Tragic Quotes - Page 9

• I think it would be a tragic statement of the universe if Java was the last language that swept through.

  James Gosling

  Thinking, Would Be, Java

  84 Copy quote

• Thanks to my ridiculous, sometimes tragic, and always unsteady upbringing, I was given the gift of bone-crushing insecurity. One thing you'll notice about people with mental problems is constant self-absorbation. I think that's because it's such a struggle just to be who they are, so they have a hard time getting past it.

  Mark Oliver

  Crush, Struggle, Past

  4 Copy quote

• After all, no one is ever taken in by the happy ending, but we are often divinely fuddled by the tragic curtain.

  Lionel Trilling

  Taken, Happy Endings, Curtains

  Lionel Trilling (1963). “Matthew Arnold”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is it not tragic, for example, that while in the last World War almost everyone believed it was the war to end all wars and wanted to make it so, now in this Second World War almost no writer that I have read dares even suggest that this is the war to end all wars, or act on that belief? We have lost the courage to hope.

  Lin Yutang

  War, Example, World

  Lin Yutang, (2013). “Between Tears and Laughter”, p.10, Read Books Ltd

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What after all, has maintained the human race on this old globe despite all the calamities of nature and all the tragic failings of mankind, if not faith in new possibilities, and courage to advocate them. Doubtless many times these new possibilities were declared by a man who, quite unconscious of courage, bore the "sense of being an exile, a condemned criminal, a fugitive from mankind." Did every one so feel who, in order to travel on his own proper path had been obliged to leave the traditional highway?

  Jane Addams

  Men, Race, Order

  Jane Addams (2010). “Peace and Bread in Time of War”, p.85, University of Illinois Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The temper of mind that sees tragedy in life has not for its opposite the temper that sees joy. The opposite pole to the tragic view of life is the sordid view.

  Edith Hamilton

  Views, Opposites, Perspective

  Edith Hamilton (1987). “The Greek way ; The Roman way”, Random House Value Pub

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A society, in the process of moving forward, often appears to be tearing itself apart. Certainly, an age of rapid change, such as ours, produces many paradoxes. But perhaps the most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

  Earl Warren

  Moving, Age, Paradox

  "Saturday Review" Magazine, (p. 16), October 23, 1971.

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Passion, Views, Law

  5 Copy quote

• There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.

  Marina Abramovic

  Art, Artist, Stills

  "Performance artist Marina "Abramović: 'I was ready to die'" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. May 14, 2014.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Tell people the truth, they laugh. The truth is so tragic they have to pretend it's a joke.

  Lucille Kallen

  Truth, People, Laughing

  6 Copy quote

• Given that a few days ago we had a terrible accident, a tragic terrorist attack in Barajas, in Madrid, I would like to propose to you that we show our complete condemnation, our most intense revulsion, and that we show profound solidarity with the victims.

  Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

  Profound, Madrid, Intense

  4 Copy quote

• the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own.

  Isak Dinesen

  Art, Men, Law

  Isak Dinesen (2011). “Winter's Tales”, p.56, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To persuade thinking persons in Eastern Europe that Central American Marxists - the Sandinistas, the guerillas in El Salvador - are in absurd and tragic error is not difficult. Poles and Czechs and Hungarians can hardly believe, after what they experienced under socialism, that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths, and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last marxist in the world will probably be an American nun.

  Michael Novak

  Lying, War, Fall

  16 Copy quote

• We've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940's, and I think it's tragic.

  Newt Gingrich

  War, Thinking, Israel

  "Palestinians are an invented people, says Newt Gingrich". www.theguardian.com. December 10, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I hope the time will never come when I shall feel satisfied. To reach the goal of one's ambitions must be tragic.

  N. C. Wyeth

  Ambition, Goal, Satisfied

  12 Copy quote

• Tragedy isn't an easy thing to kill. It takes more than a turtle. Tragedy must be destroyed by someone willing to be swallowed by it, willing to be broken, torn out of the flesh, but able to return to it. Someone must be able to shatter the tragic from within and exit into comedy, able to rip a hole so wide that a train of souls, a parade, could follow after, banging drums and throwing candy as they strolled into the sun.

  N.D. Wilson

  Rip, Turtles, Broken

  5 Copy quote

• Lebanon will be engulfed again in a huge power game that will last quite a long time. This is the tragic destiny of Lebanon.

  Walid Jumblatt

  Destiny, Games, Long

  7 Copy quote

• The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

  Milton Friedman

  Garden, Government, Investing

  6 Copy quote

• War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, Stupid, Men

  Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy, www.dwightdeisenhower.com. June 03, 1947.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in
  the end.

  Charlton Heston

  Fall, Play, Events

  15 Copy quote

• In fact, most deaths are not tragic. Few people die because of a flaw in character, which is the essential element of tragedy. They just die.

  John Chancellor

  Character, People, Tragedy

  John Chancellor (1995). “The New News Business: A Guide to Writing and Reporting”, Harper Perennial

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Fate, Destiny, Intellectual

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2004). “A Dream Too Wild: Emerson Meditations for Every Day of the Year”, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Gay unions, what is that about? I haven't been invited to any ceremonies, and I wouldn't go anyway. The idea that gay people have to mimic what obviously doesn't work for straight people any more... I think is a bit tragic. I am looking forward to gay divorces.

  Boy George

  Divorce, Gay, Thinking

  The London Evening Standard, February 20, 2006.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country's energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It's catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.

  Sarah Palin

  Country, Lying, Deep Water

  "Extreme Enviros: Drill, Baby, Drill in ANWR – Now Do You Get It?". www.facebook.com. June 2, 2010.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed.... This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Commitment, Opposites, Practice

  Martin Luther King Jr. (1963). “Strength to Love”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source