Quotes about destruction (1560 quotes, page 11)

“Capitalism will inevitably find itself face to face with a starving multitude of unemployed workers demanding food or destruction of the social order that has starved them and robbed them of their jobs.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

What is the IWW? (1918)
Source: [What is the IWW?, Helen, Keller, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/18_01_x01.htm, 1918, January, December 27 2016]

Food

“The administration, through senior Air Force officials, wants the U. S. to achieve military supremacy in outer space. Dominating all earth from outer space will have an out-of-world price tag, perhaps more than $1 trillion.A question: Why reach for the stars with guns in our hands? Are there weapons of mass destruction on Mars?Yesterday 28 Members of Congress signed on to H. R. 2420, a bill to stop the weaponization of space, urging the President to sign an international treaty to ban such weapons. If we work together towards creating peace on earth, we would not bring war to the high heavens.While some fantasize about being "masters of the universe," there are 45 million Americans without health insurance. Corporations are reneging on pension obligations. Social Security is under attack. We are headed towards a $400 billion annual budget deficit, a $600 billion trade deficit, an $8 trillion national debt. The cost of the war in Iraq is over $200 billion. While we build new bases in Iraq, we close them in the United States.Earth to Washington, D. C. Earth to Washington, D. C. D. C., call home.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressional Record (19 May 2005) http://frwebgate1.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/waisgate.cgi?WAISdocID=239723145903+0+0+0&WAISaction=retrieve.

War , Health , World , Peace

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband’s corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….. “In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription:- ‘Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers how long it would last, and was informed by them, that after eleven hundred years, a king named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the other temples in Kashmeer’…Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, ‘Destroyer of Idols’…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413)Kashmir
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Money , People , Faith , Religion

“Once again the hopes of people of two nations are being smashed by weapons in the name of eliminating weapons. Let us abolish weapons of mass destruction at home. Joblessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poverty is a weapon of mass destruction. Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction. Homelessness is a weapon of mass destruction. Poor health care is a weapon of mass destruction. Discrimination is a weapon of mass destruction.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

"Peace as a Civil Right" from A Prayer for America (2003) [Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-510-2], p. 76

Hunger , People , Health , Hope

“To eat is to appropriate by destruction.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Part 3: Being-For-Others
Being and Nothingness (1943)

“The deceit of the Allies would have fateful consequences. Germany, even under Hitler, would never have risked invading France again if her rulers and her generals had known in advance that Britain and America would oppose it by military force. The U. S. Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Guarantee brought a certain responsibility on the United States for the subsequent course of events which pushed western Europe to the brink of destruction by Germany, though this was scarcely recognized in America. The Senate's action did not spare the American republic in the end. It only made the reconquest of western Europe from the Germans, when the Second World War came, infinitely more costly in American lives and treasure than it would have been had a President's word been honored in the first place by the Senate. The United States, supremely complacent in its shortsighted isolation, was lost as a factor in guarding the peace of Europe it had helped to win, and in which its fate would always be intertwined.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Fate , War , World , Peace

“Our second goal is to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction. Some of these regimes have been pretty quiet since September the 11th. But we know their true nature. North Korea is a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Nature

“There is something radically wrong, [the anarchist] declares, in a system of society that functions and maintains its existence by the impetus of violence and force. He sees nothing praiseworthy in political society which has recourse to periodic wars, or need of jails, gallows and bludgeons--and it is because he is aware that these brutal weapons are the instruments of every government and State that he works for their destruction. … Unlike the politician, he does not regard dishonesty, brutality and avariciousness as natural characteristics of human nature, but as the inevitable consequences of coercion and frustration engendered by artificial law, he believes that these social evils are best eradicated not by greater penalties and further legislation, but by the free development of the latent forces of solidarity and sympathetic understanding which government and law so ruthlessly suppress. … Freedom will be possible when people understand and desire it--for man can only rule where others subserviently obey. Where none obey, none has power to rule.”

George Nicholson (1760–1825) British anarchist and author

"The simplicity of anarchism" in Freedom, 1955. Reprinted in What Is Anarchism?: An Introduction by Donald Rooum, ed. (London: Freedom Press, 1992, 1995) pp. 39-40.

War , People , Law , Penalty

“If an object is pleasant, repetition will increase its charm; if it expresses sorrow or pain, then repetition will intensify its melancholy. On the contrary, any subject that is peculiar or unpleasant will be made unbearable by repetition. So repetition always acts to increase intensity. Since the time that this principle of harmony was employed by the primitives, it has been visually lost, and so forgotten. One strove for the charm of variety, and so achieved the destruction of unity... Variety is just as much an element of beauty as parallelism, provided that one does not exaggerate it. For the structure of our eye itself demands that we introduce some variety into any absolutely unified object... To be simple is not always as easy as it seems... The work of art will bring to light a new order inherent in things, and this will be: the idea of unity.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

another source of his 'parallelism' concept is Hodler's letter, written in 1904 to de:Franz Servaes; in which Hodler explained his design principle of 'parallelism', later adopted by the Vienna Secession artists. The Leopold Museum in Vienna discovered and owns this letter
from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

Pain , Beauty , Art , Idea

“The portion of the materia prima which is… is endowed with the intellectual faculty, possesses a special property by which each individual, according to the degree of his perfection, is enabled to manage, to calculate, and to discover what is conducive both to the temporary existence of the individual and to the preservation of the species. All other movements… by the individual members of the species are due to accident; they are not, according to Aristotle, the result of rule and management… Aristotle sees no difference between the falling of a leaf or a stone and the death of the good and noble people in the ship; nor does he distinguish between the destruction of a multitude of ants by an ox depositing on them his excrement and the death of worshippers killed by the fall of the house when its foundations give way.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

Death , People , Way , Housing

“Twenty years ago we heard many predictions that there would be no Indians left in Brazil by the end of the decade. These gloomy forecasts were wholly wrong. We are now optimists — hopeful that right thinking will prevail and the destruction of tribal peoples and their environments will stop. Tribal peoples will survive against extraordinary odds — but they do need the help of concerned people throughout the world.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

Acceptance Speech for The Right Livelihood Award http://www.rightlivelihood.org/survival_speech.html, December 9th, 1989

People , World , Hope , Thinking

“The first class contains four, which, we are informed, may be properly called beasts for hunting; namely, the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar. The second class contains the names of the beasts of the chase, and they are five; that is to say, the buck, the doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe. In the third class we find three, that are said to afford "greate dysporte" in the pursuit, and they are denominated, the grey or badger, the wild-cat and the otter…The reader may possibly be surprised, when he casts his eye over the foregoing list of animals for hunting, at seeing the names of several that do not exist at this time in England, and especially of the wolf, because he will readily recollect the story so commonly told of their destruction during the reign of Edgar.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 17
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Animals

Cats , Wolf , Time , Animals

“Love is a great thing. It is not by chance that in all times and practically among all cultured peoples love in the general sense and the love of a man for his wife are both called love. If love is often cruel or destructive, the reason lies not in love itself, but in the inequality between people.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Love , People , Sense , Chance

“The destruction of the atom [the split of it, in modern physics] seemed to me to be the same as the destruction of the world.... science to me appeared to be dead: its most important basis was only a lunacy, a mistake perpetrated by learned men.... who blindly mistook one object for another.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: 1916 -1920, Autobiography', 1918, p. 16

Men , World , Learning , Appearance

“The fundamental, all-pervasive cause of world instability is the destruction of communities by the commercialization of all human relationships and the resulting neuroses and psychoses. The technological acceleration of transportation, communication and weapons systems is now creating power areas wider than existing political structures.”

Carroll Quigley (1910–1977) American historian

Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Lecture 3: "The State of Individuals" (1976)

World , Communication

“Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere… Nope, no weapons over there… Maybe under here.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Narrating a humorous slide show at the Radio and Television News Correspondents Association, with a series of photos depicting himself searching through the Oval Office of the White House for the weapons of mass destruction which his administration had claimed to exist, but ultimately failed to find, in Iraq. http://www.wherearethewmd.org/evolutionary_rhetoric.php, March 25, 2004
2000s, 2004

“[Iran, Libya and Syria] are irresponsible states, which must be disarmed of weapons [of] mass destruction, and a successful American move in Iraq as a model will make that easier to achieve.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

haaretzdaily.com, February 17, 2003 Haaretz http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=263941
2000s

Success

“When we consider the time which is necessary to fulfill the needs of an individual it will easily be understood that the needs of a vast country like Ethiopia can only be filled progressively and by stages.
For the life of the world is such that periods of constructive achievement are followed by periods of destruction: the period of construction brings peace and the period of destruction brings uncertainty. We have always kept in mind that the union of the spiritual strength of the people with the material power of the independent nation provides the firm basis for our people to overcome the hardships and difficulties of life facing them in this world.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Address on the 18th anniversary of his coronation (2 November 1948) http://www.jah-rastafari.com/selassie-words/show-jah-word.asp?word_id=18ann

Life , People , World , Peace

“Legitimate economic expansions, financed by actual savings, do not need busts. It is only the inflation-induced varieties that sow the seeds of their own destruction.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

“The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islam, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustan by the illumination of its guidance… On the other side, so much dust arose from the battered temple of Somnat that even the sea was not able to lay it, and on the right hand and on the left hand the army has conquered from sea to sea, and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus, in which Satanism has prevailed since the time of the Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultan's destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first holy expedition against Deogir,44so that the flames of the light of the law illumine all these unholy countries, and places for the criers to prayer are exalted on high, and prayers are read in mosques. Allah be praised!'…'On Sunday, the 23rd, after holding a council of chief officers, he [Malik Kafur, converted Hindu and commander of the Muslim army] took a select body of cavalry with him and pressed on against Billal Deo, and on the 5th of Shawwal reached the fort of Dhur Sammund after a difficult march of twelve days over the hills and valleys, and through thorny forests. 'The fire-worshipping' Rai, when he learnt that 'his idol-temple was likely to be converted into a mosque,' despatched Kisu Mal' The commander replied that he was sent with the object of converting him to Muhammadanism, or of making him a zimmi, and subject to pay tax, or of slaying him if neither of these terms were assented to. When the Rai received this reply, he said he was ready to give up all he possessed, except his sacred thread.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 85-89
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

God , Law , Light , Time

“If we have real, creative destruction here with Trump, and we have Armageddon or worse, out of the ruins will come new successes. New movements. And eventually, new rackets. And I'll be in on them. I admit it, I'm a racketeer.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Success

“Have you ever wondered, perhaps, why opinions which the majority of people quite naturally hold are, if anyone dares express them publicly, denounced as 'controversial, 'extremist', 'explosive', 'disgraceful', and overwhelmed with a violence and venom quite unknown to debate on mere political issues? It is because the whole power of the aggressor depends upon preventing people from seeing what is happening and from saying what they see.

The most perfect, and the most dangerous, example of this process is the subject miscalled, and deliberately miscalled, 'race'. The people of this country are told that they must feel neither alarm nor objection to a West Indian, African and Asian population which will rise to several millions being introduced into this country. If they do, they are 'prejudiced', 'racialist'... A current situation, and a future prospect, which only a few years ago would have appeared to everyone not merely intolerable but frankly incredible, has to be represented as if welcomed by all rational and right-thinking people. The public are literally made to say that black is white. Newspapers like the Sunday Times denounce it as 'spouting the fantasies of racial purity' to say that a child born of English parents in Peking is not Chinese but English, or that a child born of Indian parents in Birmingham is not English but Indian. It is even heresy to assert the plain fact that the English are a white nation. Whether those who take part know it or not, this process of brainwashing by repetition of manifest absurdities is a sinister and deadly weapon. In the end, it renders the majority, who are marked down to be the victims of violence or revolution or tyranny, incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong. The process has already gone perilously far, when political parties at a general election dare not discuss a subject which results from and depends on political action and which for millions of electors transcends all others in importance; or when party leaders can be mesmerised into accepting from the enemy the slogans of 'racialist' and 'unChristian' and applying them to lifelong political colleagues...

In the universities, we are told that education and the discipline ought to be determined by the students, and that the representatives of the students ought effectively to manage the institutions. This is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense which it is already obligatory for academics and journalists, politicians and parties, to accept and mouth upon pain of verbal denunciation and physical duress.

We are told that the economic achievement of the Western countries has been at the expense of the rest of the world and has impoverished them, so that what are called the 'developed' countries owe a duty to hand over tax-produced 'aid' to the governments of the undeveloped countries. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but it is nonsense with which the people of the Western countries, clergy and laity, but clergy especially—have been so deluged and saturated that in the end they feel ashamed of what the brains and energy of Western mankind have done, and sink on their knees to apologise for being civilised and ask to be insulted and humiliated.

Then there is the 'civil rights' nonsense. In Ulster we are told that the deliberate destruction by fire and riot of areas of ordinary property is due to the dissatisfaction over allocation of council houses and opportunities for employment. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that has not prevented the Parliament and government of the United Kingdom from undermining the morale of civil government in Northern Ireland by imputing to it the blame for anarchy and violence.

Most cynically of all, we are told, and told by bishops forsooth, that communist countries are the upholders of human rights and guardians of individual liberty, but that large numbers of people in this country would be outraged by the spectacle of cricket matches being played here against South Africans. It is nonsense—manifest, arrant nonsense; but that did not prevent a British Prime Minister and a British Home Secretary from adopting it as acknowledged fact.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The "enemy within" speech during the 1970 general election campaign; speech to the Turves Green Girls School, Northfield, Birmingham (13 June 1970), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 36-37.
1970s

Pain , People , World , Education

“Stolen away were the bitter ends of yesterday
Marked for destruction
Mark these words
Bellowed from the collective consciousness
Of all that is pure
A life that we don't understand”

D. S. Bradford (1982) musician

A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky, verse 2, lines 5-11
A Call To The Stars II: A Home In The Sky (2016)

Life , Understanding

“To spend for destruction ten times more than for instruction, such is the fashion in our time; and men seriously regard themsleves as rational beings!”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 50.

Men , Fashion , Time

“And as the mouthpiece
Of every single citizen without peace
Direction and leadership
I'ma spit it 'til your ears can't believe this shit
We got weapons of mass destruction, and we is it”

Danny! (1983) American rapper

"Talk To You (remix)"
Albums, The College Kicked-Out (2004)

“The happiness of most people we know is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.”

Ernest Dimnet (1866–1954) French writer

Source: What we live by (1932), p. 238

People , Error , Happiness

“When we all got back to camp, our General communicated by heliograph through a distant mountain top with Sir valley and lay it waste with fire and sword in vengeance. This accordingly we did, but with great precautions. We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. So long as the villages were in the plain, this was quite easy. The tribesmen sat on the mountains and sullen watched the destruction of their homes and means of livelihood. When however we had to attack the villas on the sides of the mountains they resisted fiercely, and we lost for every village two or three British officers and fifteen or twenty native soldiers. Whether it was worth it, I cannot tell. At any rate, at the end of a fortnight the valley was a desert, and honour was satisfied.”

Winston S. Churchill book My Early Life

My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930)
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=ooFGl74WbXsC&pg=PT149

Home , Mountain , Communication , Tree

“Doing identity politics means trying to drum up support by appealing to specific groups on the basis of their ethnicity, religion, language, sexuality or other characteristics, instead of speaking to them as Canadians interested in the wellbeing of our country as a whole.
Identity politics has become pervasive and is being practiced by all political parties trying to buy votes. Political debate has degenerated into a contest between different ways of pandering to specific groups instead of appealing to our common interests.
I have repeatedly stated that I believe identity politics is reductive, divisive and destructive of our social cohesion. I am doing THE OPPOSITE of identity politics by focusing on policy solutions that concern ALL Canadians. And I will continue to do so.”

Maxime Bernier (1963) Canadian politician

16 August 2018 https://twitter.com/MaximeBernier/status/1030087576328105985

Religion , Way , Support , Country

“The destruction was mutual. We went to Vietnam without any desire to capture territory or impose American will on other people. I don't feel that we ought to apologize or castigate ourselves or to assume the status of culpability.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Statement quoted in the Los Angeles Times (25 March 1977)
Presidency (1977–1981), 1977

People , Feeling

“Globalisation is highly selective. It proceeds by linking up all that, according to dominant interests, has value anywhere in the planet, and discarding anything which has no value or becomes devalued, in a variable geometry of creative destruction and destructive creation of value.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society (2000)

“Excessive bureaucracy is distracting, time-consuming, and destructive to creativity.”

Jerome Isaac Friedman (1930) American physicist

"Will Innovation Flourish in the Future?," 2002

Time

“Economic power is exercised by means of a positive, by offering men a reward, an incentive, a payment, a value; political power is exercised by means of a negative, by the threat of punishment, injury, imprisonment, destruction. The businessman's tool is values; the bureaucrat's tool is fear.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Men , Fear , Exercises

“The price for misreading and misinterpreting a woman has become extremely high; divorce battles, custody fights, poisonous interactions, accusations of abuse, incest, harassment, and even rape alongside the everyday unhappiness lead to a need to escape through self-destructive behaviors and addictions. It is "crunch time" for men today. Their personal isolation and dependency on women is greater than ever, while women's anger, withdrawal from relationships with men, and defensive sense of being victimized also are at a peak.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Introduction, p. 1
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Women , Men , Behavior , Sense

“It would be pleasant to believe that the age of pessimism is now coming to a close, and that its end is marked by the same author who marked its beginning: Aldous Huxley. After thirty years of trying to find salvation in mysticism, and assimilating the Wisdom of the East, Huxley published in 1962 a new constructive utopia, The Island. In this beautiful book he created a grand synthesis between the science of the West and the Wisdom of the East, with the same exceptional intellectual power which he displayed in his Brave New World. (His gaminerie is also unimpaired; his close union of eschatology and scatology will not be to everybody's tastes.) But though his Utopia is constructive, it is not optimistic; in the end his island Utopia is destroyed by the sort of adolescent gangster nationalism which he knows so well, and describes only too convincingly.
This, in a nutshell, is the history of thought about the future since Victorian days. To sum up the situation, the sceptics and the pessimists have taken man into account as a whole; the optimists only as a producer and consumer of goods. The means of destruction have developed pari passu with the technology of production, while creative imagination has not kept pace with either.
The creative imagination I am talking of works on two levels. The first is the level of social engineering, the second is the level of vision.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

In my view both have lagged behind technology, especially in the highly advanced Western countries, and both constitute dangers.
Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 18-19

Wisdom , Books , Age , World

“I've just finished reading Shakespeare's Sonnets, that is, I've read and understood them for the first time. One passionate, desolate lament - immeasurable and inconsolable - for the waning, wasting and passing of beauty. At the same time there's something disturbingly un-Christian here - the utterly heathen, desperate keening of the dirges, the grisly dances of death, danses macabres, in which death is nothing but the end, finality - destruction, not transition.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 38 Diaries 1951

Death , Beauty , Passion , Time

“The destruction of the past, or rather of the social mechanisms that link one's contemporary experience to that of earlier generations, is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century.”

Eric Hobsbawm book The Age of Extremes

Introduction, The Century: A Bird's Eye View
The Age of Extremes (1992)

Past

“Whether in number theory, or space-time cosmology, Gödel’s method was to advance the formalization of the system under consideration and then test it to destruction upon the ‘strange loops’ it generated (paradoxes of self-reference and time-travel). In each case, the system was shown to permit cases that it could not consistently absorb, opening it to an interminable process of revision, or technical improvement. It thus defined dynamic intelligence, or the logic of evolutionary imperfection, with an adequacy that was both sufficient and necessarily inconclusive. What it did not do was trash the very possibility of arithmetic, mathematical logic, or cosmic history — except insofar as these were falsely identified with idols of finality or closure.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

"A Republic, If You Can Keep It" https://web.archive.org/web/20140327090001/http://www.thatsmags.com/shanghai/articles/12321 (2013)

Travel , History , Intelligence , Mathematics

“Almost all medieval Muslim historians credit their heroes with desecration of Hindu idols and/or destruction of Hindu temples. The picture that emerges has the following components, depending upon whether the iconoclast was in a hurry on account of Hindu resistance or did his work at leisure after a decisive victory:
1. The idols were mutilated or smashed or burnt or melted down if they were made of precious metals.
2. Sculptures in relief on walls and pillars were disfigured or scraped away or torn down.
3. Idols of stone and inferior metals or their pieces were taken away, sometimes by cartloads, to be thrown down before the main mosque in (a) the metropolis of the ruling Muslim sultan and (b) the holy cities of Islam, particularly Mecca, Medina and Baghdad.
4. There were instances of idols being turned into lavatory seats or handed over to butchers to be used as weights while selling meat.
5. Brahmin priests and other holy men in and around the temple were molested or murdered.
6. Sacred vessels and scriptures used in worship were defiled and scattered or burnt.
7. Temples were damaged or despoiled or demolished or burnt down or converted into mosques with some structural alterations or entire mosques were raised on the same sites mostly with temple materials.
8. Cows were slaughtered on the temple sites so that Hindus could not use them again.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Men , Decision , Victory , Dependency

“What makes you think human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. Human beings never think for themselves, they find it too uncomfortable. For the most part, members of our species simply repeat what they are told-and become upset if they are exposed to any different view. The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion. Next question.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

The Lost World (1995)

Food , Behavior , Question , Thinking

“The usual thing — the statistically normal thing — is for the speaker to tell the graduating class that they are going out into a world torn by dissent, racked by problems of unprecedented knottiness and difficulty, and headed for the abyss of destruction unless the graduating class shoulders its burden and does something splendid to put everything right. The speaker generally admits that he is at the end of his tether: he is old, and broken on the wheel of Fate; his decrepitude and his wounds have been received in this great battle with the world's problems. Nothing — absolutely nothing — is to be expected of him in the future. From his failing hands he throws the torch; he plants the task of setting the world right square on the graduating class. He says that he does it with confidence. But he is usually so gloomy that one wonders how much his confidence is worth. Sometimes one gets the impression that immediately after Convocation he is going home to die.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

What Will the Age of Aquarius Bring
One-Half of Robertson Davies (1977)

Fate , World , Home , Confidence

“The modern food and drug industry has converted a significant portion of the world's people to a new religion—a massive cult of pleasure seekers who consume coffee, cigarettes, soft drinks, candy, chocolate, alcohol, processed foods, fast foods, and concentrated dairy fat (cheese) in a self-indulgent orgy of destructive behavior. When the inevitable results of such bad habits appear—pain, suffering, sickness, and disease—the addicted cult members drag themselves to physicians and demand drugs to alleviate their pain, mask their symptoms, and cure their diseases. These revelers become so drunk on their addictive behavior and the accompanying addictive thinking that they can no longer tell the difference between health and health care.”

Joel Fuhrman book Eat to Live

Eat to Live https://books.google.it/books?id=gUy8CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2011), Ch. 6.

Pain , People , Health , Alcohol

“The scholars who understand it hesitate to speak out boldly for fear people will not understand. The people, who understand it quite easily, also fear to speak out while they wait for the scholars to speak out first. The difference between our present situation and that of the story is that it is not the emperor but the people who are periodically made to go naked and hungry and insecure and discontented - a ready prey to less timid organizers of discontent for the destruction of the civilization.”

Abba Lerner (1903–1982) American economist

(1951, pg.16) http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=174849

People , Fear , Understanding , Waiting

“From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races. Mahmoud Ghazni was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou: Histoire de l' Inde

God , War , Faith , History

“There are cases where examinations are admitted, namely, before the coroner, and before magistrates in cases of felony. That appears to me to go rather in support of the general rule than in destruction of it. Every exception that can be accounted for is so much a confirmation of the rule that it has become a maxim, Exceptio probat regulam.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

The King v. Inhabitants of Eriswell (1790), 3 T. R. 722.

Support , Appearance

“If we want to save the planet earth, to save life and humanity, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system. Unless we put an end to the capitalist system, it is impossible to imagine that there will be equality and justice on this planet earth. This is why I believe that it is important to put an end to the exploitation of human beings and to the pillage of natural resources, to put an end to destructive wars for markets and raw materials, to the plundering of energy, particularly fossil fuels, to the excessive consumption of goods and to the accumulation of waste. The capitalist system only allows us to heap up waste. I would like to propose that the trillions of money earmarked for war should be channelled to make good the damage to the environment, to make reparations to the earth.”

Evo Morales (1959) Bolivian politician

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1246-june-2008/material-world-evo-moralesa-call-socialism

Life , Money , War , Justice

“Bill Clinton is like a lot of white politicians. They eat soul food, they party with black women, they play the saxophone, but when it comes to domestic and foreign policy, they make the same decisions that are destructive to African people in this country and throughout the world.”

Sister Souljah (1964) American hip hop-generation author, activist, recording artist, and film producer

The Today show (16 June 1992)

Women , People , World , Food

“The tragic destruction of the Gana and Gwi Bushmen reaches into the very roots of humanity and touches not only every human being alive today, but the generations yet to be born. The Gana and Gwi call themselves ’first people of the Kalahari', they might as well say, ’first people of the world'. They have been here longer than any of us. They are the last survivors of the world's first modern humans. It is not up to the Botswana government to wipe them out of history, with nothing more than an arbitrary and cruel presidential directive in favour of just more wealth for the country's elite – and of course the fantastically rich owners of De Beers. We will fight for the Bushmen's right to survive however long it takes. If they lose, then we will make certain that the crimes which brought their end are not expunged, but written large into history. Twenty-first century governments can no longer destroy indigenous tribes with impunity.”

Stephen Corry (1951) British anthropologist and activist

Massive assault on Bushman rights http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/1161, Survival International 12 September 2005

People , World , History , Beer

“That’s behind me. Same as with everything else in my life, though, I approached what I learned with eyes and ears half-closed. It’s only now I realise how dangerous and destructive Christian culture has become. If there was ever any love in it, it’s been bled out. Three major religions preach Holy War: Shintoism, Islam, and Christianity. Christianity is the only one hypocritical enough simultaneously to enjoin its followers to turn the other cheek and suffer fools gladly and the rest of it. Look at the record. Germany was a Christian country almost exactly one hundred times as long as it was Nazi. Did the Nazis undo in twelve years all the church had done in twelve centuries? No, they built on it. Hitler was a baptised Catholic and never excommunicated. When he was enlisting the support of the bishops in 1933 he promised to do nothing to the Jews that the church had not already, and kept his promise.”

John Brunner book The Stone That Never Came Down

Source: The Stone That Never Came Down (1973), Chapter 16 (p. 124)

Love , Life , War , Religion

“Tibet preserved as best as it could, what India was no longer in a position to do. For example, 4000 books belonging to the Sanskrit, Pali and Prakrit literature were translated into Tibetan language. Today, about 3800 of them are no longer even known in India. They were so completely destroyed. The work of destruction was so complete. Today much of old India is found in neighbouring countries like Tibet and Siam and Cambodia; and India's old past history cannot be reconstructed except with their aid.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Books , History , Literature , Past

“(On her role in The Locket) My character was the greatest challenge I ever had – a destructive young woman who's a kleptomaniac. The form of the film – flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks – was criticised by some reviewers of the time as too confusing. Today, though, its style is highly regarded by film historians... Many movie fans seem to remember me best from the Dr. Kildare series but, first and foremost, I remember The Locket.”

Laraine Day (1920–2007) American actress

The Independent, Obituaries, Laraine Day, November 13, 2007.

Time

“Passion is destructive; if it does not destroy, it dies.”

W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1943)

Passion

“Of course, we're there because of weapons of mass destruction that do not exist.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, WAR

“[C]oercive human interactions [are] destructive, even where the coercion is urged from honorable motives, and advocates confining the use of physical force in human relations to instances of the administration of justice understood as the protection and maintenance of individual (negative) human rights.”

Tibor R. Machan (1939–2016) Hungarian-American philosopher

Source: Private Rights and Public Illusions (1994), p. xvi

Justice , Motivation

“Poets are supremely interested in what language can't do, in order to gesture outside, they use language in a way that flirts with its destruction.”

Don McKay (1942) Canadian poet

Baler Twine

Way

“The movie, as everyone knows, is about a man who finds himself living the same day over and over and over again. He is the only person in his world who knows this is happening, and after going through periods of dismay and bitterness, revolt and despair, suicidal self-destruction and cynical recklessness, he begins to do something that is alien to his nature. He begins to learn.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-groundhog-day-1993 of Groundhog Day
Reviews, Four star reviews

World , Nature , Suicide , Learning

“Out of a desire that there may be a progress in these directions, with all that such progress means, this great Society continues its efforts. It recognizes that whoever has an evil tongue cannot have a pure mind. We read that 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh'. This is a truth which is worthy of much thought. He who gives license to his tongue only discloses the contents of his own mind. By the excess of his words he proclaims his lack of discipline. By his very violence he shows his weakness. The youth or man who by disregarding this principle thinks he is displaying his determination and resolution and emphasizing his statements is in reality only revealing an intellectual poverty, a deficiency in self-control and self-respect, a want of accurate thinking and of spiritual insight, which cannot come save from a reverence for the truth. There are no human actions which are unimportant, none to which we can be indifferent. All of them lead either towards destruction and death, or towards construction and life.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life , Death , Truth , Youth

“Our demise may instead result from the habitat destruction that ensues when the AI begins massive global construction projects using nanotech factories and assemblers—construction projects which quickly, perhaps within days or weeks, tile all of the Earth’s surface with solar panels, nuclear reactors, supercomputing facilities with protruding cooling towers, space rocket launchers, or other installations whereby the AI intends to maximize the long-term cumulative realization of its values. Human brains, if they contain information relevant to the AI’s goals, could be disassembled and scanned, and the extracted data transferred to some more efficient and secure storage format.”

Nick Bostrom book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies

Source: Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014), Ch. 6

“Hatred of the Jews has changed form but it still remains. If not racial superiority, then religious superiority is the order of the day. The world's indifference in light of this hatred has also remained. The world has very quickly become accustomed to hearing declarations only 65 years after the Holocaust, declarations of intent to annihilate millions of Jews – and the world continues to act in the same manner. The hesitancy of enlightened countries to act against extreme regimes which threaten us and threaten world peace – this too has not changed. The only thing that has truly changed is our ability and our determination to act to defend ourselves and prevent another Holocaust. This truth is a source of heavy and constant responsibility – to ensure by any means necessary the future and security of the State of Israel against those who seek our destruction. This is the last will and testament of the six million, our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust and it is our duty – and we will carry it out.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the opening of the permanent exhibition in Block 27 at Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 2013 http://www.netanyahu.org.il/en/news/538-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-s-speech-at-the-opening-of-the-permanent-exhibition-in-block-27-at-auschwitz-birkenau.
2010s, 2013

Truth , World , Peace , Sister

““I should have killed or confused you when I had the chance. You are destruction. You are corrosion. You are death to order. Family, cast him out before he infects the rest of us as he has these.”
“You may speak in your own defense, Tom,” said Aunt Agatha.
“She’s right, though; I embody those things.” He held out his hands, open. “I bring you change.””

Nina Kiriki Hoffman (1955) American writer

Source: The Thread That Binds the Bones (1993), Chapter 21 (p. 281)

Death , Family , Change , Chance

“The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it.”

Pliny the Elder book Natural History

Book II, sec. 1.
Naturalis Historia

World , Time

“A great and gentle radiance has left our scene with the death of Rabbi Maurice Davis. He was one of the people who first brought me into the circle of those devoted to helping cult victims. His compassion and vision were inspiring. He saw clearly the dangers which awaited those who lost their free will to totalism. I remember vividly one of my early contacts with Rabbi Davis, when an attorney for a destructive group was trying to get him to explain what he had said to a member of that group when she returned briefly to her family and agreed to speak with him. "I prayed with her," he said. "I prayed that she remember the teachings of her youth and her love for her family." The lawyer for the group was taken aback. "Is that all you did?", he said. "Was that all it was.'?…. Yes," Rabbi Davis answered, "the rest was up to her." It was that blend of hope, vision, and respect for the judgment of others that became the cornerstone of the American Family Foundation's ideals. We owe much to Rabbi Davis and we honor him with our continued commitment.”

Maurice Davis (1921–1993) American rabbi

In Memoriam - Rabbi Maurice Davis: Human Rights Champion http://www.whyaretheydead.net/misc/Factnet/CO0194.TXT, The Cult Observer, Vol. 11 No. 1 1994., Herbert L. Rosedale, President, American Family Foundation.
About

Love , Death , People , Youth

“In fact, all the additional knowledge gained by an irrationally constituted society may but enlarge and enhance the powers of death and destruction.”

Paul A. Baran (1909–1964) American Marxist economist

Source: The Political Economy Of Growth (1957), Chapter Eight, The Steep Ascent, p. 299

Death , Knowledge

“These people are not interested in creative destruction, they are only interested in destruction. That leads to gas chambers. That leads to, uh, guillotines. That leads to millions dead. That leads to Mao. That leads to totalitarianism. Every. Single. Time.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

The Glenn Beck Program
Radio
Premiere Radio Networks
2011-10-04
Beck: Occupy Wall Street Is "Only Interested In Destruction," Which "Leads To Gas Chambers," "Guillotines," "Mao"
Media Matters for America
2011-10-04
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201110040017
2011-08-13
regarding Occupy Wall Street protests
2010s, 2011

People , Time , Dead

“I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

As quoted in "Castro Wanted a Nuclear Strike" in The New York Times (October 23, 1992)

People , World , Victory

“I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile.
Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments:1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist.
2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient.
Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior.
Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficiency in the market.
The trick is knowing whether you’re gonna get 1 or 2 above. They’re complete opposites!”

Andrew Gelman (1965) American mathematician

“One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society” http://andrewgelman.com/2011/07/19/one_of_the_easi/ (19 July 2011)

People , School , Behavior , Thinking

“Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind….. The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive, the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph. The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore but watch and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope nor fear, but be sure of God's purpose and thy will to accomplish.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August, 1917
India's Rebirth

God , Pain , Fear , Hope

“Respecting the cosmogony of the Egyptian priests, we gather much information from writers of the Grecian sects, who borrowed almost all their tenets from Egypt, and amongst others that of the former successive destruction and renovation of the world.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.2, p. 10
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

World , Success

“A single experience of this awful convulsion of the elements suffices to fasten the memory of its occurrence upon the mind with such a dreadful force that no effort can efface the remembrance of it. The destructive violence of this storm exceeds in its power, fierceness, and grandeur all other phenomena of the atmosphere.”

John Park Finley (1854–1943) American meteorologist

Tornadoes, 1887.

Effort , Memory

“["Do you see a tie in between being a vegetarian and helping the environment?"] All of our cleaning products, lotions, shampoos, and toothpaste are organic and non-chemical, non-animal tested. You don’t have to be a vegetarian to be against animal testing, but it goes hand in hand. You know the rainforest that’s cut down or the land that’s cleared for cattle and factory farm animals, the destruction of the rain forest specifically for beef cattle is mind boggling to the both of us that they would destroy a very precious eco system just so cows have a place to eat grass. The people in South America don’t even really get to eat that beef but the land is being destroyed for it, and definitely the methane that’s produced from the cows and pigs. It’s definitely contributing to global warming. It’s hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that their cheeseburger is making global warming worse. I think it’s an important message for people to get, but it’s hard for people to put the two together and make the connection.”

Susie Feldman (1982) American actress

"Watch “The Two Coreys” this Sunday", interview with PETA (27 July 2007) https://www.peta.org/blog/watch-two-coreys-sunday/.

People , Thinking , Grass , Help

“Nature knows no tragedies or catastrophes. It knows no good or evil. It knows only creation and destruction. and one can never truly be happy and free, in the way we were as children before learning of our mortality, without at some point confronting our destruction. And all we can ask for, all we can hope for, all we can beseech God for, is to win a few battles in a war we will ultimately lose.”

Neil Strauss book Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life (2009)

God , War , Children , Hope

“Upheaval after upheaval has reminded up that modern man is traveling along the road called hate, in a journey that will bring us to destruction and damnation. Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, the command to love one's enemy is an absolute necessity for our survival. Love even for enemies is the key to the solution of the problems of our world.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

Love , Hate , World , Travel

“Here is my proposal. Israel should announce an immediate unilateral cessation in retaliation against terrorist attacks. This moratorium would be in effect for a short period, say four or five days, to give the Palestinian leadership an opportunity to respond to the new policy. It would also make it clear to the world that Israel is taking an important step in ending what has become a cycle of violence. Following the end of the moratorium, Israel would institute the following new policy if Palestinian terrorism were to resume. It will announce precisely what it will do in response to the next act of terrorism. For example, it could announce the first act of terrorism following the moratorium will result in the destruction of a small village which has been used as a base for terrorist operations. The residents would be given 24 hours to leave, and then troops will come in and bulldoze all of the buildings.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

"New response to Palestinian terrorism", The Jerusalem Post, 2002-03-11

World

“The anti‐Semite understands nothing about modern society. He would be incapable of conceiving of a constructive plan; his action cannot reach the level of the methodical; it remains on the ground of passion. To a long‐term enterprise he prefers an explosion of rage analogous to the running amuck of the Malays. His intellectual activity is confined to interpretation; he seeks in historical events the signs of the presence of an evil power. Out of this spring those childish and elaborate fabrications which give him his resemblance to the extreme paranoiacs. In addition, anti‐Semitism channels evolutionary drives toward the destruction of certain men, not of institutions. An anti‐Semitic mob will consider it has done enough when it has massacred some Jews and burned a few synagogues. It represents, therefore, a safety valve for the owning classes, who encourage it and thus substitute for a dangerous hate against their regime a beneficent hate against particular people. Above all this naive dualism is eminently reassuring to he anti‐Semite himself. If all he has to do is to remove Evil, that means that the Good is already given. He has no need to seek it in anguish, to invent it, to scrutinize it patiently when he has found it, to prove it in action, to verify it by its consequences, or, finally, to shoulder he responsibilities of the moral choice be has made. It is not by chance that the great outbursts of anti‐Semitic rage conceal a basic optimism. The anti‐Semite as cast his lot for Evil so as not to have to cast his lot for Good. The more one is absorbed in fighting Evil, he less one is tempted to place the Good in question. One does not need to talk about it, yet it is always understood in the discourse of the anti‐Semite and it remains understood in his thought. When he has fulfilled his mission as holy destroyer, the Lost Paradise will reconstitute itself. For the moment so many tasks confront the anti‐Semite that he does not have time to think about it. He is in the breach, fighting, and each of his outbursts of rage is a pretext to avoid the anguished search for the Good.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Anti-Semite and Jew

Pages 31-32
Anti-Semite and Jew (1945)

Men , Hate , People , Search

“Let's face it, man is destroying himself. He's killing himself with his pollution and with his destructive nature, and if God doesn't intervene and stop it, man would eventually wipe himself off the map!”

David Berg (1919–1994) Children of God founder

A More Sure Word of Prophecy (2 Peter 1:19)

God , Nature

“The Socialistic schools, prescinding from the barbarous multitudes which follow them, and considered in their doctors and masters, are far superior to the Liberal school, just because they go straight to all the great problems and questions, and because they always propose a peremptory and decisive solution. Socialism is strong, only because it is a theology; and it is destructive, only because it is a satanic theology. The Socialistic schools, in as much as they are theological, will prevail over the Liberal school, in as much as it is anti-theological and sceptical; and inasmuch as they are satanic, they will succumb before the Catholic school, which is at once theological and divine. Their instincts must be in accord with our assertions, if we consider that they treasure up their hatred for Catholicism, while they have only contempt for Liberalism.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

School , Question , Problem , Decision

“Only within the 20th Century has biological thought been focused on ecology, or the relation of the living creature to its environment. Awareness of ecological relationships is — or should be — the basis of modern conservation programs, for it is useless to attempt to preserve a living species unless the kind of land or water it requires is also preserved. So delicately interwoven are the relationships that when we disturb one thread of the community fabric we alter it all — perhaps almost imperceptibly, perhaps so drastically that destruction follows.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

"Essay on the Biological Sciences" in Good Reading (1958)

Communication , Water

“In [The New Poetry] I had attacked the British poets' nervous preference for gentility above all else, and their avoidance of the uncomfortable, destructive truths both of the inner life and of the present time.”

Al Alvarez (1929–2019) English poet, novelist, essayist and critic

Page 25.
The Savage God (1971)

Life , Truth , Time

“These days, to prevent terrorist attacks, strict security measures are implemented in airports and other establishments. While such measures are necessary for our physical safety, they are not a final solution. In fact, there is one explosive in particular that is the most destructive of all. No machine can detect it. It is the hatred, loathing and vengeance found in the human mind.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Compassion: The Only Way to Peace (2007)

“There has been the assumption that men are finite spirits. They are, that is to say, not only animals with a brief terrestrial existence, but in them is an element which comes from, and belongs to, the spiritual world. This world we postulate to be the world of eternal reality, of God; and we assume that in it whatever is of God, the things that are good, beautiful and true, will exist for ever with Him. We have then, to justify our belief that, because such God-like qualities exist in human personality, that personality will survive the destruction of the body.”

Ernest Barnes (1874–1953) English mathematician and clergyman

p, 125
Spiritualism and the Christian Faith (1918)

Men , God , World , Beauty

“Our cause is just, and it continues. Our discoveries in Afghanistan confirmed our worst fears, and showed us the true scope of the task ahead. We have seen the depth of our enemies' hatred in videos, where they laugh about the loss of innocent life. And the depth of their hatred is equaled by the madness of the destruction they design. We have found diagrams of American nuclear power plants and public water facilities, detailed instructions for making chemical weapons, surveillance maps of American cities, and thorough descriptions of landmarks in America and throughout the world.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Life , World , Fear , Water

“Their deceitful role in Ayodhya – which in the end harmed their clients more than anyone else – was just symptomatic. For fifty years this bunch has been suppressing facts and inventing lies. How concerned they pretend to be today about that objective of the ICHR – to promote objective and rational research into events of our past! How does this concern square with the guidelines issued by their West Bengal government in 1989 which Outlook itself had quoted – ‘Muslim rule should never attract any criticism. Destruction of temples by Muslim rulers and invaders should not be mentioned?’ But incorporating their wholesale fabrications of the destruction of Buddhist viharas, about the non-existent ‘Aryan invasion’, that is mandatory – to question them is to be communal, chauvinist! The capture of institutions like the ICHR has been bad enough, but in the end it has been a device. The major crime of these ‘historians’ has been this partisanship: suppresso veri, suggesto falsi.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud

Quotes , Communication , Question , Past

“The most sensible thing seems to be to forget our negativity, to discard it as a fantasy of youth. And yet the world gets worse, the inequalities become more strident, the self-destruction of humanity seems to come closer. So perhaps we should not abandon our negativity but, on the contrary, try to theorise the world from the perspective of the scream.”

John Holloway book Change the World Without Taking Power

Change the World Without Taking Power (2002)

Youth , World , Forgetting

“No honest historian should seek to hide, and no Musalman acquainted with his faith will try to justify, the wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army. Contemporary as well as later historians do not attempt to veil the nefarious acts but relate them with pride.”

Mohammad Habib (1895–1971) Indian historian

Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period: Collected Works of Professor Mohammad Habib, Volume 2; p. 78
Mohammed Habib, quoted in Elst, K. 2002, Ayodhya: the case against the temple. Ch.10.

Faith

“And he knows the consequences: “War ruins everything, even the bonds between brothers. War is irrational; its only plan is to bring destruction: It seeks to grow by destroying.””

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Pope Francis, Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

War

“Hobbes’s understanding of the dangers of anarchy resonates powerfully today. Liberal thinkers still see the unchecked power of the state as the chief danger to human freedom. Hobbes knew better: freedom’s worst enemy is anarchy, which is at its most destructive when it is a battleground of rival faiths. The sectarian death squads roaming Baghdad show that fundamentalism is itself a type of anarchy in which each prophet claims divine authority to rule. In well-governed societies, the power of faith is curbed. The state and the churches temper the claims of revelation and enforce peace. Where this kind is impossible, tyranny is better than being ruled by warring prophets. Hobbes is a more reliable guide to the present than the liberal thinkers who followed. Yet his view of human beings was too simple, and overly rationalistic. Assuming that humans dread violent death more than anything, he left out the most intractable sources of conflict. It is not always because human beings act irrationally that they fail to achieve peace. Sometimes it is because they do not want peace. They may want the victory of the One True Faith – whether a traditional religion or a secular successor such as communism, democracy or universal human rights. Or – like the young people who joined far-Left terrorist groups in the 1970s, another generation of which is now joining Islamist networks – they may find in war a purpose that is lacking in peace. Nothing is more human than the readiness to kill and die in order to secure a meaning in life.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 262-3)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Life , Death , War , People

“Day after day gasped away, slowly seep hours when fettered or immured, only at times does imagination scale the palisades that the spirit of chaos and confusion, the spirit of reactionary bombast, has set up around us - dreams, dreams of endless, destructive hate! Mists of hate, beclouding the burning brain!”

George Grosz (1893–1959) German artist

Letter to Otto Schmalhausen, 4 April, 1917 (Briefe, p. 49); as quoted in 'Portfolios', Alexander Dückers; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, p. 89 - note 62
George Grosz was early January 1917 recalled into the German army, only to be transferred shortly afterward to Gorden mental hospital near Brandenburg. From there he wrote this letter. At the end of April 1917 he was sent home, and on 20 May he was discharged on grounds of 'permanent unfitness for duty'

Hate , Dreams , Imagination , Time

“Statesmen and philosophers repeatedly have warned that some values - freedom, honour, self-respect - are higher than peace or life itself. This may be true. Certainly, very many would hold that the loss of human dignity and self-respect, the chains of enslavement, are too high a price even for peace. But the horrible realities of modern warfare scarcely afford even this fatal choice. There is only suicidal escape, not freedom, in the death and destruction of atomic war. This is mankind's great dilemma. The well-being and the hopes of the peoples of the world can never be served until peace - as well as freedom, honour and self-respect - is secure.”

Ralph Bunche (1904–1971) American diplomat

Some Reflections on Peace in Our Time (1950)

Life , Death , War , People

“Working together, we can build a world in which the rule of law — not the rule of force — governs relations between states. A world in which leaders respect the rights of their people, and nations seek peace, not destruction or domination. And neither we nor anyone else should live in fear ever again.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Twenty Year Vision for America (2004)

People , World , Fear , Peace

“Before people crow about the absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction, I suggest they wait a bit.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister's monthly press conference, April 2003 http://web.archive.org/20030511155256/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page3535.asp, Prime Minister's website.
28 April 2003.
2000s

People , Waiting

“It must be so — Plato, thou reasonest well!
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire,
This longing after immortality?
Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror,
O falling into nought? Why shrinks the soul
Back on herself, and startles at destruction?
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us;
'Tis heaven itself, that points out an hereafter,
And intimates eternity to man.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act V, scene i.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Secret , Hope , Soul

“…against which we should direct all our force, the navy of France: in the destruction of her marine we might see some hope of recovering America; but while our army remained in that country, we were to expect nothing from its operations. On the continent of Europe, it might be employed; there we might contend with France, in a manner that would make her feel that her own consequence was at stake. But the old Whig system of alliances on the continent had been given up, and we were left to fight all our battles by ourselves. If these alliances were renewed, France might then be taught, that rashness, not prudence, had made her enter into the American confederacy…America…might be won in Europe, while England might be ruined in America.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (14 December 1778), reprinted in the The Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to the Year 1803. Vol. XX (London: 1814), p. 79.
1770s

Hope , Feeling , Fight , Country

“Tragedy speaks not of secular dilemmas which may be resolved by rational innovation, but of the unalterable bias toward inhumanity and destruction in the drift of the world.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. VIII (p. 291).

World

“Equally important to not appearing "trigger-happy" is not to appear prone to either accidents or miscalculations. Who wants to live in the 1960's and 1970's in the same world with a hostile strategic force that might inadvertently start a war? Most people are not even willing to live with a friendly strategic force that may not be reliably controlled. The worst way for a country to start a war is to do it accidentally, without any preparations. That might initiate an all- out "slugging match" in which only the most alert portion of the forces gets off in the early phase. Both sides are thus likely to be clobbered," both because the initial blow was not large enough to be decisive and because the war plans are likely to be inappropriate. To repeat: On all these questions of accident, miscalculation, unauthorized behavior, trigger-happy postures, and excessive destructiveness, we must satisfy ourselves and our allies, the neutrals, and, strangely important, our potential enemies. Since it is almost inevitable that the future will see more discussion of these questions, i will be important for us not only to have made satisfactory preparations, but also to have prepared a satisfactory story. Unless every-body concerned, both laymen and experts, develops a satisfactory image of strategic forces as contributing more to security than insecurity it is most improbable that the required budgets, alliances, and intellectual efforts will have the necessary support. To the extent that people worry about our strategic forces as themselves exacerbating or creating security problems, or confuse symptoms with the disease, we may anticipate a growing rejection of military preparedness as an essential element in the solution to our security problem and a turning to other approaches not as a complement and supplement but as an alternative. In particular, we are likely to suffer from the same movement toward "responsible" budgets pacifism, and unilateral and universal disarmament that swept through England in the 1920's and 1930's. The effect then was that England prematurely disarmed herself to such an extent that she first almost lost her voice in world affairs, and later her independence in a war that was caused as much by English weakness as by anything else.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Hostility , War , People , World

“As far as France is concerned, we are ready to envisage everything that can be done under UNSCR 1441. […] But I repeat that every possibility offered by the present resolution must be explored, that there are a lot of them and they still leave us with a lot of leeway when it comes to ways of achieving the objective of eliminating any weapons of mass destruction which may exist in Iraq. I'd like nevertheless to note that, as things stand at the moment, I have, to my knowledge, no indisputable proof in this sphere.”

Jacques Chirac (1932–2019) 22nd President of France

Source: http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/actu/bulletin.gb.asp?liste=20030211.gb.html Statement made during a joint press conference, Paris, February 10 2003
Diplomacy with Iraq 2000s

Way , Knowledge

“Our first necessity, if India is to survive and do her appointed work in the world, is that the youth of India should learn to think,—to think on all subjects, to think independently, fruitfully, going to the heart of things, not stopped by their surface, free of prejudgments, shearing sophism and prejudice asunder as with a sharp sword, smiting down obscurantism of all kinds as with the mace of Bhima. (…) When there is destruction, it is the form that perishes, not the spirit—for the world and its ways are forms of one Truth which appears in this material world in ever new bodies…. In India, the chosen land, [that Truth] is preserved; in the soul of India it sleeps expectant on that soul's awakening, the soul of India leonine, luminous, locked in the closed petals of the ancient lotus of love, strength and wisdom, not in her weak, soiled, transient and miserable externals. India alone can build the future of mankind. (…) Ancient or pre-Buddhistic Hinduism sought Him both in the world and outside it; it took its stand on the strength and beauty and joy of the Veda, unlike modern or post-Buddhistic Hinduism which is oppressed with Buddha's sense of universal sorrow and Shankara's sense of universal illusion,—Shankara who was the better able to destroy Buddhism because he was himself half a Buddhist. Ancient Hinduism aimed socially at our fulfilment in God in life, modern Hinduism at the escape from life to God. The more modern ideal is fruitful of a noble and ascetic spirituality, but has a chilling and hostile effect on social soundness and development; social life under its shadow stagnates for want of belief and delight, sraddha and ananda. If we are to make our society perfect and the nation is to live again, then we must revert to the earlier and fuller truth.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

1910-1912
India's Rebirth

Love , Life , Wisdom , God

“I am not sure it can ever be used… I don't think we ought to use this thing unless we absolutely have to. It is a terrible thing to order the use of something that is so terribly destructive, destructive beyond anything we have ever had. You have got to understand that this isn’t a military weapon. It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses. So we have got to treat this differently from rifles and cannon and ordinary things like that.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Regarding nuclear weapons, as quoted in Harry S. Truman: A Life https://books.google.com/books?id=7UXSMj3OF4oC&pg=PA344&lpg=PA344&dq=%22It+is+used+to+wipe+out+women+and+children+and+unarmed+people,+and+not+for+military+uses.+So+we+have+got+to+treat+this+differently+from+rifles+and+cannon+and+ordinary+things+like+that.%E2%80%9D&source=bl&ots=xoePU9q9JU&sig=Lxl_x7toU7Y3oD_zKKSZQ2zD29k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCgQ6AEwA2oVChMIw7D1wb6dxwIVSjI-Ch3ibAd2#v=onepage&q=%22It%20is%20used%20to%20wipe%20out%20women%20and%20children%20and%20unarmed%20people%2C%20and%20not%20for%20military%20uses.%20So%20we%20have%20got%20to%20treat%20this%20differently%20from%20rifles%20and%20cannon%20and%20ordinary%20things%20like%20that.%E2%80%9D&f=false, by Robert H. Ferrell, p. 344

Women , Children , People , Understanding

“I don't have a specific picture in my mind's eye. I want to end up with a picture that I haven't planned. This method of arbitrary choice, chance, inspiration and destruction may produce a specific type of picture, but it never produces a predetermined picture. Each picture has to evolve out of a painterly or visual logic: it has to emerge as if inevitably. And by not planning the outcome, I hope to achieve the same coherence and objectivity that a random slice of nature (or a ready-made) always possesses. Of course, this is also a method of bringing in unconscious processes, as far as possible. I just want to get something more interesting out of it than those things that I can think out for myself.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from an interview with Sabine Schütz, 1990; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Other subjects' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/other-aspects-6
1990's

Hope , Nature , Thinking , Chance