Quotes about destruction
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“[A] danger, in its ultimate results scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine...distracts that country [Ireland]. A portion of its population is attempting to sever the constitutional tie which unites it to Great Britain in that bond which has favoured the power and prosperity of both. It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of this nation depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the United Kingdom and its widespread dependencies.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Election address; letter to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Marlborough (8 March 1880), quoted in The Times (9 March 1880), p. 8

Men, Hope, Feeling, Light

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Men, War, People, Making love

“I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1266878938049101826, (30 May 2020)

Pain, Justice, Way, Sense

“The world's problems are pressing in on us all. The scale and impact of human activities now affects a great portion of the global resources important to human welfare. These activities are putting growing, often destructive pressure on the global environment, pressure that appears likely to increase as human numbers swell toward the doubling of the world's population that evidently lies ahead. These pressures can spawn or aggravate conflict that. in a world with so much destructive weaponry, generates important national security problems. Great changes are necessary to help ensure a humane future for the generations to come.
Most of the world's scientific community and many people in the environmental movement are aware of the gravity of the problems. Yet despite sober warnings from these and other groups, in both the industrial and the developing world, re- medial efforts frequently appear powerless and ineffectual. The scientific community has not taken a sustained, powerful role in the public arena where this great cluster of issues is debated and where the problems must be resolved. There is much more that our community can contribute to assessment, warning, and proposals for new patterns of behavior.”

Henry Way Kendall (1926–1999) American physicist

Source: A Distant Light : Scientists and Public Policy (2000), Introduction, p. 1

People, World, Behavior, Communication

“War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

As quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12233, Ch. 25 : The Soldier and the Man, p. 481 Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Life, War, Secret, Business

“The Bible as a whole is not written systematically, however, but is a collection of books of history, historical metaphor, biography, law and poetry, all leading into one another without an apparent plan. The Books of the Prophets include both historical narrative and an anthology of Divine revelations. Those of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings tell the history of the Jewish people from Joshua’s conquest of the Holy Land to the destruction of the first temple by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 586 B.C. These Hebrew prophets were the conscience of the people; for in the face of powerful priests and raving multitudes they spoke up with one chief purpose in mind—to teach man “to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.””

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

(Micah 6: 8). Isaiah writes with dignity and power, condemning social systems which forget the needs of the poor. Amos, a “herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit” (Amos, 7: 14), declared God’s judgment upon the nations and upon Israel, also foretelling Israel’s restoration. Jeremiah dedicated himself to God, but was despised and persecuted by the people. He called for peace when nations prepared for war, and demanded an inward religion of sincerity at a time when priests were enforcing their orthodox codes.
The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963), Volume II

Love, God, People, Books

“For it may be very plausibly urged on their behalf, that it is impossible to extinguish evil until the origin thereof has been discovered and destroyed. This great river of human Time (rivers were expressly created to feed metaphors, allegories, and navigable canals) which comes flowing down thick with filth and blood from the immemorial past surely cannot be thoroughly cleansed by any purifying process applied to it here in the present for the pollution, if not in its very source (supposing it has a source), or deriving from unimaginable remotenesses of eternity indefinitely beyond its source, at any rate interfused with it countless ages back, and is perennial as the river itself. This immense poison-tree of Life, with its leaves of illusion, blossoms of delirium, apples of destruction, surely cannot be made wholesome and sweet by anything we may do to the branchlets and twigs on which, poor insects, we find ourselves crawling, or to the leaves and fruit on which we must fain feed; for the venom is drawn up in the sap by the taproots plunged in abysmal depths of the past. This toppling and sinking house wherein we dwell cannot be firmly re-established, save by re-establishing from its lowest foundation upwards.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

"The Speedy Extinction of Evil and Misery", part VIII, pp. 93–94
Essays and Phantasies (1881)

Life, Age, Tree, Evil

“Your personal brand when consciously built can be a force for good, or a force for destruction.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Personality

“Influence without control is a weapon of mass destruction.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

“You'll say I'm self-destructive —
I constructed all this tragedy.
Go tell them all it's all my fault
You'll tell them I was crazy.
And anyway it's over now
Nothing left to say.”

Alicia Witt (1975) American actress

"Anyway"
Lyrics, Alicia Witt (2009)

Self-confidence

“The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation, and awakened active antagonism. That the honourable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.”

Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910) England-born American physician, abolitionist, women's rights activist

p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=GHkIAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30 Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women (1895)

Women

“When we saw the most beautiful fishes of the sea, the dolphin and bonito, in pursuit of the flying fish, and when these forsook their native element to seek for shelter in air, the application to human nature was obvious. What empire is not like a tumultuous ocean, where the great in all the magnificence and pomp of power, continually persecute and contrive the destruction of the defenceless?”

Georg Forster book A Voyage Round the World

Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes.
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

Beauty, Nature, Fish, Flying

“[E]lections to the supreme power having upon some occasions produced the most destructive contentions, many states would take refuge from a return of the same calamities, in a rule of succession; and no rule presents itself so obvious, certain, and intelligible, as consanguinity of birth.”

William Paley (1743–1805) Christian apologist, natural theologian, utilitarian

Vol. II, Book VI, Ch. I.
The Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785)

Intelligence, Birth, Success

“You need to study history, Doctor. All great changes are based on pain and destruction.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 35

Pain, History, Study, Change

“The use of destructive, noisy machinery for recreational purposes must become anathema to humans, as unthinkable as eating one’s young.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Margarets (2007), Chapter 14, “I Am Margaret/On Earth” (p. 114)

“Real and major changes in religious or political power systems do not occur until substantial numbers of people realize the old systems are destructive, genocidal and beyond repair.”

David Lane (white nationalist) (1938–2007) American white supremacist, convicted felon

Revolution by Number

People, Change

“We have become aware of the responsibility for our attitude towards the dark pages in our history. We have understood that bad service is done to the nation by those who are impelling to renounce that past. Such attitude leads to a moral self-destruction.”

Aleksander Kwaśniewski (1954) Polish politician, president of Poland

"Speech at the Jedwabne Ceremony" http://www.dialog.org/hist/kwasniewski.html (10 July 2001)

History, Past

“We end up creating more demons, multiplying chaos and destruction, adding more to the original number that descended from heaven.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“I was filled with determination, to do my best to expose and destroy what i then knew to be a legalized infamy, responsible for a vast destruction of human life.”

Edmund Dene Morel (1873–1924) British politician (1873-1924)

King Leopold's ghost. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/kingleopoldsghost History of the CRA, 1904, FF.

Life

“The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Post-war years (1945–1955) Source: The Sinews of Peace https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1946/s460305a_e.htm speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.

Age, Science, Time

“All creative thought and creative action is strictly personal. A committee, any collective, cannot think. It cannot act creatively. It can only act destructively. It can exercise brute force.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

Leonard Read Journals, November 4, 1951 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1951/leonard-e-read-journal-november-1951/

Exercises, Thinking, Personality

“Freedom is the biggest myth ever created. It's a destructive, unachievable goal that has caused a great deal of pain. Very few people can handle freedom. A society is healthy and productive when it's under control.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 30

Pain, People, Freedom

“What is one man's safety is another man's destruction.”

Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) English trader, writer and journalist

Source: Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ch. 13, Wreck of a Spanish Ship.

“You cannot be destructive and be creative at the same time....”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA, (July 2010)

Time

“The fundamental law of life is the law of cause and effect and therefore we have to be harmless, because if we are destructive, we're destroying the equilibrium of everybody.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA, (July 2010)

Life, Law

“This century has seen world war for the first time. It has seen a world civilization threatened with self-destruction, not only through war but through the exploitation of all the kingdoms in nature...”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Introduction p. I - XII

War, World, Nature, Time

“In recent decades the effects of environmental change on insect populations has been the focus of my research. It is widely recognised that invasive alien species, climate change and habitat destruction are all major players in the declines of many insects. Ladybirds are no exception.”

Helen Roy (1969) British ecologist and entomologist

Source: Ladybirds: an interview with Helen Roy, Ecological Entomologist at the BRC https://www.nhbs.com/blog/ladybirds-helen-roy (14 May 2013)

Change

“We preach the Golden Rule with an enthusiasm that is well-nigh vehement, and then freckle the globe with huge murder-houses for the expeditious destruction of those who have as good a right to live as we have.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: " The Unconscious Holocaust https://archive.org/details/theunconsciousholocaust-jhowardmoore", Good Health: A Journal of Hygiene, Vol 32, Iss. 2, 1 Feb. 1897, p. 75

Housing

“Women should empower themselves while still remaining true to their marriage and husbands. If a marriage is stressful, emotionally destructive, I think we should be strong enough to walk away from such damaging unions.”

Omotola Jalade Ekeinde (1978) Nigerian actress and singer

https://naijagists.com/omotola-jalade-ekeinde-wisdom-quotes-top-20-motivational-quotes-sayings-omosexy/ Omotola Jalade Ekehinde speaking on Career.

Women, Marriage, Thinking, Strong

“Humanity is a moral disaster. There would have been much less destruction had we never evolved. The fewer humans there are in the future, the less destruction there will still be.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=false, 2015, p. 55 Source: Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)

Future

“I as President of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic in such a destructive situation made every possible effort to return the dialogue to normal and prevent an escalation of tension with Moldova.”

Vadim Krasnoselsky (1970) politician

Source: Vadim Krasnoselsky (2021) cited in " Commentary by Vadim Krasnoselsky regarding the next appeal to the President of the Republic of Moldova https://novostipmr.com/en/news/21-12-24/commentary-vadim-krasnoselsky-regarding-next-appeal-president" on Novosti Pridnestrovya, 24 December 2021.

Effort

“Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it's endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it's unendurable . . . then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Hays translation
Source: Meditations (c. AD 121–180), Book X, 3

“Technology is nature without the human being. It is abstract nature, reduced to itself, delivered over to itself, exalting and expressing itself on its own. It develops in such a way that all the virtualities and potentialities within it must be actualized, for them and for what they are, for their own sake, so that everything is done that can be done, that is to say, everything that nature can become. It is a matter of making gold, going to the moon, building self-guiding and self-monitoring missiles that can decide on the moment to self-destruction – and destroy us. Technology is alchemy; it is the self-fulfillment of nature in place of the self-fulfillment of the life that we are. It is barbarism, the new barbarism of our time, in place of culture. Inasmuch as it puts the prescriptions and regulations of life out of play, it is not simply barbarism in its most extreme and inhumane form that has ever been known – it is sheer madness.”

Michel Henry (1922–2002) French writer

Michel Henry, Barbarism, Continuum, 2012, p. 52
Books on Culture and Barbarism, Barbarism (1987)

Life, Way, Nature, Time

“It is time that we squarely face the fact that institutional schoolteaching is destructive to children. Nobody survives the seven-lesson curriculum completely unscathed, not even the instructors.”

John Taylor Gatto book Dumbing Us Down

Source: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (1992), p. 17

Children, Time

“I am opposed to it because I wish to see united at an important crisis of the world—a crisis that perhaps is nearer arriving than some of us suppose—because I wish to see a united people welded in one great nationality, and because I feel that if we sanction this policy—if we do not cleanse the Parliamentary bosom of all this "perilous stuff"—we shall bring about the disintegration of the Kingdom and the destruction of the Empire.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1874/jul/02/motion-for-a-committee-adjourned-debate#column_963 in the House of Commons against Irish Home Rule (2 July 1874)

People, World, Feeling

“In everything we are destroyers – even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief. The very socialism and internationalism through which our choked spirit seeks utterance, which seem to threaten your way of life, are alien to our spirit's demands and needs. Your socialists and internationalists are not serious. The charm of these movements, the attraction, such as it is, which they exercise, is only in their struggle: it is the fight which draws your gentile radicals.”

Maurice Samuel (1895–1972) novelist, translator and lecturer

You Gentiles (1924) Source: pp. 152-153 https://archive.org/details/you-gentiles-maurice-samuel-1924-217pgs-rel.sml/page/152/mode/1up

Life, Way, Exercises, Fight

“Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities; and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order then these possibilities will have a chance and you will het Progress. One can define the classical quite clearly as the exact opposite to this. Man is an extraordinary fixed and limited animal whose nature is absolutely constant. It is only by tradition and organization that anything decent can be got out of him.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Source: Speculations (Essays, 1924)

Nature, Chance, Animals

“Compassion for other human beings has to extend to the society that’s been grinding the powerless under its heel. The more civilized the society becomes, the more humane it becomes; the more it can see its own humanity, the more it sees the ways in which its humanity has been behaving inhumanly. This injustice of the world inspires a rage so intense that to express it fully would require homicidal action; it’s self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage. Simply put, I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.”

Sidney Poitier (1927) American-born Bahamian actor, film director, author, and diplomat

Variant: I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger; it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage — self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage — and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.
Source: The Measure of a Man (2000)

World, Way, Forgiveness, Learning

“Some of the harm that humans cause to other humans and to animals is mediated by the destructive effect that humans have on the environment. For much of human history, the damage was local. Groups of humans fouled their immediate environment. In recent centuries the human impact has increased exponentially and the threat is now to the global environment. The increased threat is a product of two interacting factors–the exponential growth of the human population combined with significant increases in negative effects per capita. The latter is the result of industrialization and increased consumption.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015) Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false, p. 48

History, Animals

“The terrible exploitation of native labor and destruction of native home life and the degenerating living conditions which have often been the result of private enterprise will no longer be possible.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter VII The Council for Economics

Life, Home

“Violence is the daimonic gone awry. It is "demon possession" in its starkest form. Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 5, p. 130

Age, Time

“The daimonic is any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person. Sex and eros, anger and rage, and the craving for power are examples. The daimonic can be either creative or destructive and is normally both.”

Rollo May book Love and Will

Source: Love and Will (1969), Ch. 5 : Love and the Daimonic, p. 123

Sex, Nature, Rage, Personality

“Strive to attain the supreme Reality” is the bold declaration of Sri Sankara. Yet you have made the material world alone the only solid reality. This treacherous mirage is luring humanity to its destruction. Stop this downward plunge.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Sayings of Swami Sivanada (1947)

World, Reality

“It’s scary to think about, but we may finally find unity as a species in self-destruction. The first minute of World War III will render nations, races, and religions meaningless concepts because the first thing to die in nuclear fire will be all our beloved imaginary borders.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

War, World, Religion, Thinking

“Terrorism cannot be born of religion. Terrorism is the product of corrupt minds, hardened hearts, and arrogant egos, and corruption, destruction, and arrogance are unknown to the heart attached to the divine.”

Ali Gomaa (1951) Egyptian imam

"Terrorism Has No Religion" http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/terrorism-has-no-religion/0019906, The American Muslim (TAM).

Religion, Heart

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. That's why Jesus says, "Love your enemies." Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they're mistreating you. Here's the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don't do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they're mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)

Love, Hate, People, Way

“Life is not about projecting onto others your inability to cope, nurturing hatred and then going off either to self-destruction or to annihilate those who have been more successful than you.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Source: 2010s, Nomad: A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations (2010), Chapter 5, “My Brother’s Son” (p. 71)

Life, Success

“How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension?”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 7, “Senzeni Na” (p. 526)

People, Beauty

“As long as people are still talking, there is a glimmer of hope. War does not bring any solutions, only destruction, suffering and lack of peace.”

Mieczysław Mokrzycki (1961) Polish bishop

Ukraine: Church continues to help refugees and pray for peace https://acninternational.org/ukraine-church-continues-to-help-refugees-and-pray-for-peace/ (24 February 2022)

War, People, Peace, Hope