Disaster Quotes
-
I have never seen an adequate description anywhere of the amazement, the uncomprehending horror of the bulk of the American people which preceded the firing of that gun at Sumter. Politicians or far-sighted leaders on both sides knew what was coming. And it is they who have written histories of the war. But to the easy-going millions, busied with their farms or shops, the onrushing disaster was as inexplicable as an earthquake. Their protest arose from sea to sea like the clamor of a gigantic hive of frightened bees.
-
In all cultures and peoples there are stories of the trickster. In some North American traditions he is known by the form and name of Coyote. He is the energy of mischief and often of danger . . . Coyote has brought me to the edge of disaster, death, and mischief time and time again . . . It has been said that Coyote only lets you see him when he wants you to. For whatever reason, he has let me see him.
-
To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.
-
Americans are depressed, angry and very worried about the economic consequences of the disaster.
-
It's pretty easy to decide to roll with the punches, to look at the enormity of natural disaster and choose to hunker down and do less. It's more important than ever, I think, to persist and make a dent in the universe instead. We've all been offered access to so many tools, so many valuable connections, so many committed people. What an opportunity.
-
I don't care if they're licensed legal firearms, people who are not highly trained putting guns in their hands is a recipe for disaster. So I'll train our officers that there is a concealed carry law, but when somebody turns with a firearm in their hand the officer does not have an obligation to wait to get shot to return fire and we're going to have tragedies as a result of that. I'm telling you right up front.
-
In handling resources, strive to avoid disaster rather than to attain an optimum.
-
Wherever there is disaster, the newsman is there. If he cannot find disaster, he searches for the odd and the peculiar, the exotic and the unfamiliar. His photographs, seen by millions, make momentary events and strange occurrences all over the world our common property.
-
When the foot of the' mountain is enveloped in mist, the mountain appears to us much loftier than it is; so also when the ground and basis of a disaster is not clear to us.
-
We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster, which went into the official log as - DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.
-
Riskier mortgage lending practices, imposed by government, were what set the stage for many mortgage payments to stop and thus for the financial disasters that followed. Political rhetoric, echoed in the media, seeks to obscure that painfully plain fact.
-
People want to buy cheap and sell dear; this by itself makes them countertrend. But the notion of cheapness or dearness must be anchored to something. People tend to view the prices they’re used to as normal and prices removed from these levels as aberrant. This perpective leads people to trade counter to an emerging trend on the assumption that prices will eventually return to “normal”. Therein lies the path to disaster.
-
There is no doubt that the time to act is now. It is now that timely action can avert disaster. It is now that with foresight and will such action can be taken without disturbing the essence of our way of life, by adjusting behaviour not altering it entirely.
-
I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.
-
The strange thing about the apocalypse is that it's uneven. For some people, it goes one way and for others another way, so that there's always this shifting relation to the narrative of the disaster. Sometimes apocalypses are just structural fictions, and sometimes they're real. Sometimes a narrative requires an end - the fact that the beginning was always leading somewhere becomes clear at the end. There's an idea that we're always in the middle, but we posit this apocalyptic end in order to also be able to project into the past or the beginning. I think that's true and false.
-
That poverty is no disaster is understood by everyone who has not yet succumbed to the madness of greed and luxury that turns everything topsy-turvy.
-
Do we really want the people who created $40 trillion of unfunded liabilities in Social Security and Medicare in charge of our health care? Faceless bureaucrats, power-lusting politicians, and people spending other people's money are a recipe for disaster.
-
“Freedom has its risks. Suppression of freedom, I believe, is a sure prescription for disaster.”
-
I never learned to count my blessings I choose instead to dwell in my disasters
-
If some appalling disaster befalls, there's Always a way for the rich.
-
Why is history important? Without history, many people have no idea how many of today's half-baked ideas have been tried, again and again - and have repeatedly led to disaster. Most of these ideas are not new. They are just being recycled with re-treaded rhetoric.
-
I do not wish disaster to British arms.
-
Most companies are busy making their products worse, not better. Updating is almost always a disaster.
-
A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not about political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time. All of the people of the Earth are in a desperate race against disaster... To save the Earth we must look beyond it, to interplanetary space. To present the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it, we must understand that our planet does not exist in isolation.
