Collapse Quotes - Page 22

• I'm not saying we're going to win. I am saying rebellion becomes a way to protect your own dignity. Corporations are, theologically speaking, institutions of death. They commodify everything - the natural world, human beings - that they exploit until exhaustion or collapse. They know no limits.

  Chris Hedges

  Winning, World, Corporations

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. July 14, 2011.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• With the decline of American interests in the outcome of this region, there is no glue holding it together. And the countries in this region are invented ... The last guarantor of the region's borders was the United States, and the US has basically said "the hell with it." What you're really having is the collapse of nation-states because they're not nations. They're only states.

  George Friedman

  Country, Together, Borders

  Source: www.businessinsider.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today, our incentives aren't set up well - you can make a lot of money burning fossil fuels, digging up wetlands, pumping fossil water out of aquifers that will take 10,000 years to recharge, overfishing species in international waters that are close to collapse, and so on.

  Ramez Naam

  Aquifers, Years, Water

  "Q&A with Ramez Naam: Dialogues on the Environment". Interview with Mark Tercek, bigthink.com.

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that we will see a lot of destruction, but I believe that if we can see the right patterns and draw the right lessons from that destruction, we might be able to rebuild before it's too late. And then I have that ultimate optimism that even if we can't, life will rebuild itself. In a way, the global economy might collapse, but Gaia won't, and people's ingenuity won't. We will rebuild society, we will rebuild local economies, we will rebuild human aspirations.

  Vandana Shiva

  Believe, Optimism, People

  Source: scottlondon.com

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The underlying strategy of the Fed is to tell people, "Do you want your money to lose value in the bank, or do you want to put it in the stock market?" They're trying to push money into the stock market, into hedge funds, to temporarily bid up prices. Then, all of a sudden, the Fed can raise interest rates, let the stock market prices collapse and the people will lose even more in the stock market than they would have by the negative interest rates in the bank. So it's a pro-Wall Street financial engineering gimmick.

  Michael Hudson

  Wall, Engineering, People

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Architects thrive after massive urban disasters. The abject collapse of East Berlin gave us the only city in Europe with a mighty host of Postmodern skyscrapers.

  Bruce Sterling

  East Berlin, Europe, Cities

  4 Copy quote

• This idea that America is somehow on the verge of collapse, this vision of violence and chaos everywhere, doesn't really jibe with the experience of most people.

  Barack Obama

  Ideas, America, People

  "Obama: Trump's speech 'doesn't really jibe' with facts". www.theguardian.com. July 22, 2016.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse.

  Lester R. Brown

  Country, Government, Causes

  "Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization" by Lester R. Brown, www.scientificamerican.com. May 2009.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ugly programs are like ugly suspension bridges: they're much more liable to collapse than pretty ones, because the way humans (especially engineer-humans) perceive beauty is intimately related to our ability to process and understand complexity. A language that makes it hard to write elegant code makes it hard to write good code.

  Eric S. Raymond

  Writing, Learning, Bridges

  "Why Python?". www.linuxjournal.com. Apr 30, 2000.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some beliefs may be subject to such instant, brutal and unambiguous rejection. For example: no left-coiling periwinkle has ever been found among millions of snails examined. If I happen to find one during my walk on Nobska beach tomorrow morning, a century of well nurtured negative evidence will collapse in an instant.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Beach, Morning, Science

  4 Copy quote

• That we do not discover reality but rather invent it is quite shocking for many people. And the shocking part about it - according to the concept of radical constructivism - is that the only thing we can ever know about the real reality (if it even exists) is what it is not. It is only with the collapse of our constructions of reality that we first discover that the world is not the way we imagine.

  Paul Watzlawick

  Real, People, Way

  50 Copy quote

• The suddenness of the leap from hardware to software cannot but produce a period of anarchy and collapse, especially in the developed countries.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Country, Media, Anarchy

  Marshall McLuhan, Matie Molinaro, Corinne McLuhan, William Toye (1987). “Letters of Marshall McLuhan”, Oxford University Press, USA

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Homosexuality is not a civil right. Its rise almost always is accompanied, as in the Weimar Republic, with a decay of society and a collapse of its basic cinder block, the family.

  Pat Buchanan

  Block, Decay, Republic

  24 Copy quote

• The progressive Left can be in favor of Big Government or population control but not both. The mutual incompatibility is about to plunge Europe into societal collapse. There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital - and that's before anyone invented unsustainable welfare systems.

  Mark Steyn

  Government, Europe, Growth

  Mark Steyn (2006). “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It”, p.3, Regnery Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ironically, the universities have trained hundreds of thousands of graduates for jobs that soon will not exist. They have trained people to maintain a structure that cannot be maintained. The elite...know only how to feed the beast until it dies. Once it is dead, they will be helpless. Don't expect them to save us. They don't know how....and when it all collapses, when our rotten financial system with its trillions in worthless assets implodes and our imperial wars end in humiliation and defeat, the power elite will be exposed as being as helpless, and as self-deluded as the rest of us

  Chris Hedges

  Jobs, War, Self

  35 Copy quote

• On golfer Rory McIlroy's collapse in the final round of the 2011 Masters: We had hoped to compare the young Northern Irishman to the great Masters champions but instead had to reach for the compendium of great golfing train wrecks.

  Matt Dickinson

  Failure, Train Wrecks, Champion

  4 Copy quote

• The bottom line for housing is that the concerns we used to hear about the possibility of a devastating collapse—one that might be big enough to cause a recession in the U.S. economy—while not fully allayed have diminished. Moreover, while the future for housing activity remains uncertain, I think there is a reasonable chance that housing is in the process of stabilizing, which would mean that it would put a considerably smaller drag on the economy going forward.

  Janet Yellen

  Mean, Thinking, Lines

  7 Copy quote

• Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Funny, Money, Greedy

  "The Complete Neurotic's Notebook". Book by Mignon McLaughlin, 1981.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Look at your body— A painted puppet, a poor toy Of jointed parts ready to collapse, A diseased and suffering thing With a head full of false imaginings. —The Dhammapada

  Thomas Ligotti

  Suffering, Looks, Body

  37 Copy quote

• What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries?... In order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

  Maurice Strong

  Change, Country, Responsibility

  "Environmentalism: Ideology and Power". Book by Donald Gibson, 2002.

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• By the end of the 50s, everything began to collapse and, little by little, I lost all of my work. I lost Rex, the Wonder Dog and all the westerns.

  Gil Kane

  Dog, Littles, Wonder

  4 Copy quote

• After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleashed its greedy and - above all - its suicidal power. The belief is now that everything - and everyone - is fair game.

  Gunter Grass

  Suicidal, Games, Rivals

  22 Copy quote

• I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Internet, Supernova

  "Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis: Meditations on Computer Systems Development". Book by Patrick McDermott, 2002.

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Almost all of the many predictions now being made about 1996 hinge on the internet's continuing exponential growth. But I predict the internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.

  Robert Metcalfe

  Growth, Internet, Predictions

  "Zen and the Art of Systems Analysis: Meditations on Computer Systems Development". Book by Patrick Mcdermott, 2002.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You would think that if neoliberals were in any way honest, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the first thing to do is get rid of the Red Army and the KGB, and build up the economy. Instead, they just get rid of the economy and keep the military and the KGB.

  David Graeber

  Military, Army, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source