Catastrophe Quotes - Page 21

• Irony is the hardest addiction of all. Forget heroin. Just try giving up irony, the deep-down need to mean two things at once, to be in two places at once, not to be there for the catastrophe of a fixed meaning.

  Edward St Aubyn

  Giving Up, Mean, Two

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• I often compare myself as a kid to my own grandchildren, who are around 11 and 14 now. That's the age kids usually read my book. And I remember myself, we'd gone through a world war. My father was an army officer so I was aware of what was going on. But I wasn't bombarded with images of catastrophe like many kids are today.

  Lois Lowry

  Father, War, Book

  "Lois Lowry, ‘Son’ And ‘The Giver’ Author, Reflects On Dystopian Novels, Psychopaths And Why Kids Make The Best Audiences". Interview with Lucas Kavner, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 5, 2012.

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• However, I also want to say this. The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy. At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control. Now, to me, this was about a federal agency’s dangerous response to a situation that could have resulted in a catastrophe, and that means people dying and people being shot, kind of comparable to what we saw in Waco, Texas.

  Sean Hannity

  Mean, Heart, Men

  "Sean Hannity: 'Our government is simply out of control'". "Hannity" with Sean Hannity, www.foxnews.com. April 24, 2014.

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• No connection between Iraq and the 9/11 catastrophe.

  Richard Ben-Veniste

  Iraq, Connections

  "Meet the Press", www.nbcnews.com. June 20, 2004.

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• The news might be single-handedly trying to bring about an environmental catastrophe, which it will then report on. Super injunctions are interesting legal weapons really, they don't just gag the press, they gag them from mentioning the existence of the gag. Sport belongs in a news bulletin about as much as a mummified cat's head belongs in a Caesar salad. Combine the "mounting pressure" with the "growing cause" and you've got yourself a "media whirlwind" which you can also refer to.

  Charlie Brooker

  Sports, Cat, Media

  "Newswipe with Charlie Brooker", 2009 - 2010.

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• In the long run, though, the greatest IT risk facing most companies is more prosaic than a catastrophe. It is, simply, overspending. IT may be a commodity, and its costs may fall rapidly enough to ensure that any new capabilities are quickly shared, but the very fact that it is entwined with so many business functions means that it will continue to consume a large portion of corporate spending.

  Nicholas G. Carr

  Running, Fall, Mean

  "Why IT Doesn't Matter Anymore". hbswk.hbs.edu. June 09, 2003.

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• A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes.

  Bill Mollison

  Stars, Creating, Car

  "Permaculture: A Designers' Manual". Book by Bill Mollison, 1988.

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• Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strife, and can prevent the pending extermination of man by man on this planet. Without love, no armament, no war, no diplomatic machinations, no coercive police force, no school education, no economic or political measures, not even hydrogen bombs can prevent the pending catastrophe.

  Pitirim Sorokin

  Love, Education, War

  Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (2002). “The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation”, p.12, Templeton Foundation Press

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• The banks themselves were doing business on capitals three-fourths of which were fictitious. This fictitious capital... is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe, have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of the debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Fall, Sacrifice

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• Just imagine going to war over Danzig - such a world catastrophe, just to prevent Germany from getting a piece of territory that belonged to her; because Britain was afraid of Germany getting too strong.

  Joachim von Ribbentrop

  Strong, War, Germany

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• Plain experience and common sense inform us that no abstract Person can have made us as we are without also wishing to delete us and start over (Gen. 8:21; Zeph. 1:2). Therefore, the existence of cruel and arbitrary nature, together with the universality of human sin, prevents us from beginning the theological enterprise with any concept of God that is distinct from revelation. All theologies of a cosmic harmonic principle shipwreck on the truths of tragedy, catastrophe, and injustice.

  Paul F. M. Zahl

  Common Sense, Starting Over, Together

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• We all know the tragedy of the dustbowls, the cruel unforgivable erosions of the soil, the depletion of fish or game, and the shrinking of the noble forests. And we know that such catastrophes shrivel the spirit of the people... The wilderness is pushed back, man is everywhere. Solitude, so vital to the individual man, is almost nowhere.

  Ansel Adams

  Men, Erosion, Games

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• Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes.

  Anais Nin

  Self, Suffering, Patterns

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• Let passion reach a catastrophe and it submits us to an intoxicating force far more powerful than the niggardly irritation of wine or of opium. The lucidity our ideas then achieve, and the delicacy of our overly exalted sensations, produce the strangest and most unexpected effects.

  Honore de Balzac

  Powerful, Passion, Wine

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• Lives are only one with living. How dare we, in our egos, claim catastrophe in the rise and fall of the individual entity? There is only Life, and we are beads strung on its strong and endless thread.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Strong, Fall, Oneness

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (2015). “Cross Creek”, p.218, Booklassic

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• The century would seek to dominate nature as it had never been dominated, would attack the idea of war, poverty and natural catastrophe as never before. The century would create death, devastation and pollution as never before. Yet the century was now attached to the idea that man must take his conception of life out to the stars.

  Norman Mailer

  Stars, War, Men

  Norman Mailer (1970). “Of A Fire On The Moon”

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• [In-group exclusivism has] killed more human beings and destroyed more cities and villages than all the epidemics, hurricanes, storms, floods, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions taken together. It has brought upon mankind more suffering than any other catastrophe.

  Pitirim Sorokin

  Taken, Epidemics, Earthquakes

  Pitirim Aleksandrovich Sorokin (2002). “The Ways and Power of Love: Types, Factors, and Techniques of Moral Transformation”, p.24, Templeton Foundation Press

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