Catastrophe Quotes

• Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.

  H. G. Wells

  Education, Appreciation, Witty

  Outline of History (1920) vol. 2, ch. 41, pt. 4

  87 Copy quote

  Show source

• This awful catastrophe is not the end but the beginning. History does not end so. It is the way its chapters open.

  Saint Augustine

  Risk, Doe, Awful

  8 Copy quote

• The happiness of most people is not ruined by great catastrophes or fatal errors, but by the repetition of slowly destructive little things.

  Ernest Dimnet

  Inspirational, Happiness, Happy

  "What We Live by". Book by Ernest Dimnet, p. 238, 1932.

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is really amazing, and frustrating, is mankind's habit of refusing to see the obvious and inevitable until it is there, and then muttering about unforeseen catastrophes.

  Isaac Asimov

  Habit, Muttering, Obvious

  17 Copy quote

• Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?

  Virginia Woolf

  Illusion, Praise, Ifs

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.572, Wordsworth Editions

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Catastrophe and creation are twins.

  Barbara Marx Hubbard

  Creativity, Chaos, Twins

  Barbara Marx Hubbard (2010). “Conscious Evolution: Awakening the Power of Our Social Potential”, p.150, New World Library

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• What I know for sure is that behind every catastrophe, there are great lessons to be learned. Among the many that we as a country need to get is that as long as we play the "us and them" game, we don't evolve as people, as a nation, as a planet.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Success, Country, Business

  8 Copy quote

• We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and the threat is outrunning our response.

  Sam Nunn

  Race, Cooperation, Threat

  "Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction". Panel Discussion, www.belfercenter.org. June 27, 2005.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else.

  Don DeLillo

  Somewhere Else, Long, Want

  Don DeLillo (2011). “White Noise”, p.77, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• One may as well be optimistic. The road to catastrophe will be rougher if it's paved with dread.

  John Perry Barlow

  Optimistic, May, Dread

  7 Copy quote

• One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

  Jean Giraudoux

  Privilege, Witness, Terrace

  Jean Giraudoux (1963). “Judith. Tiger at the gates. Duel of angels”

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

  Susan Sontag

  Change, Nature, Swag

  9 Copy quote

• For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

  Oscar Wilde

  People, Tragedy, Farce

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.823, GENERAL PRESS

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Accomplices

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1956). “Collected Poems”, HarperCollins Publishers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

  Isaac Asimov

  Writing, Science, Fiction

  1975 'How Easy To See The Future', in Natural History, Apr.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.

  Vladimir Putin

  Demise, Unions, Provocative

  Speech on national TV, April 25, 2005.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• "There's been a quantum leap technologically in our age, but unless there's another quantum leap in human relations, unless we learn to live in a new way towards one another, there will be a catastrophe."

  Albert Einstein

  Peace, Age, Way

  13 Copy quote

• The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life.

  Mason Cooley

  Drama, Tragedy, Littles

  5 Copy quote

• Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience.

  Bruce Lee

  Mma, Differences, Inconvenience

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living”, p.221, Tuttle Publishing

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• How small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles.

  H. G. Wells

  Distance, May, Apocalypse

  H. G. Wells (2015). “The Door in the Wall: H. G. Wells Collections”, p.24, 谷月社

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Life, God

  Telegram to prominent Americans, 24 May 1946

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The term clinical depression finds its way into too many conversations these days. One has a sense that a catastrophe has occurred in the psychic landscape.

  Leonard Cohen

  Depression, Depressing, Psychics

  The International Herald Tribune, November 4, 1988.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If some great catastrophe is not announced every morning, we feel a certain void. Nothing in the paper today, we sigh.

  Lord Acton

  Morning, Anxiety, Paper

  8 Copy quote

• When a man meets catastrophe on the road, he looks in his purse, but a woman looks in her mirror.

  Margaret Turnbull

  Women, Mirrors, Looks

  8 Copy quote

• Great breakthroughs are always followed by great catastrophes.

  Rosalia de Castro

  Breakthrough

  13 Copy quote