Demolish Quotes

The French dine to gratify, we to appease appetite," observed John Sanderson. "We demolish dinner, they eat it." The general misconception back home was that French food was highly seasoned, but not at all, wrote James Fenimore Cooper. The genius in French cookery was "in blending flavors and in arranging compounds in such a manner as to produce ... the lightest and most agreeable food." The charm of a French dinner, like so much in French life, was the "effect. ~ David McCullough

The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them. ~ William Whewell

And he who must be a creator in good and evil: verily, he must be an annihilator first and demolish values. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

How is it possible that things so trivial and so easy to remedy can have the power to perplex and absorb an intelligence as mature as yours, and one so ready to demolish and pass over much greater difficulties? ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The great thing about writing 'Deadpool' is that he can demolish expectations and typical comic book conventions with monster truck force. There are few other characters who can transition so easily from one type of story to the next. ~ Cullen Bunn

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasure. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. ~ Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Maybe she would have done more good as a playwright than as a doctor, after all - clichés were like plaque in the arteries of the imagination, they clogged the sense of what was possible. Maybe if enough people had worked to demolish clichés, the world wouldn't have ended. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

I couldn't have written [What Good Are The Arts?] because I
and I'm not alone, by any means
do not have Carey's breadth of reading, nor his calm, wry logic, which enables him to demolish the arguments of just about everyone who has ever talked tosh about objective aesthetic principles. And this group, it turns out, includes anyone who has ever talked about objective aesthetic principles. ~ Nick Hornby

Destroy such shining altars that spread bigotry - demolish such glorious churches and temples that proclaim divine supremacy - burn such glistening crucifixes, scriptures and idols that are used to preach weakness and segregation - obliterate every single trace of orthodoxy from the face of this planet, not with violence, but with awareness - and work - work to uplift the downtrodden - work to elevate the impoverished - work to raise those abandoned by fortune and opportunity - only then you shall have the rightful place under the sun as a holy human being. ~ Abhijit Naskar

3For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. ~ Anonymous

Every day we should stand in awe of Him, as He is with us, and do what is pleasing before Him. If we are unable now to perceive Him with our physical eyes, we can, if we are watchful, see Him continuously with the eyes of our understanding, and not just see Him, but reap great benefits from Him. This vision destroys all sin, demolishes all evil, and drives away everything bad. It gives birth to purity and dispassion, and bestows eternal life. ~ Gregory Palamas

The Cubists' belief in progress was by no means complacent. They saw the new products, the new inventions, the new forms of energy, as weapons with which to demolish the old order. Yet at the same time their interest was profound and not simply declamatory. In this they differed fundamentally from the Futurists. The Futurists saw the machine as a savage god with which they identified themselves. Ideologically they were precursors of fascism: artistically they produced a vulgar form of animated naturalism, which was itself only a gloss on what had already been done in films. 35 Carlo Carra. The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. 1911 The Cubists felt their way, picture by picture, towards a new synthesis which, in terms of painting, was the philosophical equivalent of the revolution that was taking place in scientific thinking: a revolution which was also dependent on the new materials and the new means of production. ~ John Berger

What she had unexpectedly met there in the village church was not God; it was beauty. She knew perfectly well that neither the church nor the litany was beautiful in and of itself, but they were beautiful compared to the construction site, where she spent her days amid the racket of the songs. The mass was beautiful because it appeared to her in a sudden, mysterious revelation as a world betrayed.

From that time on she had known that beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenary. ~ Milan Kundera

A person shouldn't talk too much, Ella realised. With writing, you could construct a whole world, but talking too much could demolish it. ~ Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen

Prison is designed to break one's spirit and destroy one's resolve. To do this, the authorities attempt to exploit every weakness, demolish every initiative, negate all signs of individuality
all with the idea of stamping out that spark that makes each of us human and each of us who we are. ~ Nelson Mandela

Nothing will change until we demolish the "we-they" mentality. We are human, and therefore all human concerns are ours. And those concerns are personal. ~ Sam Hamill

What tried to demolish me, I allowed to polish me. ~ India.Arie

Practice is an ever-fresh, challenging flow of work and play in which we continually test and demolish our own delusions; therefore, it is sometimes painful. ~ Stephen Nachmanovitch

Rather let my left hand take my right hand captive than witness one nation enslave and demolish another. Rather let my heart drag my feet away in chains than witness one ruler flex at the expense of another. Let the flags of nations be white and blank and lifted in the great surrender of humanity.
The Scroll of Anatiya 25:3436 ~ Zoe Klein

Beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewere. Beauty hides behind the scenes of the May Day parade. If we want to find it, we must demolish the scenery. ~ Milan Kundera

A good quotation must be provocative; as provocative as to demolish an old wrong castle in the mind with a single strike! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Our ... advantage was that we had evolved unstated but fruitful methods of collaboration ... If either of us suggested a new idea, the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but non-hostile manner. ~ Francis Crick

Money - you demolish cities, root men from their homes, you train and twist good minds and set them on to the most atrocious schemes. No limit, you make them adept at every kind of outrage, every godless crime - money ~ Sophocles

Discipline

If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things to govern your soul and your senses,
for fear that your passions and longings may lead you away from the path you should follow.
Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection, obediently, steadfastly seeking the aim set before them;
only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Action

Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting –
freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action,
trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.

Suffering

A change has come indeed.
Your hands, so strong and active, are bound; in helplessness now you see your action is ended;
you sigh in relief, your cause committing to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.

Death

Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Ambitious intelligence [is] a force that can demolish the 'heart's reasons' - namely, a warm empathy, a considerateness toward others, a willingness, even, to let them become one's teachers, however humble or troubled their lives. ~ Robert Coles

To demolish this basilica," the king said, " is to pretend our history never happened – an easy way to allow ourselves to move happily forward, telling ourselves that another 'Franco' could never happen. But of course it could happen, and it will happen if we are not vigilant. - Father of Prince Julian ~ Dan Brown

Muhammad was a jackass. People who believe in him are stupid. Let us call a spade as spade. These people must be laughed at. They, and their screwball prophet have to be ridiculed not respected. Let them cringe, let them wince, let them agonize. We must demolish this fetish and break the shackles of these wretched people. They must be set free and the only way to do that is to demolish their fetish. ~ Ali Sina

He knows that the only way to break the cycle of retribution and oppression and heartbreak is to demolish the ladder of deserving altogether. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

Opinions are easy," said Henry with a shrug. "So long as I know anything at all about a topic, I'm going to have an opinion. Sometimes that opinion is going to be wrong, but one of the great things about opinions is that you can change them. And if you share your opinions, you're much more likely to come across someone who disagrees with you and can help you to be less wrong, which is why I give my opinions so freely. Maybe the oathkeepers are nothing like what I imagine them to be. Maybe the small number of them I've met aren't representative of the whole. I don't think it's out of the question that I might meet an oathkeeper who's spent decades studying all of the same things that I've thought of and stands ready to demolish me in a debate. So long as I don't start thinking of my opinions as something sacred, there's no harm in them. So no, there's nothing that I can think of that I don't have an opinion on. ~ Alexander Wales

Mathematics may be likened to a large rock whose interior composition we wish to examine. The older mathematicians appear as persevering stone cutters slowly attempting to demolish the rock from the outside with hammer and chisel. The later mathematicians resemble expert miners who seek vulnerable veins, drill into these strategic places, and then blast the rock apart with well placed internal charges. ~ Howard Whitley Eves

He really did demolish me. I don't know who that hellcat slut was that tore up grass and screwed her brains out. I don't know who I am anymore.
Pia Giovanni ~ Thea Harrison

Words are everything to me. Words can build you up and feel so good. On the flip side, words can absolutely demolish you. ~ Taylor Swift

Excuses are made by the power of weakness. Their purpose is merely a wish you have; you wish they would demolish your guilt and regret. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Some years ago I was struck by the large number of falsehoods that I had accepted as true in my childhood, and by the highly doubtful nature of the whole edifice that I had subsequently based on them. I realized that it was necessary, once in the course of my life, to demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations if I wanted to establish anything at all in the sciences that was stable and likely to last. ~ Rene Descartes

We are to vigorously and violently demolish all the fortifications of the foe, winning the battle and talking him captive for Christ. The Church is not to assume a defensive posture, but may take aggressive action to overcome evil by means of good. ~ Jay E. Adams

We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it ... I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come. ~ George McGovern

Seventy percent of US companies now use open-plan offices and hot desking in the hope that these free-form physical structures will provoke free-form thinking. This architectural determinism isn't entirely convincing - there's plenty of evidence that people find open workspaces noisy, distracting, and impersonal. Walking through several such workspaces recently, I couldn't help but notice how hard everyone was working to simulate privacy. Plugged into headphones, surrounded by stacks of books and temporary dividers, defensiveness was more evident than openness. Architecture alone won't change mindsets and tearing down physical walls won't demolish the mental silos that trap thinking. ~ Margaret Heffernan

It is a poor conclusion, is it not?' he observed, having brooded awhile on the scene he had just witnessed: 'an absurd termination to my violent exertions? I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished! My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don't care for striking: I can't take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.'Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I'm in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly remember to eat and drink. Those two who have left the room are the only objects which retain a distinct material appearance to me; and that appearance causes me pain, amounting to agony. About HER I won't speak; and I don't desire to think; but I earnestly wish she were invisible: her presence invokes only maddening sensations. HE moves me differently: and yet if I could do it without seeming insane, I'd never see him again! You'll perhaps think me rather inclined to become so,' he added, making an effort to smile, ' ~ Emily Bronte

23:24 You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor follow their practices, but you shall utterly overthrow them and demolish their pillars. ~ Anonymous

It has become somewhat trite, nowadays, to say that after so many years of destruction it is a kind of miracle that Paris is still standing, a miracle we thrill to every day. But if the beauty of Paris has survived wars, how extraordinary that it can do nothing against the pickaxes of the Parisians themselves when they make up their minds to demolish something, nor against the vagaries of their architects left to their own devices! ~ Julien Green

Love Beginning To End
Love is not just kiss me here kiss me there thing, it is life; use love to erect a family, never use it to demolish the group wherein you are born. ~ Jamaluddin Jamali

The publication in 1859 of the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin made a marked epoch in my own mental development, as it did in that of human thought generally. Its effect was to demolish a multitude of dogmatic barriers by a single stroke, and to arouse a spirit of rebellion against all ancient authorities whose positive and unauthenticated statements were contradicted by modern science. ~ Francis Galton

Other vices make their own way; this makes way for all vices. He that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice. ~ Francis Quarles

Sometimes in those moments of greatest abandonment when we feel utterly deserted a sign appears where we least expect it and shows us the way. Those who dare to advance into darkness, expecting nothing, will at last find their shining goal. On a page torn from a book, which an autumn wind blew around my feet, I read the words that showed me I was on the right path: "The initiate who sets out in good faith to find the Truth, only to find, on all sides, the inexorable barrier that throws him back into the 'ordinary tumult,' will hear the Master say: 'Watch out, there is a wall.' 'But is this wall temporary?' asks the restless soul, 'can I pass through it or demolish it? Is it an adversary? Is it a friend?' 'I cannot tell you. You must discover it for yourself. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

When you expect a man to create your world of dreams, you fall into the doctrine against women and strengthen what we are supposed to fight back and demolish. ~ Namrata Kumari

You've got to know the rules to break them. That's what I'm here for, to demolish the rules but to keep the tradition. ~ Alexander McQueen

We need a new direction, and we need it soon. Instead of death by food pyramid, we can have life by educated freedom - a freedom in which we're released from the rules of the federal government, the dogma of the fad diet du jour, the smooth words of a health guru, the marionetting of powerful industries, the misinterpretation of science, and the mass confusion that keeps us incapacitated. As we demolish the walls of the pyramids, plates, and other shapes that ultimately lock us inside a dietary dictatorship, we're left with a horizon-wide landscape to explore - and with it, the opportunity to pursue what works for us and guiltlessly leave behind what doesn't. But there's just one catch. In order to reach that point of liberation, we can't keep doing what we've been doing - or else we'll keep getting what we've been getting. ~ Denise Minger

Every rhetorician knows that his most effective weapons by far are labels. He can demolish the opposition with simple and devastating labels such as communism, socialism, or atheism, popery, militarism, or Mormonism, or give his clients' worst crimes a religious glow with noble labels such as integrity, old-fashioned honesty, tough-mindedness, or free competitive enterprise. ~ Nibley, Hugh

I demolish my bridges behind me ... then there is no choice but to move forward ~ Fridtjof Nansen

We crave a world of either/or, but the Dream says, Both/and. We build a wall between our social persona and our inner selves; the Dream bids us, Demolish it. We wish to believe we're separate from one another, but the Dream insists, We are in this together. We are pleased to believe Time is a one-way river from past to present to future, yet the Dream reveals, All three times flow into one. We wish to seek pure virtue and avoid all stain, but the Dream avers, The dark and the light are braided and bound. ~ Marc Ian Barasch

If necessary, they will even kill to escape the pain of their own spiritual growth. As the integrity of their sick self is threatened by the spiritual health of those around them, they will seek by all manner of means to crush and demolish the spiritual health that may exist near them. I define evil, then, as the exercise of ~ M. Scott Peck

Some people who meet me might think I starve myself, because there's such an assumption that being thin involves putting yourself through torture and punishing your body, but I'm just naturally skinny - you should watch me demolish a ploughman's lunch. ~ Tamsin Egerton

By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat ... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier ... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings. ~ Alfred Jarry

I asked him if he'd come to clean the windows and he said no he'd come to demolish the house. He didn't tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me. ~ Douglas Adams

Agnosticism is a perfectly respectable and tenable philosophical position; it is not dogmatic and makes no pronouncements about the ultimate truths of the universe. It remains open to evidence and persuasion; lacking faith, it nevertheless does not deride faith. Atheism, on the other hand, is as unyielding and dogmatic about religious belief as true believers are about heathens. It tries to use reason to demolish a structure that is not built upon reason. ~ Sydney J. Harris

The Jew continues to monopolize money, and he loosens or strangles the throat of the state with the loosening or strengthening of his purse strings ... He has empowered himself with the engines of the press, which he uses to batter at the foundations of society. He is at the bottom of ... every enterprise that will demolish first of all thrones, afterwards the altar, afterwards civil law. ~ Franz Liszt

No human heart is denied empathy. No religion can demolish that by indoctrination. No culture, no nation and nationalism - nothing can touch it because it is empathy. ~ Dayananda Saraswati

We should neither try to demolish technology nor run away from it. We can restrain it and must redeem it. - ALBERT BORGMANN ~ Anonymous

In the elevator, he held silent, but she saw him twice look at her blouse. She could feel his gaze, damn it, deep inside herself. And she knew what he was looking at.
Without the binding, her boobs were far too noticeable. The damned buttons gaped and the material strained.
"Enjoying yourself?" she asked with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
If anything, her jibe only made him intensify his study. He stood there, negligence personified, his hands clasped behind his back, his stance casual and relaxed. "I can see the outline of your nipples."
She nearly strangled on her fury. "Go to hell!"
"What are you? C cup? Maybe even a D?"
Oh, God, she did not want to stand here alone with him, closed up in such a small space with his heat and scent invading her lungs. "None of your damn business."
He lifted his hand in front of him, not to touch her, but to imagine it covering her right breast. His face screwed up while he pretended to heft her. "I'd say a full C."
A fine trembling started in her neck and went down her spine. She needed to stay composed to face off with Murray Coburn, but for whatever reason, this man wanted to demolish her control. "I say go kill yourself."
He cracked a smile.
And what that smile did for him . . . She couldn't deny that he was devastatingly handsome. Probably a cutthroat villain, but still gorgeous. That disheveled fair hair and those intense, oddly colored eyes . . . she shivered.
He lifted a brow. "Cold?" ~ Lori Foster

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ~ Beth Moore

Only unconditional grace can transform a hardened heart into a grateful heart. Only a free gift can demolish any notion of quid pro quo. Only an utterly merciful act of love can fashion a new creation capable of love. As theologian Karl Barth puts it, 'As the beloved of God, we have no alternative but to love him in return. ~ Mark Galli

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends. ~ A.S. Byatt

The charm of a city, now we come to it, is not unlike the charm of flowers. It partly depends on seeing time creep across it. Charm needs to be fleeting. Nothing could be less palatable than a museum-city propped up by prosthetic devices of concrete.

Paris is not in danger of becoming a museum-city, thanks to the restlessness and greed of promoters. Yet their frenzy to demolish everything is less objectionable than their clumsy determination to raise housing projects that cannot function without the constant presence of an armed police force…

All these banks, all these glass buildings, all these mirrored facades are the mark of a reflected image. You can no longer see what's happening inside, you become afraid of the shadows. The city becomes abstract, reflecting only itself. People almost seem out of place in this landscape. Before the war, there were nooks and crannies everywhere.

Now people are trying to eliminate shadows, straighten streets. You can't even put up a shed without the personal authorization of the minister of culture.

When I was growing up, my grandpa built a small house. Next door the youth club had some sheds, down the street the local painter stored his equipment under some stretched-out tarpaulin. Everybody added on. It was telescopic. A game. Life wasn't so expensive - ordinary people would live and work in Paris. You'd see masons in blue overalls, painters in white ones, carpenters in corduroys. Nowadays, j ~ Robert Doisneau

If only a horrible storm can demolish the castle of the devil, then let the storm be victorious! It is not uncommon that heaven comes after hell! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

You can never make a city as clean as the nature itself. To do this, you must completely demolish the city and convert it into the pure nature. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We can demolish all the chaos, loneliness, discrimination and wars of the world, once we simply get hold of our desires - and we can do so, not by force, but only by being aware of their harms. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don't demolish them. ~ Carlos Castaneda

A wrong concept misleads the understanding; a wrong deed degrades the whole man, and may eventually demolish the structure of the human ego. ~ Muhammad Iqbal

Our witness is only as strong as our freedom is real. We can have the most noble convictions in the world, but if we are snarky and impatient when we don't get our way, those things will interfere with our influence. If we gossip more than we pray, those misspoken words will demolish our influence. If our addictions get in the way of living out our convictions, we'll have mostly a negative influence. ~ Susie Larson

Lee Kuan Yew ruled Singapore from 1959 until 1990, making him, we believe, the longest serving prime minister anywhere. His party, the People's Action Party (PAP), dominated elections and that dominance was reinforced by the allocation of public housing, upon which most people in Singapore rely. Neighborhoods that fail to deliver PAP votes come election time found the provision and maintenance of housing cut off.18 In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe went one step further. In an operation called Murambatsvina (Operation Drive Out the Rubbish), he used bulldozers to demolish the houses and markets in neighborhoods that failed to support him in the 2005 election. ~ Bruce Bueno De Mesquita

Smart people do not use bulldozers to demolish things, they use science. ~ Steven Magee

We must rip the foundations out from under all the bastions of human reasoning that say, "I don't need God!" We must demolish every non-God story of life. We must pulverize every God-is-not-good life narrative. ~ James MacDonald