locked up was actually a blessing for me. It helped for me to see the light. Once you get the rug snatched from under you - I had my career and family snatched from me, and I was forced to just sit there in that box for three years and think about what I did and how selfish I was, it made me really see things with new eyes, like, hold up, why was I doing that? What the hell was I thinking about? I gotta change. Something's got to give. I can't ever come back in this place again.
In the past I would self destruct when it came to love - I was immature, throwing myself into things but now times have changed, I want a relationship where you understand the other person.
Found myself screaming in a hotel room. I didn't want to self-destruct.
Mom put a note in my lunch again, I see... Dear son, I hope you will study hard in summer school... Do not look upon it as a punishment, but rather as a privilege... We are very proud of you, and want you to have a good education. This note will self-destruct in five seconds.
Without a vision people and the church become self-centered. People start finding fault with one another and the church self-destructs.
But, it has something to do with having belief in a human future and what that human future is. What is the future of humanity? How does this whole experiment not self-destruct with the environment and everything else going on?
I think the hardest thing in life is to forgive. Hate is self destructive. If you hate somebody, you're not hurting the person you hate, you're hurting yourself. It's a healing, actually, it's a real healing...forgiveness.
I find drug use disrespectful, self destructive and weak. I want no part of it. I believe in complete respect for myself and others.
Self improvement is masturbation. Now self destruction.
Procrastination is the seed of self destruction.
You're dealing with people who are suiciding slowly. You've got to get to the bottom of what is psychologically motivating them to self-destruct.
I believe that all technological societies tend to self-destruct. The reason is that the very things that make us a successful technological society, such as our curiosity, our ambition and determination, will also cause us to fall.
There are times in my life when I let myself get consumed with jealously for someone else's life, their body, their wardrobe, their talent. They call it the green-eyed monster for a reason. It's a self destructive and when it's in the room, it consumes you. Be strong and don't focus on what other people have.
Our whole social order could self-destruct over the obsession with freedom disconnected from responsibility; where choice is imagined to be somehow independent of consequences.
Self destroyer, wreck your health, destroy friends, destroy yourself. The time device of self destruction, lies, confusion, start eruption.
Personality of reincarnating as Paulo was that of his deceased sister, Emilia. She made several suicidal attempts. Finally she took cyanide and died very quickly on October, 12, 1921." Joe Fisher continued the research: Emilia died "fourteen months before Paulo's birth. He took on Emilia's self destructive instincts. Paulo made several attempts to kill himself before committing suicide on September 5, 1966 by setting himself on fire.
Anything short of the discipline and honesty of a true gold coin standard will inevitably self-destruct, consuming our wealth and liberties, and nurturing the omnipotent state.
I have a lot of friends who are trying to clean up their act, or that are still making trouble for themselves, so I’m definitely well-versed on what goes on in the mind and the heart of a person who self-destructs as their coping mechanism, and also what they’re like when you take their preferred substance away.
Capitalism would self-destruct in no time. So the business classes have always demanded strong, straight intervention to protect the society from the destructive effects of market forces because they don't want everything destroyed.
Solitude. It is way underrated in our world of writing. We stay busy. We act busy. We thrive on busy. The truth is there is a lot of beauty that lives in the solitude. Quiet is not the enemy. Quiet is necessary for brains to not self-destruct.
Only in America could you find a way to make a healthy buck, And still keep your attitude on self-destruct.
I'll never understand how a man can live his life With his finger on the self-destruct button, Holding it there day after day, Blinded by an obsession to press it But lacking the conviction to do even that.
Who is to blame for this most recent of sports disgraces in America? The culture that flings young athletes like Tyson up out of obscurity, makes millionaires of them and watches them self-destruct?
Also she signed away the right to self-destruct years ago. The fine print on the birth certificate, her friends call it.
Worry is just about the worst form of mental activity there is-next to hate, which is deeply self destructive. Worry is pointless. It is wasted mental energy. It also creates bio-chemical reactions which harm the body, producing everything from indigestion to coronary arrest, and a multitude of things in between.
When the beginnings of self destruction enter the heart, it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.
If you say to yourself, okay, I will not self-destruct. I don't have to be the most talented person. I don't have to be everybody's best friend, I don't have to be liked, I don't have to be successful, well, one thing I will not do is self-destruct. If you take that out, your chances for success just went up like 800 percent.
There was a time when I was unable to get out of bed because my body, its muscles eating themselves away, refused to sit up. There was a time when the lies rolled off my tongue with ease, when it was far more important to me to self-destruct than to admit I had a problem, let alone allow anyone to help.
You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct.
Perhaps, in retrospect, there would be little motivation even for malevolent extraterrestrials to attack the Earth; perhaps, after a preliminary survey, they might decide it is more expedient just to be patient for a little while and wait for us to self-destruct.
I do think [Barack Obama's] strategy for re-election is so misguided. He's counting on the Republicans to self-destruct, and they might, you know, but they might not. So he might be a one-term president.
When it comes to cooking, five years ago I felt guilty "just adding water." Now I want to bang the tube against the countertop and have a five-course meal pop out. If it comes with plastic silverware and a plate that self-destructs, all the better.
One's god dictates the kind of law one implements and also controls the application and development of that law over time. Given enough time, all non-Christian systems of law self-destruct in a fit of tyranny.
I want to be the apostle of self destruction. I want my book to affect man's reason, his emotions, his nerves, his whole animal nature. I should like my book to make people turn pale with horror as they read it, to affect them like a drug, like a terrifying dream, to drive them mad, to make them curse and hate me but still to read me.
It was frustrating when people loved you and took an interest in you and sometimes worried about you and personally cared what you did with yourself. Lena wished that love were something you could flip on and off. You could turn it on when you felt good bout yourself and worthy of it and generous enough to return it. You could clip it off when you needed to hide or self-destruct and had nothing at all to give." (Lena, 194)
I was addicted to amphetamines at the time I got busted, but I tend to think I was on a determined, self-destruct course that had little to do with the effect of Benzedrine.
There are seeds of self-destruction in all of us that will bear only unhappiness if allowed to grow.
I'm an ambitious person. I mean, if I did that... I would self-destruct, in the sense that the decadence would be too strong an attraction for me. Whether that be in the form of gambling, fast cars, alcohol, drugs, whatever it happens to be... I think the lure of that lifestyle would be too strong.
We need never be hopeless because we can never be irreperably broken.
She did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think the hate invincible," with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken.
My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people.
A token of ecological awareness in a society devoted to self destruction and waste but unwilling to acknowledge its indulgent ways.
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.