Quotes About Self-defeating

eternal life and all fundamentalist attempts to describe it are self-defeating. Trying to nail down theological certainties is putting faith in our imagination rather than in God's. It is like me demanding an explanation from Lucy in that

and all fundamentalist attempts to describe it are self-defeating. Trying to nail down theological certainties is putting faith in our imagination rather than in God's. It is like me demanding an explanation from Lucy in that

What makes this constant assessing and comparing so self-defeating is that we are often comparing our lives, our marriages, our families, and our communities to unattainable, media-driven visions of perfection, or we're holding up our reality against our own fictional account of how great someone else has it. Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison.

Making excuses is one of a host of self-defeating behaviours and mental patterns that can block your success.

The negative patterns that form as a result of this self defeating behaviour actually symbolize the negative belief that we nurture.

Procrastination is a part of perfectionism in some people. Those who procrastinate don't do anything. By not doing anything, they can't fail. It's an inhibiting, self-defeating cycle.

Perfectionism is a self-defeating behavior that prevents us from taking risks and pursuing our dreams.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.

Paradoxically, the United States' determination to protect its troops can be self-defeating. Allies and adversaries see U.S. forces living in secure compounds, eating fancy chow and minimizing their exposure to potential terrorist assaults.

This struck memory chords in me; seeking a life of the mind, I had more or less consciously rejected the 'girl stuff' that I associated with my mother in her kitchen. Now I realize that this rejection of the sanctity of daily tasks was self-defeating in the long run. It served to alienate me not only from the wisdom of my mother and grandmothers, but from the pleasure of cooking, serving and eating some very good food.

Because immigrants came here precisely for the social and economic benefits, refusing to learn English was self-defeating.

Yet if there's one thing I know with absolute certainty, both personally and professionally, it is this: Nothing will change in our lives until we change our own behavior. Insight won't do it. Understanding why we do the self-defeating things we do won't make us stop doing them. Nagging and pleading with the other person to change won't do it. We have to act. We have to take the first step down a new road.

Petty minds foster petty hearts, and have the funny habit of shooting themselves in the foot.

Your Empire is corrupt, Commander. Corrupt, dangerous, and ultimately self-defeating. It's going to fall anyway. I'm just helping it along.

There is nothing worth having that can he obtained by nuclear war - nothing material or ideological - no tradition that it can defend. It is utterly self-defeating.

Hostility toward Iran may not be the silliest of all American foreign policies - that would probably be the continuing trade embargo of Cuba - but it is undoubtedly the most self-defeating.

self-defeating statement is one that fails to meet its own standard.

There is something self-defeating in the too conscious pursuit of pleasure.

I think women have a hard time not apologizing their way into negotiations. We tend to back in to these conversations in a self-deprecating and ultimately self-defeating way.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

It is this bloody-mindedness - the obsessive quest for wisdom though it brings no peace, the desire to gain knowledge of a future that cannot be circumvented, the relentless preparation for a doom that cannot be avoided - that reminds us of our own self-defeating consciousness, the knowledge of mortality that defines our humanity.

It'll become obvious that we've really been working against ourselves.

The logic of idolatry is ultimately self-and world-defeating, because the idolatrous impulse is born out of a deep distrust in God's love and care and a denial of the sacred character of the world. People embark on an idolatrous path when they believe that God's gifts are not sufficient or God's care is misdirected.

There is only one moment in which you can experience anything, and that is now, yet a great deal of time is thrown away by dwelling on past or future experiences. Turning your now into total fulfillment is the touchstone of effective living, and virtually all self-defeating behaviors (erroneous zones) are efforts at living in a moment other than the current one.