Devastation Quotes - Page 5

• This is the great truth life has to teach us ... that gratification of our individual desires and expression of our personal preferences without consideration for their effect upon others brings in the end nothing but ruin and devastation.

  Hortense Odlum

  Expression, Desire, Ruins

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• Ecological devastation is the excrement, so to speak, of man's power worship.

  Ernest Becker

  Men, Worship, Speak

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• We can break the mountains apart; we can drain the rivers and flood the valleys. We can turn the most luxuriant forests into throw-away paper products. We can tear apart the great grass cover of the western plains and pour toxic chemicals into the soil and pesticides onto the fields until the soil is dead and blows away in the wind. We can pollute the air with acids, the rivers with sewage, the seas with oil - all this in a kind of intoxication with our power for devastation at an order of magnitude beyond all reckoning.

  Thomas Berry

  Blow, Oil, Rivers

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• A fish is free as long as it stays in the water. If it suddenly declares that it wants its freedom to fly in the air like a bird, disaster occurs. A train is free as long as it stays on the track. However, if it demands freedom to take off down a major highway, the result is destruction and devastation. We too can only experience true freedom in its fullest if we remain within the framework of freedom. Often this requires accepting responsibility and practicing discipline.

  Gigi Graham

  Responsibility, Air, Discipline

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• The world is broken, and all our attempts to fix it will inevitably fail, and some day all life will be extinguished from the planet and there will be no one to remember that any of us ever did anything. But this fact, strangely, does not delegitimize hope, because every now and again we find evidence that hope is helpful. This evidence, in my opinion, should be celebrated-even as we lament and fight the devastation.

  John Green

  Fighting, Broken, Doe

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• I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

  Donald Trump

  Thinking, Important, Nuclear

  Source: cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com

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• Very little makes me feel vulnerable these days. I hit my absolute apex of vulnerability when I returned to my home state of Louisiana, during the Gulf oil spill disaster, and witnessed mass devastation to every demonstration of life surrounding me - from grass, trees, bayous, insects, to animals and people - we all felt demolished.

  Ian Somerhalder

  Home, Animal, Oil

  "Interview with United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Ian Somerhalder". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• I only started to understand the concept of "environmental protection" 14 years ago. I was an ambassador for a charity event, and the staff told me that the consumption of disposable chopsticks in China, per year, could result in the devastation of unimaginable acres of forest.

  Li Bingbing

  Years, Environmental, Events

  "Interview with Li Bingbing on Elephants and Ivory Poaching". Interview with Maranda Pleasant, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• The common fisheries policy unfortunately led to the devastation of fishing in Scotland. My dad had to close his business. As a result something that he been built up by by grandfather and maintained by my dad disappeared. So my dad suffered.

  Michael Gove

  Dad, Fishing, Scotland

  Source: www.theguardian.com

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• It is a fact that the ecological devastation of the planet can be traced to the consumption of meat and dairy, which contributes to water, soil, and air pollution as well as global warming and the mass extinction of many species of plant and animal forms.

  Sharon Gannon

  Animal, Air, Mass Extinction

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• So many more cycles of elation of the first kiss, and devastation when it's over.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Kissing, First Kiss, Elation

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.267, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• My mother ... had a very deep inner spirituality that allowed her to rebuild her life. It's extraordinary that she had such a strong sense of self and such a commitment to the future and such a strong creative sense that she could build new worlds for herself and for us out of the total devastation in her life.

  Caroline Kennedy

  Mom, Mother, Strong

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• The best indicator of a sociopath serial bully is not a clinical diagnosis but the trail of devastation and destruction of lives and livelihoods surrounding this individual throughout their life.

  Tim Field

  Bullying, Diagnosis, Sociopath

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• Among these treasures of our land is water-fast becoming our most valuable, most prized, most critical resource. A blessing where properly used-but it can bring devastation and ruin when left uncontrolled.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Blessing, Land, Water

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• When we walk slowly, the world can fully appear. Not only are the creatures not frightened away by our haste or aggression, but the fine detail of fern and flower, or devastation and disruption, becomes visible. Many of us hurry along because we do not want to see what is really going on in and around us. We are afraid to let our senses touch the body of suffering or the body of beauty

  Joan Halifax

  Flower, Suffering, Ferns

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• The Iraqis had paid a terrible price for Saddam's folly (in the Gulf War). But looking at the devastation they left behind (in Kuwait), my sympathy was limited.

  Margaret Thatcher

  War, Kuwait, Terrible

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• The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.

  Thomas Berry

  Moving, Transition, Would Be

  Thomas Berry (2011). “The Great Work: Our Way into the Future”, p.3, Crown

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• I paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine to pray for the souls of those who had fought for the country and made ultimate sacrifices. I have made a pledge never to wage war again, that we must build a world that is free from the sufferings of the devastation of war.

  Shinzo Abe

  Country, War, Sacrifice

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• There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost.

  Desmond Tutu

  Home, Rivers, Ozone

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• I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that?

  Luis J. Rodriguez

  People, Addiction, Sitting

  Source: bluemesareview.org

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• You read statistics all the time like, "13 million people are at risk because of the severe drought in East Africa," but I think those kinds of numbers fall on deaf ears - there's so much devastation in the world, that it's a bit overwhelming for people.

  Scarlett Johansson

  Fall, Thinking, Numbers

  Interview with Arianna Huffington, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 22, 2011.

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• Worst of all, however, is the devastation wrought by the misuse of religious conviction for political ends. In truth, we cannot sharply enough attack those wretched crooks who would like to make religion an implement to perform political or rather business services for them.

  Adolf Hitler

  Religious, Political, Crooks

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Pain is pain and sorrow is sorrow. It hurts. It limits. It impoverishes. It isolates. It restrains. It works devastation deep within the personality. It circumscribes in a thousand different ways. There is nothing good about it. But the gifts God can give with it are the richest the human spirit can know.

  Margaret Clarkson

  Hurt, Pain, Giving

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• And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world, or to repair the devastation we've already wrought.

  Daniel Quinn

  Mastery, World, Enough

  Daniel Quinn (2009). “Ishmael: A Novel”, p.80, Bantam

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• We have to choose between dialogue and utter devastation.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Dialogue

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