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.

Michael Emerson

I witnessed first-hand the self-defeating results of putting yourself under so much pressure to perform.

Ananya Birla

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

Bill Keller

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

Camille Paglia

Isolation is a self-defeating dream.

Carlos Salinas de Gortari

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to learn.

Carol S. Dweck

It's morally wrong, and economically self-defeating, that so much wealth flows upwards towards the richest of Americans, while millions work full time but still can't provide for their families.

Charles B. Rangel

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

Chris Hadfield

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.

Chris Hadfield

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.

David Ignatius

I had a client who was getting ready for the Oscars, and all she ate was one meal a day - of two boiled eggs! I was able to persuade her to add some almonds and a protein shake and some vitamin supplements. It's a self-defeating strategy. You need to eat enough, particularly protein, to build lean and toned muscle in the first place.

David Kirsch

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?

Evgeny Morozov

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

George Michael

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.

George Wald

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?

Gloria Guinness

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

Henry Flynt

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

Jake Barton

There are about 15 million Muslims in the EU. They face ignorance, insult and even persecution. They cannot be wished away. To impose Enlightenment freedoms is self-defeating. Anyway, the Muslims have their own enlightenment.

James Buchan

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?

Juan Williams

Every time we watch a little story play out inside our head, we're fantasizing, whether we realize it or not, and it seems to me that, though succumbing to fantasies about other people can be dangerous or self-defeating, the act of fantasizing itself is also an essential part of being human, of being capable of both abstraction and empathy.

Kim Brooks

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.

Mark Fisher