Catastrophe Quotes - Page 10

• We don't want to go back to the same policies and practicies that drove our economy into a ditch, that punished the middle class, and that led to this catastrophe. We keep moving forward.

  David Axelrod

  Letting Go, Failure, Moving

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• The believer's cross is no longer any and every kind of suffering, sickness, or tension, the bearing of which is demanded. The believer's cross must be, like his Lord's, the price of his social nonconformity. It is not, like sickness or catastrophe, an inexplicable, unpredictable suffering; it is the end of the path freely chosen after counting the cost. It is not, like Luther's or Thomas Muntzer's or Zinzendorf's or Kierkegaard's cross, an inward wrestling of the sensitive soul with self and sin; it is the social reality of representing in an unwilling world the Order to come.

  John Howard

  Wrestling, Reality, Self

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• I think it's so much fun to create a space. As the world has gotten more and more hectic - with these horrible catastrophes [happening] - people are going out less, ordering in, [having guests over]. People love to be in their homes.

  Aerin Lauder

  Fun, Home, Thinking

  Interview with Michael Kors, aspenpeak-magazine.com. May 22, 2013.

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• Rather than saying 'I hate mess', it might draw more compassion to say, 'mess terrifies me as a harbinger of catastrophe'.

  Alain de Botton

  Hate, Compassion, Might

  Twitter post from Feb 24, 2013

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• Man has sought to take from the natural world not only that which is necessary for his stability and survival, but often seeks to satisfy his perceived and ultimately false psychological needs, such as his need for self-display, luxuries and the like. Twenty percent of humanity consumes eighty percent of the world's wealth and is accountable for an equal percentage of the world's ecological catastrophes.

  Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople

  Men, Self, Luxury

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• The fear of climatic catastrophes is an ancient one and not unlike our fear of strangers. In the past, people believed that the climate almost always changes for the worse, and only rarely for the better - God's punishment for sinful behavior.

  Hans von Storch

  Past, Punishment, People

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• While the rich reap most of the benefits of technological development, the poor bear an unequal burden of dealing with the consequences of the resulting increased pollution. The poor continue to live in greatest proximity to the sources of pollution, the infrastructure and machinery of industry. They work in the most polluted and physically dangerous workplaces. And these same individuals, living and working closest to the sources of environmental catastrophe, are also the ones most lacking decent health care.

  James H. Cone

  Technological Development, Environmental, Bears

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• A wise man who stands firm is a statesman, a foolish man who stands firm is a catastrophe.

  Adlai Stevenson I

  Wise, Educational, Men

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• How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry-between say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off." Were the catastrophes of Love Canal, Bhopal, Chernobyl, and the Exxon Valdez episodes of war or of peace? They were in fact, peacetime acts of aggression, intentional to the extent that the risks were known and ignored.

  Wendell Berry

  War, Differences, Risk

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• We saw what happens with Bolsheviks. It was another catastrophe. I don't have the solution. The moviemaker can ask questions but not give solutions.

  Costa-Gavras

  Giving, Saws, Bolsheviks

  Source: progressive.org

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• The pace of consumption, waste and environmental change has so stretched the planet's capacity that our contemporary lifestyle, unsustainable as it is, can only precipitate catastrophes, such as those which even now periodically occur in different areas of the world ... we need to reflect on our accountability before those who will have to endure the dire consequences.

  Pope Francis

  Change, Accountability, Environmental

  Pope Francis (2016). “Care for Creation: A Call for Ecological Conversion”, p.33, Orbis Books

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• Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

  Len Wein

  Lenses, Gone, Stories

  "Speaking with...LEN WEIN". Interview with Marv Wolfman, www.marvwolfman.com.

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• The biggest catastrophes that we've witnessed rarely come from information that is secret or hidden. It comes from information that is freely available and out there, but that we are willfully blind to.

  Margaret Heffernan

  Secret, Information, Blind

  "Is Conflict Good For Progress?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. March 11, 2013.

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• In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.

  Roland Barthes

  Mother, Children, Patient

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• Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Stars, Cutting, Roots

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• Because I write fiction that is based in the real world, it's going to lead people into some of the modern dilemmas and concerns and even catastrophes that they will think about in a new way.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Real, Writing, Thinking

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• Anyone who knows me well must understand and be sympathetic to my genuine need to be my own greatest hero. It is not a flaw of character; it is a catastrophe.

  Pat Conroy

  Hero, Character, Needs

  Pat Conroy (2010). “The Lords of Discipline: A Novel”, p.81, Open Road Media

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• The humanity and the humility, which are very different than the biological species homo sapiens. Humanity versus homo sapiens - very different things. We are biological creatures, we are animals, no doubt, but when you talk about "humando," you're talking about that particular kind of animals who are aware of their impending extinction, who have the capacity to be sensitive to catastrophe and disaster and calamity and profound crisis.

  Cornel West

  Humility, Animal, Talking

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

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• By neglecting our garden, we are storing up for ourselves, in the not very distant future, a world catastrophe as bad as any atomic war, and we are doing it with all the bland complacency of an idiot child chopping up a Rembrandt with a pair of scissors.

  Gerald Durrell

  Children, War, Garden

  "Two in the Bush". Book by Gerald Durrell, 1966.

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• The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of the fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance - he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.

  Robert Fagles

  Hero, Ignorance, Men

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• Every day, it seems, a new extreme weather catastrophe happens somewhere in America, and the medias all over it, profiling the ordinary folks wiped out by forest fires, droughts, floods, massive sinkholes, tornadoes.

  Jane Velez-Mitchell

  Fire, Weather, America

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• Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination.

  Yukio Mishima

  Cancer, Imagination, Caught

  Yukio Mishima, Cecilia Segawa Seigle (1974). “The temple of dawn”, Harvill Secker

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• In our interconnected world, novel technology could empower just one fanatic, or some weirdo with a mindset of those who now design computer viruses, to trigger some kind of disaster. Indeed, catastrophe could arise simply from technical misadventure - error rather than terror.

  Martin Rees

  Technology, Errors, Design

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• That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

  Susan Vreeland

  Heart, Humble, Hands

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• If centralism is ultimately to prevail; if our entire system of free Institutions as established by our common ancestors is to be subverted, and an Empire is to be established in their stead; if that is to be the last scene of the great tragic drama now being enacted: then, be assured, that we of the South will be acquitted, not only in our own consciences, but in the judgment of mankind, of all responsibility for so terrible a catastrophe, and from all guilt of so great a crime against humanity.

  Alexander H. Stephens

  Drama, Responsibility, Humanity

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