Fatal Flaw Quotes

Every money message we hold on to contains a fatal flaw; it impressions us in an incomplete world. ~ George Kinder

We're a society of brats, fighting over the same toys. That, for me, is the closest we come to be inherently evil as a people. It leads to selfishness, inflexibility, and impatience -- among so many other traits that are ugly and harmful. We're combative, competitive, petty, and suffer from one fatal flaw that I can never get my head around. We recognize behavior in others that makes us insane, while turning right around and doing the exact thing to someone else. ~ Trevor D. Richardson

Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. ~ Donna Tartt

Moreover, an archetype exists in the nation's consciousness that connects student loan debt with irresponsibility. This is a result of well-publicized accounts of loan defaults in decades past in which students took out loans with no intention of ever paying them back and simply filed for bankruptcy after graduation. This perception was sufficiently strong that in the 1970s, Congress was convinced to remove bankruptcy protections from student loans. However, according to a March 2007 paper by John A. E. Pottow of the University of Michigan, this perception had a fatal flaw: "The fatal problem is that there are no empirical data to buttress the myth that students defraud creditors any more than other debtors."1 In fact, it was shown that when student loans were dischargeable in bankruptcy, there was a less than 1 percent bankruptcy rate among student debtors.2 Nevertheless, this misconception has been so often repeated that it is now indelibly etched in the public's mind. ~ Alan Collinge

He appreciated it, to a point. He also had no intention of having a second marriage like his first, a marriage in which the wife taught the husband, and didn't care who knew it; in fact, took pains to let others see how much she had taught him, how much more she knew about art and politics and all the rest. That had been Dorothy Hearst Paley's fatal flaw, one she recognized too late. Babe ~ Melanie Benjamin

Our contemporary brand of socialism has one fatal flaw. It's too expensive. When you try to shower benefits on so many recipients, you eventually must resort to subterfuge. Foremost among those tricks is money and credit expansion. Inevitably, you debase your currency. ~ James Cook

Emotion. It's a lethal weakness of our kind. A sickness that inhibits logic and eventually drives our minds toward the breaking point. It's our kryptonite – our fatal flaw and our saving grace.

After all, emotions make us who we are. They make us capable of love and compassion and selflessness, bring out the best in us.

At the same time, they ruin us. Make us feel hatred and pain and guilt. Cause our muscles to lock, our pulses to spike, our hearts to split in half.

These things called…feelings…could break every single one of us, if we let them. ~ Tiana Dalichov

Liberalism's fatal flaw, ... is that it has no permanent norms, only a succession of enthusiasms espoused by minor prophets. Each of these seems like a hot new idea to liberals, but soon goes to irksome and destructive extremes. ~ Joseph Sobran

The fatal flaw of most utopian visions is that they're fundamentally static, and that's not a comfortable place for humans to live. Fourier was very good at imagining a utopia that is constantly changing and very busy, but a vision of paradise that would have been most tantalizing to an underfed overworked factory worker in 1840 doesn't have much appeal in fiction because it's not a story. ~ Christine Jennings

She is such a blade - -beautiful, powerful, and deadly to her enemies- - as well as her bond-mate due to her fatal flaw. The questions are - How deep is her flaw and can it be healed? After all, a mortal is not a mearcair blade to be discarded if forged improperly. (Kagan Donmall regarding Tessa Montgomery) ~ Jacqueline Patricks

If there is one fatal flaw in this business, it is allowing isolated information to drive trading or investing decisions-committing money without understanding all the risks. And there is only one way to understand all the risks: through systematic knowledge. ~ Victor Sperandeo

Then Augustus Waters reached into a pocket and pulled out, of all things, a pack of cigarettes. He flipped it open and put a pack between his lips.
"Are you serious?" I asked. "You think that's cool? Oh, my God, you just ruined the whole thing."
"Which whole thing?" he asked, turning to me. The cigarette dangled unlit from the unsmiling corner of his mouth.
"The whole thing where a boy who is not unattractive or unintelligent or seemingly in any way unacceptable stares at me and points out incorrect uses of literality and compares me to actresses and asks me to watch a movie at his house. But of course there is always a hamartia and yours is that, oh, my God, even though you HAD FREAKING CANCER you give money to a company in exchange for the chance to acquire YET MORE CANCER. Oh, my God. Let me just assure you that not being able to breathe? SUCKS. Totally disappointing. Totally."
"A hamartia?" he asked, the cigarette still in his mouth. It tightened his jaw. He had a hell of a jawline, unfortunately.
"A fatal flaw," I explained, turning away from him. ~ John Green

Your faith in Homo technologicus -the Tinkering Man- has one fatal flaw. It offers you no escape clause. ~ David Brin

And like I said, I didn't know him very well, but my ears perked up whenever I heard his name. I guess I wanted to hear something - anything - juicy. Not because I wanted to spread gossip. I just couldn't believe someone could be that good.
If he was actually that good ... wonderful. Great! But it became a personal game of mine. How long could I go on hearing nothing but good things about Clay Jensen?
Normally, when a person has a stellar image, another person's waiting in the wings to tear them apart. They're waiting for that one fatal flaw to expose itself.
But not with Clay. ~ Jay Asher

My fatal flaw is hubris.
The brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?
No, seaweed brain. That's hummus. Hubris is worse.
What could be worse than hummus? ~ Rick Riordan

Would you like to know your fatal flaw?' Eddie flushed with annoyance. He could have easily made a list of Hochman's flaws, enough to fill several pages. Still, he was curious. 'Please do tell.' 'You judge what you don't understand. ~ Alice Hoffman

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "conciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

The fatal flaw of human wisdom is that it promises that you can change your relationships without needing to change yourself.
Every painful thing we experience in relationships is meant to remind us of our need for God. And every good thing we experience is meant to be a metaphor of what we can only find in Him ... We settle for the satisfaction of human relationships when they were meant to point us to the perfect relational satisfaction found only with God. ~ Paul David Tripp

Was it possible there was some fatal flaw in their matching, that they were ultimately, impossibly different
dissimilar enough to fall in love, but too fundamentally distinct to stay together? ~ Galt Niederhoffer

Sometimes we want so badly to believe the good in people we ignore our gut instincts. Optimism shouldn't be such a fatal flaw ~ Molly S. Hillery

There is really only one way to restore a world that is dying and in disrepair: to make beauty where ugliness has set in. By beauty, I don't mean a superficial attractiveness, though the word is commonly used in this way. Beauty is a loveliness admired in its entirety, not just at face value. The beauty I'm referring to is metabolized grief. It includes brokenness and fallibility, and in so doing, conveys for us something deliciously real. Like kintsukuroi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with powdered gold, what is normally seen as a fatal flaw is distinguished with value. When we come into contact with this kind of beauty, it serves as a medicine for the brokenness in ourselves, which then gives us the courage to live in greater intimacy with the world's wounds. ~ Toko-pa Turner

Normally when a person has a stellar image another person's waiting in the wings to tear them apart. They're waiting for that one fatal flaw to expose itself. ~ Jay Asher

I HAVE A FATAL flaw.
I like to think we all do. Or at least that makes it easier for me when I'm writing -building my heroines and heroes up around this one self-sabotaging trait, hinging everything that happens to them on a specific characteristic: the thing they learned to do to protect themselves and can´t let go of, even when it stops serving them. ~ Emily Henry

The determination that is his biggest strength ... is also at times his fatal flaw. Like an unthinking machine, he'll just keep shoving, not realizing a step back, a one-night pause, could let some obstacle move out of the way and smooth his path. ~ Lin Pardey

Holding a grudge is a fatal flaw. ~ Rick Riordan

Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In ~ Rick Riordan

Here in the United States, we're consumed by our love of money and status. We think bigger is better, and if we can just get that promotion, all will be well with our souls. There's one fatal flaw to this mindset: it's all smoke and mirrors. ~ Jen Lilley

Each considers the other to have a fatal flaw in their philosophy which ought by rights to exclude a friendship, and are a little baffled to discover it does nothing of the kind. ~ Sarah Perry

We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60's. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously ... All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped create ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody ... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Everything we do and say will either underline or undermine our discipleship process.

As long as there is one unsaved person on my campus or in my city, then my church is not big enough.

One of the underlying principles of our discipleship strategy is that every believer can and should make disciples.

When a discipleship process fails, many times the fatal flaw is that the definition of discipleship is either unclear, unbiblical, or not commonly shared by the leadership team.

Write down what you love to do most, and then go do it with unbelievers. Whatever you love to do, turn it into an outreach.

You have to formulate a system that is appropriate for your cultural setting. Writing your own program for making disciples takes time, prayer, and some trial and error - just as it did with us. Learn and incorporate ideas from other churches around the world, but only after modification to make sure the strategies make sense in our culture and community.

Culture is changing so quickly that staying relevant requires our constant attention. If we allow ourselves to be distracted by focusing on the mechanics of our own efforts rather than our culture, we will become irrelevant almost overnight.

The easiest and most common way to fail at discipleship is to import a model or copy a method that worked somewhere else without first understanding the values that create a healthy discipleship culture. Principles and ~ Steve Murrell

I'm a coward when it comes to matters of the heart. That is my fatal flaw. ~ Haruki Murakami

I have done my best. I saw a fatal flaw in the camera industry. We did our best to address it. ~ James Jannard

Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.
'm listening.
Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did
that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, i would do it better.'. Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the world?
Percy:Um ... no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare.
Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw.
Percy: what is?
Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it ... well, they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing.
Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It didn't exactly cheer me up. ~ Rick Riordan

Who is fatal to others is so to himself. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

Dangerous, therefore, is it to take shelter under a tree, during a thunder-gust. It has been fatal to many, both men and beasts. ~ Benjamin Franklin

It was that fatal and perfidious bark, Built in th' eclipse, and rigg'd with curses dark. ~ John Milton

Life is algorithmic. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague. Maybe it's everywhere in the population already and we never noticed. Maybe this is end-stage. Terminal without symptoms, like poor Kip."
Kanya glances at the ladyboy. Kip gives a gentle return smile. Nothing shows on her skin. Nothing shows on her body. It is not the doctor's disease she dies of. And yet ... Kanya steps away, involuntarily.
The doctor grins. "Don't look so worried. You have the same sickness. Life is, after all, inevitably fatal. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

To-morrow is that lamp upon the marsh, which a traveller never reacheth;
To-morrow, the rainbow's cup, coveted prize of ignorance;
To-morrow, the shifting anchorage, dangerous trust of manners;
To-morrow, the wrecker's beacon, wily snare of the destroyer.
Reconcile conviction with delay, and To-morrow is a fatal lie;
Frighten resolutions into action, To-morrow is a wholesome truth. ~ Martin Farquhar Tupper

Without thinking or reflecting, we plunge into war, contract heavy debts, increase vastly the patronage of the Executive, and indulge in every species of extravagance, without thinking that we expose our liberty to hazard. It is a great and fatal mistake. ~ John C. Calhoun

This boy was so far out of my league it was embarrassing. I found myself staring at him, trying to find some minute flaw that might justify dragging him back to my level. Finding nothing, I decided that having a dimple on only one cheek was practically a deformity. ~ G.J. Walker-Smith

If you ask religious believers why they believe, you may find a few "sophisticated" theologians who will talk about God as the "Ground of all Isness," or as "a metaphor for interpersonal fellowship" or some such evasion. But the majority of believers leap, more honestly and vulnerably, to a version of the argument from design or the argument from first cause. Philosophers of the caliber of David Hume didn't need to rise from their armchairs to demonstrate the fatal weakness of all such argument: they beg the question of the Creator's origin. ~ Lawrence M. Krauss

Jean turned on Kevin and spoke in quick, furious French. "What the hell is this?" "His antagonism is a personality flaw we're learning to live with," Kevin said. ~ Nora Sakavic

We live in a world of guided missiles
and misguided men. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Power is an instrument of fatal consequence. It is confined no more readily than quicksilver, and escapes good intentions as easily as air flows through mesh. ~ Mike Pence

Self-sufficiency which first reared its head in the Garden of Eden, is the most fatal sin because it pulls us as if by a magnet that their lack of self-sufficiency is obvious to them every day. They must turn somewhere for strength, and sometimes they go through life relying on their natural gifts. But there's a chance, just a chance, that people who lack such natural advantages may cry out to God in their time of need. ~ Philip Yancey

He felt the inability to grieve as a terrible flaw. ~ Frank Herbert

My policy has always been to burn my bridges behind me. My face is always set toward the future. If I make a mistake it is fatal. When I am flung back I fall all the way back - to the very bottom. My one safeguard is my resiliency. So far I have always bounced back. ~ Henry Miller

A fisherman in the month of May stood angling on the bank of the Thames with an artificial fly. He threw his bait with so much art, that a young trout was rushing toward it, when she was prevented by her mother. "Never," said she, "my child, be too precipitate, where there is a possibility of danger. Take due time to consider, before you risk an action that may be fatal. How know you whether yon appearance be indeed a fly, or the snare of an enemy? Let someone else make the experiment before you. If it be a fly, he will very probably elude the first attack: and the second may be made, if not with success, at least with safety." She had no sooner spoken, than a gudgeon seized the pretended fly, and became an example to the giddy daughter of the importance of her mother's counsel. FABLES, ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703-1764 ~ Robert Greene

There is something strangely determinate and fatal about a single shot in the night. It is as if someone had cried a message to you in one word, and would not repeat it. ~ Isak Dinesen

The best and most innovative products don't always win ... (it's an) aesthetic flaw in how the universe worked ~ Walter Isaacson

The fire was barely fifteen minutes old. What followed was a series of fatal errors that set the fire free and doomed the city to a fiery death. ~ Jim Murphy

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency
the belief that the here and now is all there is. ~ Allan Bloom

I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn't understand why the happiness never came, couldn't see the flaw in my thinking, couldn't see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again. And all my efforts were doomed, because already drinking hadn't made me feel good in years. ~ Heather King

You know, I guess I just don't like to talk a lot about sad things. Now you know my flaw. What good does it do to talk about sad things in the past? ~ James Patterson

Sometimes it's not catastrophic. Sometimes you only come to the bottom of your coffee cup. Sometimes you have a good day. No one wants to know. No one wants to tell you about theirs either. You might somehow take it. Turn it against them. See the flaw. You always tell them the whole thing sucks. It keeps you alive. They figure if you're out there having a rotten time, everything's fine and you're doing your part. No one will ever try to take your bad times away from you but they'll come swarming for your happiness. ~ Henry Rollins

If the sad truth be known, writers, being the misfits we are, probably ought not to belong to families in the first place. We simply are too self-interested, though we may excuse the flaw by calling it 'focused.' ~ Roger Rosenblatt

The dark grave, which knows all secrets, can alone reclaim the fatal doubt once cast on a woman's name. ~ George Herbert

. . .and every native has a story of winter – stories that usually begin, You call this a storm? And grow in the telling like battle tales shared by graying war veterans. It's a peculiar character flaw to those of us from cold climates that we feel superior to those who have the sense to live elsewhere. ~ Richard Paul Evans

In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding. ~ Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Idealism, though just in its premises, and often daring and honest in their application, is stultified by the exclusive intellectualism of its own methods: by its fatal trust in the squirrel-work of the industrious brain instead of the piercing vision of the desirous heart. It interests man, but does not involve him in its processes: does not catch him up to the new and more real life which it describes. Hence the thing that matters, the living thing, has somehow escaped it; and its observations bear the same relation to reality as the art of the anatomist does to the mystery of birth. ~ Evelyn Underhill

The main of life is composed of small incidents and petty occurrences; of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence ... ~ Samuel Johnson

Ah, what he is; that is quite another thing. I have seen so many remarkable things in him, that if you would have me really say what I think, I shall reply that I really do look upon him as one of Byron's heroes, whom misery has marked with a fatal brand; some Manfred, some Lara, some Werner, one of those wrecks, as it were, of some ancient family, who, disinherited of their patrimony, have achieved one by the force of their adventurous genius, which has placed them above the laws of society. ~ Alexandre Dumas

Everyone is in pain. Most people think pain in massage means something is happening, and if they can endure it, they will be improved, but sometimes the only thing pain means is pain.
It a very easy mistake to make, though.. She'd refused for the longest time to get therapy or take any psychoactive drugs because she'd felt that the "darkness" was necessary, not just for her as an actor, but as a human being.
You didn't have to feel slightly terrible all the time, as it turns out. Her only worry now was that slightly terrible was not a flaw in her chemistry, but an appropriate response to being the kind of person that she was. "You're very hard on yourself," Luke said.
"Can you imagine the kind of person that I'd be if I wasn't hard on myself?" she said back. Luke should be sympathetic. He was hoping to improve the human race, and it would be hard to get there if the human race thought it was already fantastic, thanks very much.
Well, she could still go dark, if she needed to, she could go dark right now. Yesterday she had done Terror. She'd done Fear and Dejection and Remorse. And because she had done Remorse as fully as a person could do it, she knew that she hadn't ever experienced that kind of pure Remorse before. What she'd felt in the past was polluted Remorse, because half the time she was sorry she was also privately resentful and building a case about why the actions that had led to Remorse could be justified. ~ Meg Howrey