Tragic Quotes - Page 17

• Whenever possible, I like to have the supreme head of a company show me over the works. It is extremely illuminating to note the attitude of workers towards their boss, and equally interesting to note the attitude towards the workers. It is tragic to notice how many chief executives of large concerns are absolutely unknown, even by sight, to the rank and file of their workers.

  B. C. Forbes

  Attitude, Sight, Interesting

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• Employers, have you ever stopped to reckon what the goodwill of your workers is worth? ... In most large concerns it would be worth more in dollars and cents to have the goodwill of the working force than of those on the outside. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the average working force is capable of increasing its production 25% or more whenever the workers fell so inclined. Workers animated by ill will cannot possibly give results equal to those of workers animated by goodwill. The tragic fact appears to be that a tremendous number of working forces are not so animated.

  B. C. Forbes

  Ill Will, Average, Numbers

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• The tragic solemnity of existence strikes us with terrible force on that morning when we wake to find the mournful words "too late" ringing in our ears.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Morning, Too Late, Ears

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• The White House begun airing their TV commercials to re-elect the president, and the John Kerry campaign is condemning his use of 9/11 in the ads. He said, it is unconscionable to use the tragic memory of a war in order to get elected, unless of course, it's the Vietnam War.

  Jay Leno

  Memories, War, Order

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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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• When people go through tragic circumstances, it's not that there is no love there, but it's so hard to deal with and sometimes the gap starts to happen.

  Maggie Q

  People, Gaps, Sometimes

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• I remember the day Richard Nixon won in 1968. That was a time that seemed certain to bring about long awaited seismic change in America. But events of tragic proportion took us on a turn. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were suddenly dead.

  Richard Schiff

  Kings, America, Long

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Life to most Greeks may be either tragic or comic or a mixture of both; but one thing it never is - and that is, meaningless.

  Helen Clark MacInnes

  Greek, Mixtures, May

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• I've found him to be a disappointment. Wonderful speech in Egypt, and good intentions aside, foreign policy needs to be firmly grounded in reality, and understanding of a sort of chaos theory...[that is to say] it needs to be part good intention, part political intelligence, and part political savvy and knowledge of international interests and national burdens. President Obama has been extremely short-sighted in this sense, and if he fails, it will be a tragic blow for peaceniks and multilateralists the world over, and a manna from heaven for the Republican party.

  Munir Butt

  Disappointment, Party, Blow

  Foreign Affairs, 2009.

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• Tragic experience indicates that the most sacred obligations are utterly disregarded when their observance means losing the war.

  Kirby Page

  War, Mean, Sacred

  Kirby Page (1976). “Kirby Page and the social gospel: an anthology”, Dissertations-G

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• Spring blossoms are fairy tales, autumn leaves are tragic dramas.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Spring, Drama, Autumn

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• The part of [Oscar] Wilde was exceptionally important to me; the man, his achievements, his wisdom, but his downfall, his disgrace and the tragic and bitter end to it have always fascinated, appalled and attracted me since childhood. It was he who first in some measure vindicated my sexuality.

  Stephen Fry

  Men, Childhood, Important

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• The West has funded the war against itself by buying Arab oil. It is as simple and as tragic as that.

  Phyllis Chesler

  War, Simple, Oil

  Phyllis Chesler (2013). “An American Bride in Kabul: A Memoir”, p.188, Macmillan

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• The older I've gotten, the more the need to exert comedy no matter how tragic a character I may be portraying because they are essentials for presenting truth.

  Ed Asner

  Character, Essentials, Needs

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• My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.

  John Bradley-West

  Drama, School, Long

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• What hasty preparations we make for our future. Think of it: it seems almost tragic, the things we're sure we ought to bring along. We pack too heavy with what we hope we'll use, and too light of what we must. We thus go forth misladen, ill equipped for the dawn.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Thinking, Light, Preparation

  Chang-rae Lee (2014). “On Such a Full Sea: A Novel”, p.212, Penguin

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• Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

  Heather O'Neill

  Stars, Children, Fall

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• Sarah Palin's whole family got into a drunken public fistfight. Something police are calling a 'tragic case of trash-on-trash violence.'

  Bill Maher

  Police, Violence, Calling

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• I've often felt that life is a hard deal and it's unrelentingly tragic and an uphill fight.

  Woody Allen

  Fighting, Life Is, Deals

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• It wasn't really touching to be young; it was touching not to be young, because you had less of life left. Touching to be thirty; more touching to be forty; tragic to be fifty; and heartbreaking to be sixty. As to seventy, as to eighty, one would feel as one did during the last dance of a ball, tired but fey in the paling dawn, desperately making the most of each bar of music before one went home to bed.

  Rose Macaulay

  Home, Tired, Touching

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• The immediate future is going to be tragic for all of us unless we find a way of making the vast educational resources of this country serve the true purpose of education, truth and justice.

  Anne Sullivan Macy

  Country, Educational, Justice

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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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• I'm going to show you a technology today which takes insults and criticisms out of the airwaves. (Marshall puts on giraffe ears) With this technology, it will be impossible for you to hear criticisms, harsh remarks, or insults. All you can hear is what all people are ever saying, "please" and "thank you". What used to sound like criticism, judgment, or blame, you will see, are really tragic, suicidal expressions of "please".

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Communication, Suicidal, Technology

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• Any evaluation which implies rightness or wrongness is a tragic, suicidal expression of an unmet need. Tragic, first because it decreases our likelihood of getting our need met! Even if we think it. And secondly, because it increases the likelihood of violence. That's why I'm suggesting any evaluation which implies rightness or wrongness is a tragic, suicidal expression of an unmet need. Say the need! Learn a need-consciousness.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Communication, Suicidal, Thinking

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• It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Art, Mean, Interesting

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.222, Atlantic Books Ltd

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