Destructive Tendency Quotes

We have once again succeeded in destroying what we could not create.

Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart, never at what the universe has put together, and this is his limitation.

Chaos needs no allies, for it dwells like a poison in every one of us.

What men yearn for they often destroy.

When in doubt, blow something up.

There is no blindness more insidious, more fatal that this race for profit.

Leave me in a room with some crayons and I'll draw on the wall.

It's our very capacity for self-consciousness that makes us self-destructive!

Only part of us is sane: only part of us loves pleasure and the longer day of happiness, wants to live to our nineties and die in peace, in a house that we built, that shall shelter those who come after us. The other half of us is nearly mad. It prefers the disagreeable to the agreeable, loves pain and its darker night despair, and wants to die in a catastrophe that will set back life to its beginnings and leave nothing of our house save its blackened foundations.

We are not an endangered species ourselves yet, but this is not for lack of trying.

I had learned early to assume something dark and lethal hidden at the heart of anything I loved. When I couldn't find it, I responded, bewildered and wary, in the only way I knew how: by planting it there myself.

Humanity cannot afford to acknowledge all of the blood that it spills and the destruction it inflicts on the world in its effort to perpetuate itself. Desacralization is a process that allows us to sever any relationship we might feel to other living things. By draining the aliveness out of things, we can pretend that our control and manipulation are of little consequence. Man the trapper becomes man the taxidermist, disemboweling nature of its spontaneity and movement, and stuffing it with a leaden inanimateness.

If you gave me a fresh carnation, I would only crush its tender petals.

Mankind, I hazard, wherever found, Civilized or Savage, cannot keep to any purpose for much length of time, except the purpose of destroying himself.

There's a real sense of fighting and destruction in our DNA that we don't get in touch with.

If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend or, perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.

Nature's creative power is far beyond man's instinct of destruction.

And I knew that there was some dark corner of me that would enjoy using magic for killing—and then long for more. That was black magic, and it was easy to use. Easy and fun. Like Legos

What a strange creature man is that he fouls his own nest.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH,' the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.

Sure I destroyed my guitar at every concert, but it was okay, because I'd always get a shiny new one the very next day.

Energy had fastened upon her like a disease.

Although there is a beast in all of us, we don't show it often. But it is very liberating to be that angry at times. Given a chance, I'm sure people would like to go on a rampage and break everything.

Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.