104 Destruction Quotes Explained

Destruction, both as a concept and an experience, has fascinated humanity for centuries. It evokes a mix of emotions, from awe and fear to reflection and motivation. In literature, philosophy, and even everyday life, quotes about destruction offer profound insights into the human condition, revealing our vulnerabilities, strengths, and the cyclical nature of existence. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 104 destruction quotes, each meticulously explained to unravel its deeper meaning and relevance. Whether you're seeking inspiration, solace, or a new perspective, these quotes promise to provide a thought-provoking journey through the multifaceted theme of destruction.

1. “Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” - Cormac McCarthy

2. “In a time of destruction, create something.” - Maxine Hong Kingston

3. “Right or wrong, it's very pleasant to break something from time to time.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

4. “You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.” - Scott Westerfeld

5. “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” - George Orwell

6. “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” - Rachel Carson

7. “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.” - Mikhail Bakunin

8. “What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?Or sells eternity to get a toy?For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?” - William Shakespeare

9. “What this country needs... what this great land of ours needs is something to happen to it. Something ferocious and tragic, like what happened to Jericho or the cities of the plain - something terrible I mean, son, so that when the people have been through hellfire and the crucible, and have suffered agony enough and grief, they’ll be people again, human beings, not a bunch of smug contented cows rooting at the trough.” - William Styron

10. “They have nothing to give. They have no power of making. All their power is to darken and destroy. They cannot leave this place; they are this place; and it should be left to them. They should not be denied nor forgotten, but neither should they be worshiped. The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. And where men worship these things and abase themselves before them, there evil breeds; there places are made in the world where darkness gathers, places given over wholly to the Ones whom we call Nameless, the ancient and holy Powers of the Earth before the Light, the powers of the dark, of ruin, of madness… I think they drove your priestess Kossil mad a long time ago; I think she has prowled these caverns as she prowls the labyrinth of her own self, and now she cannot see the daylight any more. She tells you that the Nameless Ones are dead; only a lost soul, lost to truth, could believe that. They exist. But they are not your Masters. They never were. You are free, Tenar. You were taught to be a slave, but you have broken free.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

11. “Do they see the lethal insanity of a race to the brink of oblivion, and then over the edge? Apparently not. If they did, surely they wouldn't be racing to begin with. Or is it a simple failure of imagination? One doesn't like to think such a rudimentary failing could bring about the end, yet...” - Stephen King

12. “It would be well to realize that the talk of ‘humane methods of warfare’, of the ‘rules of civilized warfare’, and all such homage to the finer sentiments of the race are hypocritical and unreal, and only intended for the consumption of stay-at-homes. There are no humane methods of warfare, there is no such thing as civilized warfare; all warfare is inhuman, all warfare is barbaric; the first blast of the bugles of war ever sounds for the time being the funeral knell of human progress… What lover of humanity can view with anything but horror the prospect of this ruthless destruction of human life. Yet this is war: war for which all the jingoes are howling, war to which all the hopes of the world are being sacrificed, war to which a mad ruling class would plunge a mad world.” - James Connolly

13. “I am the spirit that negates.And rightly so, for all that comes to beDeserves to perish wretchedly;'Twere better nothing would begin.Thus everything that that your terms, sin,Destruction, evil represent—That is my proper element.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

14. “A frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys.” - Edith Wharton

15. “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. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. 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. (from "Loving Your Enemies")” - Martin Luther King Jr.

16. “We now have the liberal playbook and we know what they are doing, and we are using it against them. Unlike the Democrats though, we aren't out to destroy our society, we are out to save it.” - Mark R. Levin

17. “Those single-track military minds never think to ask their cleaning staff for help in giant lethal marauding creature matters.” - Robin McKinley

18. “It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written.” - Karl Marx

19. “Analysis is the art of creation through destruction.” - P.S. Baber

20. “Tous, nous aimons ce que nous détruisons.” - Gene Wolfe

21. “I’ve seen knives pierce the chest,Children dying in the roadCrawling things hooked and baited,Rapists bound and then castrated,Villains singed in public square.Yet none these sights did make me cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.” - Roman Payne

22. “Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.” - Markus Zusak

23. “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

24. “I think I’ll dismember the world and then I’ll dance in the wreckage.” - Neil Gaiman

25. “Hey, even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.” - Chuck Palahniuk

26. “Intelligence without wisdom brings destruction.” - Erol Ozan

27. “She has always been a bystander in family destruction, never realizing she herself possessed the capacity to inflict it.” - Curtis Sittenfeld

28. “It is not what they built. It is what they knocked down.It is not the houses. It is the spaces between the houses.It is not the streets that exist. It is the streets that no longer exist.” - James Fenton

29. “Any philosophy, whether of a religious or political nature - and sometimes the dividing line is hard to determine - fights less for the negative destruction of the opposing ideology than for the positive promotion of its own. Hence its struggle is less defensive than offensive. It therefore has the advantage even in determining the goal, since this goal represents the victory of its own idea, while, conversely,it is hard to determine when the negative aim of the destruction of a hostile doctrine may be regarded as achieved and assured. For this reason alone, the philosophy's offensive will be more systematic and also more powerful than the defensive against a philosophy, since here, too, as always, the attack and not the defence makes the decision. The fight against a spiritual power with methods of violence remains defensive, however, until the sword becomes the support,the herald and disseminator, of a new spiritual doctrine.” - Adolf Hitler

30. “the way to create art is to burn and destroyordinary concepts and to substitute themwith new truths that run down from the top of the headand out of the heart” - Charles Bukowski

31. “Study, along the lines which the theologies have mapped, will never lead us to discovery of the fundamental facts of our existence. That goal must be attained by means of exact science and can only be achieved by such means. The fact that man, for ages, has superstitiously believed in what he calls a God does not prove at all that his theory has been right. There have been many gods – all makeshifts, born of inability to fathom the deep fundamental truth. There must be something at the bottom of existence, and man, in ignorance, being unable to discover what it is through reason, because his reason has been so imperfect, undeveloped, has used, instead, imagination, and created figments, of one kind or another, which, according to the country he was born in, the suggestions of his environment, satisfied him for the time being. Not one of all the gods of all the various theologies has ever really been proved. We accept no ordinary scientific fact without the final proof; why should we, then, be satisfied in this most mighty of all matters, with a mere theory?Destruction of false theories will not decrease the sum of human happiness in future, any more than it has in the past... The days of miracles have passed. I do not believe, of course, that there was ever any day of actual miracles. I cannot understand that there were ever any miracles at all. My guide must be my reason, and at thought of miracles my reason is rebellious. Personally, I do not believe that Christ laid claim to doing miracles, or asserted that he had miraculous power...Our intelligence is the aggregate intelligence of the cells which make us up. There is no soul, distinct from mind, and what we speak of as the mind is just the aggregate intelligence of cells. It is fallacious to declare that we have souls apart from animal intelligence, apart from brains. It is the brain that keeps us going. There is nothing beyond that.Life goes on endlessly, but no more in human beings than in other animals, or, for that matter, than in vegetables. Life, collectively, must be immortal, human beings, individually, cannot be, as I see it, for they are not the individuals – they are mere aggregates of cells.There is no supernatural. We are continually learning new things. There are powers within us which have not yet been developed and they will develop. We shall learn things of ourselves, which will be full of wonders, but none of them will be beyond the natural.[Columbian Magazine interview]” - Thomas A. Edison

32. “I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that's where they begin. Their great skills is their capacity to escalate.” - Markus Zusak

33. “Creation and destruction are one, to the eyes who can see beauty.And the greatest praise to India is this: not only are her people beautiful; not only are her daily life and cult beautiful; but, in the midst of the utilitarian, humanitarian, dogmatic world of the present day, she keeps on proclaiming the outstanding value of Beauty for the sake of Beauty, through her very conception of Godhead, of religion and of life.” - Savitri Devi

34. “to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.” - Cassandra Clare

35. “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” - Ray Bradbury

36. “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” - Kurt Vonnegut

37. “If I had known they were going to do this, I would have become a shoemaker.” - Albert Einstein

38. “The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.” - Kurt Vonnegut

39. “I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon. ” - Anais Nin

40. “We have to heal our wounded world. The chaos, despair, and senseless destruction we see today are a result of the alienation that people feel from each other and their environment.” - Michael Jackson

41. “How could you love something so destructive?" I ask."Because this wolf doesn't care if your heart is whole or not," you say. "It tastes just the same.” - Jonathan Messinger

42. “It was time to bring out the world destructive weapons. It was now time to hit him where it would do the biggest damage, his pride.” - Ottilie Weber

43. “What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?” - Sylvia Plath

44. “We as human beings appear to be in the most adverse stages in our evolution. How can the Mother Earth survive when the souls of Her sons are tainted with avarice, and the very minds which shape Her fate are dominated by ego? Minds that are prone to paranoia and can no longer trust its brothers. Humanity is at a crossroads. A crossroads which speaks of either profound change or ultimate destruction.” - Chris Cordova

45. “With its grace and carelessness, it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though [all] could be swept into a nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.” - George Orwell

46. “No visiting angel, or explorer from another planet could have guessed that this bland orb teemed with vermin, with world-mastering, self-torturing, incipiently angelic beasts.” - Olaf Stapledon

47. “It was nearly lunch-time before Blackie had finished and went in search of T. Chaos had advanced. The kitchen was a shambles of broken glass and china, the dining-room was stripped of parquet, the skirting was up, the door had been taken off its hinges, and the destroyers had moved up a floor. Streaks of light came in through the closed shutters where they worked with the seriousness of creators - and destruction after all is a form of creation. A kind of imagination had seen this house as it had now become. ("The Destructors")” - Graham Greene

48. “Domination and critique have always formed an apparatus covertly against a common hostis: the conspirator, who works under cover, who used everything THEY give him and everything THEY attribute to him as a mask. The conspirator is everywhere hated, although THEY will never hate him as much as he enjoys playing his game. No doubt a certain amount of what one usually calls “perversion” accounts for the pleasure, since what he enjoys, among other things, is his opacity. But that isn’t the reason THEY continue to push the conspirator to make himself a critic, to subjectivate himself as critic, nor the reason for the hate THEY so commonly express. The reason is quite simply the danger he represents. The danger, for Empire, is war machines: that one person, that people transform themselves into war machines, ORGANICALLY JOIN THEIR TASTE FOR LIFE AND THEIR TASTE FOR DESTRUCTION.” - Tiqqun

49. “Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” - Criss Jami

50. “I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.” - Criss Jami

51. “In all these sights I achieve solace only in bringing forth trees, picturing them blooming like smoke from the roofs of gutted buildings, dreaming of what a fine and picturesque pile of rubble this city will someday make.” - Tod Wodicka

52. “The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean — once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.” - Jared Diamond

53. “Outcasts, callused from being in exile for too long, learn to thrive on being the hated; the attention and infamy of our actions fuel us to become antiheroes. Too often do we forget: we risk self-destruction if we fail to follow what we know is right; our talents too often become misplaced, misdirected, misguided from what could have been something wonderful.” - Mike Norton

54. “Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty if vapour from the pit of death.” - J. A. Baker

55. “The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy.” - Thomas S. Monson

56. “O Rose, thou art sick.The invisible wormThat flies in the nightIn the howling stormHas found out thy bedOf crimson joy,And his dark secret loveDoes thy life destroy.” - William Blake

57. “[H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion -- held almost to the last -- was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terible weakness.” - Iain Pears

58. “The tyrant is a child of PrideWho drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity,Until from his high crest headlongHe plummets to the dust of hope.” - Sophocles

59. “Oh, really? Do you wake up heaving from bloody dreams thatpromise destruction like some crazy street guy forecasting theApocalypse? Did you slam a door in your dad’s face hours before he died?Does everyone, cops included, think you’re a pestering loon ’cause‘accident’ doesn’t sit right with you, nor the many other freakouts, likethe car that keeps showing up on your street, with someone sitting in it,doing like, nothing? No? Oh no? Didn’t think so. Life sucks for everyone.Jump or deal with it.” - Courtney Vail

60. “The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.” - Anais Nin

61. “As I see the world, there's one element that's even more corrosive than missionaries: tourists. It's not that I feel above them in any way, but that the very places they patronize are destroyed by their affection.” - Tahir Shah

62. “Bluebell had been saying that he knew the men hated us for raiding their crops and gardens, and Toadflax answered, 'That wasn't why they destroyed the warren. It was just because we were in their way. They killed us to suit themselves.” - Richard Adams

63. “If you’re listening to this, congratulations! You survived Doomsday.I’d like to apologize straightaway for any inconvenience the end of the world may have caused you. The earthquakes, rebellions, riots,tornadoes, floods, tsunamis, and of course the giant snake who swallowed the sun—I’m afraid most of that was our fault. Carter and I decided we should at least explain how it happened.” - Rick Riordan

64. “Our problems started in Dallas, when the fire-breathing sheep destroyed the King Tut exhibit.” - Rick Riordan

65. “Yes, an actual full-sized camel. If you find that confusing, just think how the criosphinx must have felt.Where did the camel come from, you ask? I may have mentioned Walt’s collection of amulets. Two of them summoned disgusting camels. I’dmet them before, so I was less than excited when a ton of dromedary flesh flew across my line of sight, plowed into the sphinx, and collapsed on topof it. The sphinx growled in outrage as it tried to free itself. The camel grunted and farted.“Hindenburg,” I said. Only one camel could possibly fart that badly. “Walt, why in the world—?”“Sorry!” he yelled. “Wrong amulet!”The technique worked, at any rate. The camel wasn’t much of a fighter, but it was quite heavy and clumsy. The criosphinx snarled and clawedat the floor, trying unsuccessfully to push the camel off; but Hindenburg just splayed his legs, made alarmed honking sounds, and let loose gas.I moved to Walt’s side and tried to get my bearings.” - Rick Riordan

66. “Life was taking its vengeance on me, and that vengeance consisted merely in coming back, nothing more. Every case of madness involves something coming back. People who are possessed are not possessed by something that just comes but instead by something that comes back. Sometimes life comes back. If in me everything crumbled before that power, it is not because that power was itself necessarily an overwhelming one: it in fact had only to come, since it had already become too full-flowing a force to be controlled or contained - when it appeared it overran everything. And then, like after a flood, there floated a wardrobe, a person, a loose window, three suitcases. And that seemed like Hell to me, that destruction of layers and layers of human archaeology.” - Clarice Lispector

67. “Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.” - Brandon Sanderson

68. “Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.” - William Shakespeare

69. “How must it have felt, Pikes, the night they seized your films, like entrails yanked from the camera, out of your guts, clutching them in coils and wads to stuff them up a stove to burn away! Did it feel as bad as having some fifty thousand books annihilated with no recompense? Yes. Yes. Stendahl felt his hands grow cold with the senseless anger.” - Ray Bradbury

70. “To let the brain work without sufficient material is like racing an engine. It racks itself to pieces.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

71. “To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.” - Fernando Pessoa

72. “Everything might scatter. You might be right. I suppose it's something we can't easily get away from. People need to feel they belong. To a nation, to a race. Otherwise, who knows what might happen? This civilisation of ours, perhaps it'll just collapse. And everything scatter, as you put it.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

73. “Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up?” - Peter Orner

74. “Vengeance, retaliation, retribution, revenge are deceitful brothers—vile, beguiling demons promising justifiable compensation to a pained soul for his losses. Yet in truth they craftily fester away all else of worth remaining.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

75. “You can't let the truth bring out the worst and let it get the best of you.” - Criss Jami

76. “No civilization, including Plato's, has ever been destroyed because its citizens learned too much.” - Robert McKee

77. “Have you ever thought what a God would be like who actually ordained and executed the cruelty that is in [the biblical Book of Revelation]? A holocaust of mankind. Yet so many of these Bible-men accept the idea without a second thought.” - C.J. Sansom

78. “Many [Tudor-era religious radicals] believed then, exactly as Christian fundamentalists do today, that they lived in the 'last days' before Armageddon and, again just as now, saw signs all around in the world that they took as certain proof that the Apocalypse was imminent. Again like fundamentalists today, they looked on the prospect of the violent destruction of mankind without turning a hair. The remarkable similarity between the first Tudor Puritans and the fanatics among today's Christian fundamentalists extends to their selective reading of the Bible, their emphasis on the Book of Revelation, their certainty of their rightness, even to their phraseology. Where the Book of Revelation is concerned, I share the view of Guy, that the early church fathers released something very dangerous on the world when, after much deliberation, they decided to include it in the Christian canon."[From the author's concluding Historical Note]” - C.J. Sansom

79. “I thought about the current contamination of beaches, raw sewage spilling into oceans and streams, the hole in the ozone, forests being stripped, the toxic-waste dumps, the merry plunder of mankind added to the drought and the famine that nature dishes up annually as a matter of course. It's hard to know what's actually going to get us first. Sometimes I think we should just blow the whole planet and get it over with. It's the suspense that's killing me.” - Sue Grafton

80. “Destruction is a man's will,Nevertheless Prevention is also a man's will,Its a man's choice to choose between Destruction and Prevention. :)” - Babu Rajan

81. “The world won't end with a bang or a whimper. It'll end with the death screams of a thousand demons and a defiant, carefree, savage, wolfen howl.” - Darren Shan

82. “Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.” - Ludwig Feuerbach

83. “It is not against reason, said the Englishman, to prefer the destruction of the world to a scratch on your finger – how much easier to understand the same price for the gash in your soul.” - Paul Hoffman

84. “There is a point when the anguished soul finally despairs. A moment in life when the heart, the will, even the spirit crumbles. Some say that after much grief and drowning in tears, it is possible to pick up the pieces and carefully repair what was shattered. I say nay. For the chains of despair have no key, and the soul destroyed by that monster can never hope to be unaffected. There are things done that cannot be undone.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

85. “Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.” - Criss Jami

86. “I can't destroy things so beautiful.""Time will destroy them if you don't. Time destroys everything. But if you destroy them, it will mean something.” - Neal Shusterman

87. “She looked at the last thing she had written and she felt calm. Then she crossed the words out vehemently, scribbling until even the shape of the sentence was destroyed.” - Helen Oyeyemi

88. “Love me. You have destroyed everything! But if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me.” - Anne Rice

89. “All are at war with the one who wars against self.” - E'yen A. Gardner

90. “Rejoice, for bad things are about to happen.” - Ryan Sohmer

91. “The destruction of this universe would have no significance on a cosmic scale.” - Stanley Kubrick

92. “The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale.” - Stanley Kubrick

93. “I'm thinking maybe letting the latches burn is the right idea. Let everything burn until there's nothing left but ashes and cool rain.” - Rodman Philbrick

94. “It took a freaking genius to put this together, Michael."I hefted my staff."Fortunately," I said, and took a two-handed swing at the nearest stand of slender, delicate crystal. It shattered with gratifying ease, and the encasing light around the greater circle began to waver and dissipate. "It only takes a monkey with a big stick to take it apart.” - Jim Butcher

95. “Realmente não dá para entender como é que um sujeito faz uma bobagem dessas. So há uma explicação: Destino. Antes da gente nascer, alguém, sei lá quem, talvez Deus, Deus define direitinho como é que vai foder a sua vida. É isso. Era minha teoria. Deus só pensa no homem quando tem que decidir como é que vai destruí-lo.” - Patrícia Melo

96. “…If one who slays one is a murderer then he who slays a thousand is not a hero,' said Lalu.” - Mulk Raj Anand

97. “Because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we all have become lazy. Lazy people are like cancer. They spread. Before you know it, the entire country is destroyed.” - Tahir Shah

98. “The ants are bad" The Bear"the ants?"Tahir"Do not be fooled. They look very small, so harm you don't think of then at all. Then years. Then one day you wake up, and your home has fallen down." Osman.” - Tahir Shah

99. “You have to love someone completely to be willing to destroy them.” - Deanna Raybourn

100. “Beauty is transformed over time, and not without destruction.” - Terry Tempest Williams

101. “I wanted myself. I wouldn't let what was mine be destroyed.” - Stephenie Meyer

102. “And so we know the satisfaction of hate. We know the sweet joy of revenge. How it feels good to get even. Oh, that was a nice idea Jesus had. That was a pretty notion, but you can't love people who do evil. It's neither sensible or practical. It's not wise to the world to love people who do such terrible wrong. There is no way on earth we can love our enemies. They'll only do wickedness and hatefulness again. And worse, they'll think they can get away with this wickedness and evil, because they'll think we're weak and afraid. What would the world come to?But I want to say to you here on this hot July morning in Holt, what if Jesus wasn't kidding? What if he wasn't talking about some never-never land? What if he really did mean what he said two thousand years ago? What if he was thoroughly wise to the world and knew firsthand cruelty and wickedness and evil and hate? Knew it all so well from personal firsthand experience? And what if in spite of all that he knew, he still said love your enemies? Turn your cheek. Pray for those who misuse you. What if he meant every word of what he said? What then would the world come to?And what if we tried it? What if we said to our enemies: We are the most powerful nation on earth. We can destroy you. We can kill your children. We can make ruins of your cities and villages and when we're finished you won't even know how to look for the places where they used to be. We have the power to take away your water and to scorch your earth, to rob you of the very fundamentals of life. We can change the actual day into actual night. We can do these things to you. And more.But what if we say, Listen: Instead of any of these, we are going to give willingly and generously to you. We are going to spend the great American national treasure and the will and the human lives that we would have spent on destruction, and instead we are going to turn them all toward creation. We'll mend your roads and highways, expand your schools, modernize your wells and water supplies, save your ancient artifacts and art and culture, preserve your temples and mosques. In fact, we are going to love you. And again we say, no matter what has gone before, no matter what you've done: We are going to love you. We have set our hearts to it. We will treat you like brothers and sisters. We are going to turn our collective national cheek and present it to be stricken a second time, if need be, and offer it to you. Listen, we--But then he was abruptly halted.” - Kent Haruf

103. “There is a self-destructive program running in the consciousness of humanity, and we must write a new program.” - Bryant McGill

104. “Knowledge is knowledge whether it teaches you construction or destruction.” - M.F. Moonzajer