Apocalyptic Quotes

• This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Poetry, Religion

  "The Hollow Men" l. 95 (1925)

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• She was one of those people who was born for the greatness of a single love, for exaggerated hatred, for apocalyptic vengance, and for the most sublime forms of heroism but she was unable to shape her fate to the dimensions of her amorous vocation, so it was lived out as something flat and gray trapped between her mother's sickroom walls, wretched tenements, and the tortured confessions with which this large, opulent, hot-blooded woman made for maternity, abundance, action, and ardor- was consuming herself.

  Isabel Allende

  Mother, Wall, Fate

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• If only I was as eloquent as Demosthenes, I would have to do no more than repeat a single word three times.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Three, Single Word, Eloquent

  "Briefwechsel". "Briefwechsel" by Johann Georg Hamann, 1955-1975.

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• I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Albert Einstein (2003). “Einstein's 1912 manuscript on the special theory of relativity”, George Braziller

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• The new century has brought on its own terrible dangers, which although not reaching the apocalyptic potential of the Cold War, still have the capacity to shake our world.

  Adam Schiff

  War, Our World, Cold

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• The level of outbreak is beyond anything we’ve seen - or even imagined.

  Tom Frieden

  Ebola, Levels, Outbreaks

  "CDC: ‘Window Is Closing’ on Containing Ebola" by Abby Haglage, www.thedailybeast.com. September 2, 2014.

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• Faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mad Cow Disease, Evil, Religion

  "Is Science a Religion?". Humanist, www.skeptical-science.com. January/February 1997.

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• Todayart is moving in a direction of which our fathers would never even have dreamed.We stand before the new pictures as in a dream and we hear the apocalyptic horsemen in the air.

  Franz Marc

  Dream, Father, Moving

  1912 Subscription prospectus of the Blaue Reiter Almanac, Jan.

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• Uncovering secrets is apocalyptic in the simple sense (the Greek root means ‘an uncovering’). In this case, it lifts the shame covers. It allows articulation to enter where silence once ruled.

  Lewis Hyde

  Mean, Simple, Roots

  Lewis Hyde (2010). “Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth and Art”, p.432, Macmillan

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• The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe.

  Mike Lofgren

  Party, Europe, Political

  "Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult". www.truth-out.org. September 3, 2011.

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• We need the stars... We need purpose! We need the image the Destiny to take root among the stars gives us of ourselves as a purposeful, growing species. We need to become the adult species that the Destiny can help us become! If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars.... When we have no difficult, long-term purpose to strive toward, we fight each other. We destroy ourselves. We have these chaotic, apocalyptic periods of murderous craziness.

  Octavia Butler

  Stars, Fighting, Destiny

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• When forced to survive in an apocalyptic world, there are some characters that embrace their higher selves with some emerging as natural born leaders, and others succumb to their more base and primal selves and basically transform into savages.

  Laurie Holden

  Character, Self, Leader

  Source: collider.com

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• Our most important allies in the fight against ISIL are the vast majority of Muslims who reject its apocalyptic ideology of hatred.

  Lindsey Graham

  Fighting, Hatred, Important

  Source: www.buzzfeed.com

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• Youth no longer inhabit the privileged space, however compromised, that was offered to previous generations. They now occupy a neoliberal notion of temporality of dead time, zones of abandonment and terminal exclusion marked by a loss of faith in progress and a belief in those apocalyptic narratives in which the future appears indeterminate, bleak and insecure.

  Henry Giroux

  Loss, Insecure, Time Zones

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• My own suspicion is that a stand-alone artificial mind will be more a tool of narrow utility than something especially apocalyptic.

  Jamais Cascio

  Mind, Tools, Stand Alone

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• The best songs of this [modern] period - the apocalyptic "High Water," for example - return [Bob] Dylan to where he was in his first phase, updating and transforming American traditional music.

  Jay Michaelson

  Song, Water, Phases

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Zombies are apocalyptic in nature. They belong to a class of monster that doesn't just hunt humans, but seeks to obliterate that entire human race.

  Max Brooks

  Race, Class, Zombie

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• The exploitation and superficiality of mainstream America is the object not of [Bob] Dylan's hipster scorn, but of an apocalyptic parable of holy fools and righteous thieves - the kind of imagery that Dylan's later work would explore more fully.

  Bob Dylan

  Hipster, America, Thieves

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Every time you write a poem it’s apocalyptic. You’re revealing who you really are to yourself.

  Li-Young Lee

  Writing, Revealing

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• From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything, and go ahead with techniques for which we have no way of responding to the known problems.

  Carl Safina

  Lucky Day, Oil, Risk

  "Deepwater Horizon, One Year Later: A Conversation With Carl Safina". Interview with Douglas Gorney, www.theatlantic.com. April 20, 2011.

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• According to Hindu cosmology, we're in the kali yuga, a dark period when the cow of history is balanced precariously on one leg, soon to topple. Then there are our new-age friends who believe that this December we're in for a global cage-rattling which, once the dust has settled, will usher in a great spiritual awakening. Most of this apocalyptic noise appears to be just wishful thinking on the part of people who find life too messy and uncertain for comfort, let alone for serenity and mirth.

  Tom Robbins

  Spiritual, Believe, Dark

  "The Syntax of Sorcery". Interview with Tony Vigorito, realitysandwich.com. June 6, 2012.

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• Everyone in Seattle is a total pussy when it comes to snow. The whole city shut down, the place looked like an apocalyptic movie.

  Hamilton Leithauser

  Cities, Snow, Pussy

  "Listen: New Walkmen: 'Heaven'". Interview with Larry Fitzmaurice, pitchfork.com. April 16, 2012.

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• I am glad it's [California novel] resonated with people because, for me, most apocalyptic novels aren't scary, because they feel so very far off.

  Edan Lepucki

  California, People, Scary

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I often think about how, if we were all placed in an apocalyptic situation, you'd realize quickly how stupid, petty things just don't matter anymore. Who you love is who you love, and it doesn't matter. Survival is your primary focus.

  Alycia Debnam Carey

  Stupid, Love Is, Thinking

  "Alycia Debnam-Carey on ‘The 100′ Season 3 and ‘Fear the Walking Dead’". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. January 21, 2016.

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• When you're spending that much time by yourself in your car looking at landscapes, it's desolate. Most of the other people around you are invisible in their own cars. You're driving past houses where maybe once in a while somebody is out, but that's about it. So I was interested in that aesthetic and I decided I wanted to write an apocalyptic narrative, but the more I thought of it, it seemed bizarre and untenable to me to pick one, so I just didn't.

  Lucy Corin

  Writing, Past, Car

  Source: therumpus.net

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