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

What hurts us worst is to have our favorite self-deceptions stripped away.

We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.

Self destructive behavior is our species' Achilles' heel. We are the only species that actively engineers its own demise.

We can overcome this. It's necessary for our survival.

My self destructive behaviors are at an all-time low. I just don't do things anymore that unnecessarily cause me to die.

It took years to get here. Occasionally my mind still suggests a debaucherous act, but it’s quickly shot down. The math doesn't work. The aftermath is misery.

I'm hopeful about the future because culture is shifting. Health is becoming high status. It a useful and powerful currency. Health isn't just our bodies but society, our planet, and our technology.

Self destruction is looking increasingly foolish and low status. This shift will accelerate and eventually existence itself will become the highest virtue.

Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction.

There is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement.

It is lack of confidence, more than anything else, that kills a civilisation. We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs.

Life goes on, yes, and our capacity for self-deception accompanies it.

Very often we are our own worst enemy as we foolishly build stumbling blocks on the path that leads to success and happiness.

For that’s how it is, we cover up our mistakes and failings, we invent stories that put ourselves in a more favorable light. Self-deception is perhaps the most human thing of all.

If we underinvest in ourselves, and by that I mean our minds, our bodies, and our spirits, we damage the very tool we need to make our highest contribution.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

And while there are countless ways that we rip ourselves off, there’s one way in particular that is, without a doubt, the most rampant and the most devastating of all: we invest everything we’ve got in believing that we’re not good enough.

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.