Top 25 Self-Defeating Quotes

There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. And exaggerating climate change risks distracting us from other important issues including ones we might have more near-term control over.

Is there anything more self-defeating than using technology to free up your time – so that you can learn how to do an even better job at it?

Isolation is a self-defeating dream.

Sitting with a bunch of adults and arguing about what’s going to be most effective for kids is just sort of self-defeating.

All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.

Furthermore, I don’t believe you have to be quite that competitive to compete effectively. Beyond a certain point, all that bearing down is self-defeating.

What’s certain is that ranking powerful people is inherently self-defeating. For starters, true potentates know who they are without being told, and they have no need to announce it.

Russians aren’t perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians.

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.

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

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.

Waging a colonial war in the post-colonial age is self-defeating.

A tax on capital is self-defeating, in that it slows down capital accumulation, investment and economic growth.

Referring to the PAP as uncaring so as to persuade some of our fellow Singaporeans to consider casting their vote for the WP will be self-defeating for us.

Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it’s also so disappointing and self-defeating.

This is this thing I harp on: Sometimes acting can be a self-defeating psychological enterprise if we feel like we’re desperate, if we feel like we’re beggars at the door, praying that someone will take pity on us and give us a job. It would be so much better to feel like we’re tradesmen.

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.

Abduction was what it felt like on first listening to Public Enemy. Like the post-punks, Public Enemy implicitly accepted the idea that a politics which came reassuringly dressed in established forms would be self-defeating.

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

Where are the exhortations for children to reject the self-defeating stereotypes that reduce black people to violent, oversexed ‘gangstas,’ minstrel show comedians and mindless athletes?

Uncritical American boosterism – automatic endorsement of every government action – is myopic and self-defeating.

Dreaming is one thing, and working towards the dream is one thing, but working with expectations in mind is very self-defeating.

I’ve never worn costume jewelry in my life. It’s really very self-defeating. Why should a man buy a woman real jewelry when she wears false pieces?

You don’t want to go around willy-nilly suing news organizations. That’s probably self-defeating.

I used to believe that George Michael was a total actor. It was self-defeating, because it made me also feel fraudulent.