Collapse Quotes - Page 9

• Money is the most important subject intellectual persons can investigate and reflect upon. It is so important that our present civilization may collapse unless it is widely understood and its defects remedied very soon.

  Robert W. Hemphill

  Money, Civilization, Intellectual

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• By abrogating all moral standards in their war against Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders initiated a process of moral collapse that has ended by soaking their own societies in blood. The terror they intended to inflict only upon others has rebounded with a hundred times greater horror upon their own lands.

  David Frum

  War, Israel, Blood

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• At the crash of economic collapse of which the rumblings can already be heard, the sleeping soldiers of the proletariat will awake as at the fanfare of the Last Judgment and the corpses of the victims of the struggle will arise and demand an accounting from those who are loaded down with curses.

  Karl Liebknecht

  Struggle, Sleep, Soldier

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• Poetry is the most subtle of the literary arts, and students grow more ingenious by the year at avoiding it. If they can nip around Milton, duck under Blake and collapse gratefully into the arms of Jane Austen, a lot of them will.

  Terry Eagleton

  Art, Years, Ducks

  "A puritan at play" by Terry Eagleton, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2008.

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• Only when we have enough mental stress to force us to see our own bankruptcy of power, do we trust in God, and only when we trust in God can we make a contribution which will not collapse.

  Kenneth Lee Pike

  Stress, Trust In God, Enough

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• It seems to me that there must be an ecological limit to the number of paper pushers the earth can sustain, and that human civilization will collapse when the number of, say, tax lawyers exceeds the world's total population of farmers, weavers, fisherpersons, and pediatric nurses.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Civilization, Numbers, Nurse

  Barbara Ehrenreich (1990). “WORST YEARS OF OUR LIVES”, Pantheon

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• No one will remember that President Obama supported the Arab Spring if it eventually fails and the region collapses back into the political Dark Ages. If we actively engage these movements with advice, with money, and, when necessary, with military force, then we get a vote in how it all turns out.

  Sebastian Junger

  Spring, Military, Dark

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• What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses.

  Frank Herbert

  Loyalty, Real, Greatness

  "Children of Dune". Book by Frank Herbert, 1976.

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• A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not about political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time. All of the people of the Earth are in a desperate race against disaster... To save the Earth we must look beyond it, to interplanetary space. To present the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it, we must understand that our planet does not exist in isolation.

  Ben Bova

  Military, Civilization, Space

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• Cyprus was a breath away from economic collapse. It was a big battle in which we came out wounded, but upright and determined to make a fresh start.

  Nicos Anastasiades

  Battle, Cyprus, Fresh Start

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• There is an old song which asserts 'the best things in life are free.' Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted...and get it without toil, without sweat, without tears. Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Song, Pain, Believe

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Starship Troopers”, p.76, Penguin

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• With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President
  Obama ... is stepping once again - and with understandably great reluctance - into the chaos
  of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but
  gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism -
  the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the
  Ottoman Empire a century ago.

  Hisham Melhem

  Islamic, Civilization, Broken

  "The Barbarians Within Our Gates" by Hisham Melhem, www.politico.com. September 18, 2014.

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• It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse.

  Mike Lee

  Ceilings, Fiction, Debt

  "Republican Senator Wants Deeper Spending Cuts". "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, www.foxnews.com. February 08, 2011.

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• If you line everything up, just right, you walk through a doorway where the world as you know it collapses.

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, World, Lines

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• One of the most destructive things that's happening in modern society is that we are losing our sense of the bonds that bind people together - which can lead to nightmares of social collapse.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  People, Together, Losing

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• Actually I can't imagine Nato troops on the ground and I think it's also important to send that very clear message to the UN and other organisations right now so that appropriate plans can be in place in due time and the Gaddafi regime can collapse soon.

  Anders Fogh Rasmussen

  Thinking, Important, Messages

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• No part of Italian society should see itself as exempt from the effort to save Italy from collapse.

  Giorgio Napolitano

  Italian, Effort, Should

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• But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.

  Robert Benchley

  Blow, Ice, Brain

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.24, Courier Corporation

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• There is no indispensable man. The government will not collapse and go to pieces if any one of the gentlemen who are seeking to be entrusted with its guidance should be left at home.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Home, Men, Gentleman

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1978). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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• I have always thought that if we began for one moment to say what we thought, society would collapse.

  Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

  Honesty, Moments, Ifs

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• I think the popular concept of the artist is a person who has this great passion and enthusiasm and super emotion. He just throws himself into this great masterpiece and collapses from exhaustion when it's finished. It's really not that way at all.

  Richard Estes

  Passion, Artist, Thinking

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• The future will be less predictable, forecast rises will shrink, company lifetimes will shrink, new entrants will proliferate and it’s going to just get more unpredictable. If you thought financial crises came and went, just count on them – another economic collapse, it’s almost going to be like not news any more. But for startups this is great, because it’s a perpetual driver of disruption.

  Steve Jurvetson

  News, Financial, Lifetime

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• Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any of the properties of visual space, and as they flow from each other, the whole conceptual framework collapses.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Space, Challenges, Flow

  "Laws of Media: The New Science". Book by Marshall McLuhan, co-written with Eric McLuhan, p.43, 1988.

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• The negative way [of describing God] is a cardboard prop of Christianity to conceal its unknowable God. When this prop collapses, theistic agnosticism emerges, complete with its package of contradictions and non-sensical utterances.

  George H. Smith

  Negative, Utterance, Way

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• The speed with which armies collapse, bureaucracies abdicate, and social structures dissolve once the autocrat is removed frequently surprises American Policy makers.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Army, Surprise, Speed

  "Jeane Kirkpatrick". www.economist.com. December 19, 2006.

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