Disaster Quotes - Page 14

• Environmental disaster is the gravest threat to China's continued development. That's according to me, but it is not some wacko view.

  James Fallows

  Views, Environmental, Development

  4 Copy quote

• Wives invariably flourish when deserted; ... it is the deserting male, the reckless idealist rushing about the world seeking a non-existent felicity, who often ends in disaster.

  William McFee

  Rushing, Wife, Infidelity

  7 Copy quote

• Disaster appears, to crush one man now, but afterward another.

  Euripides

  Crush, Adversity, Men

  Euripides (2013). “Euripides I: Alcestis, Medea, The Children of Heracles, Hippolytus”, p.54, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. To keep the peace, we and our allies must be strong enough to convince any potential aggressor that war could bring no benefit, only disaster.

  Ronald Reagan

  Strong, War, Believe

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1984). “Ronald Reagan”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yet there is a dignity in the human spirit which can become most clearly visible in the moment of defeat and disaster.

  Bruce Catton

  Spirit, Dignity, Defeat

  6 Copy quote

• The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.

  Cyril Connolly

  War, World, Able

  1944 The Unquiet Grave, pt.2.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Animals are unpredictable things, and so our life is unpredictable. It's a long tale of little triumphs and disasters and you've got to really like it to stick it.

  James Herriot

  Animal, Unpredictable Things, Long

  James Herriot (2012). “If Only They Could Talk: The classic memoirs of a 1930s vet”, p.34, Pan Macmillan

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth superhighway on which we progress with great speed, but at its end lies disaster.

  Rachel Carson

  Lying, Long, Progress

  "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson, (p. 277), 1962.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes I think I might not have written 'The Age of Miracles' if I hadn't grown up in California, if I hadn't been exposed to its very particular blend of beauty and disaster, of danger and denial.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Thinking, California, Miracle

  6 Copy quote

• Our country, we have faith to believe, is only at the beginning of its growth. Unless the forests of the United States can be made ready to meet the vast demands which this growth will inevitably bring, commercial disaster, that means disaster to the whole country, is inevitable.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Country, Believe, Mean

  Theodore Roosevelt (1970). “Presidential Addresses and State Papers of Theodore Roosevelt: With Portrait Frontispiece”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Alas, all too often, the dream turns into a mud puddle. I am left looking at a disaster. What to do! Keep working. I ask the Almighty for help. That frees me.

  Jules Olitski

  Dream, Failure, Mud

  7 Copy quote

• Negotiating sugar trade in bilateral free trade agreements is a recipe for disaster for the U.S. sugar industry, and it is unnecessary.

  Kent Conrad

  Agreement, Recipes, Sugar

  4 Copy quote

• Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, oil spills and radioactive fallout cause massive death of people, pigs, bats and birds. These disasters also impact the immune health of survivors. All harbor viruses.

  Paul Stamets

  Impact, Volcanoes, Pigs

  "Agarikon: Ancient Mushroom for Modern Medicine" by Paul Stamets, www.huffingtonpost.com. September 15, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I still feel needles in my back when I think about all the horrible disasters that would have befallen me if I had permanently moved to San Francisco and rented a big house, joined the company dole, become national-affairs editor for some upstart magazine—that was the plan around 1967. But that would have meant going to work on a regular basis, like nine to five, with an office—I had to pull out.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Thinking, Editors, San Francisco

  Hunter S. Thompson, Beef Torrey, Kevin Simonson (2008). “Conversations with Hunter S. Thompson”, p.149, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you see reference to a new paradigm you should always, under all circumstances, take cover. Because ever since the great tulipmania in 1637, speculation has always been covered by a new paradigm. There was never a paradigm so new and so wonderful as the one that covered John Law and the South Sea Bubble - until the day of disaster.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Sea, Law, Wonderful

  "Galbraith on Crashes, Japan and Walking Sticks" by Ben Laurance and William Keegan, The Observer, June 21, 1998.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I work closely with a number of charities from food pantries to drug rehabilitation to natural disaster relief to preventing sexual exploitation of young girls. It is one of the most rewarding things I do.

  Beyonce Knowles

  Girl, Numbers, Drug

  "Exclusive: Beyoncé Discusses New H&M Campaign". Interview with Lisa Dougan, www.elle.com. April 15, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I notice the older I get, the more my speaking voice turns people around. Even if they have no idea who I am, they know they've heard this weird nasal disaster somewhere before.

  Jay Baruchel

  Who I Am, Ideas, Voice

  Source: www.esquire.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a joke about the balloon boy who has a balloon mum and a balloon dad and he goes to a balloon school with balloon friends ad a balloon principal. And one day, the balloon boy decides to take a pin to his balloon school, which is, of course, a disaster. And he's called into the balloon principal's office, and the balloon principal tells him, 'You've let me down, you've let your school down, you've let your parents down, you've let your friends down. But most importantly you've let yourself down'.

  Gabrielle Williams

  Dad, School, Boys

  Gabrielle Williams (2010). “Beatle Meets Destiny”, p.216, Marshall Cavendish

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is not permitted to a man, who takes up pen or chisel, to seek originality, for passion is his only business, and he cannot but mould or sing after a new fashion because no disaster is like another.

  William Butler Yeats

  Fashion, Passion, Men

  William Butler Yeats (1998). “Mythologies”, p.339, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so: we still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Heart, Thinking

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.196, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know ... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.

  Jean Anouilh

  Worry, Inheritance, Earth

  Jean Anouilh (1991). “The rehearsal or Love punished”, Methuen

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

  Mary Oliver

  Life, Wells, Seals

  Mary Oliver (1986). “Dream Work”, p.71, Atlantic Monthly Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.

  William S. Burroughs

  Government, Law, Cities

  William S. Burroughs (2007). “Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader”, p.416, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.

  Susan Sontag

  War, Years, Long

  "Why Are We in Kosovo?" by Susan Sontag, www.nytimes.com. May 2, 1999.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Stoutly as we may affirm that our disasters and vices are chargeable to luck, we never dream of ascribing our meritorious deeds, in the slightest degree to its agency. In such cases we quite unconsciously blink out of sight the magic power of the latter principle, so wondrous and all-controlling in its influence at other times, and coolly appropriate to ourselves not merely the lion's share, but the whole glory of our position.

  William Matthews

  Dream, Agency, Sight

  7 Copy quote