Disaster Quotes - Page 27

• Every week I have a disaster in my kitchen. The fire alarm goes off repeatedly. But it doesn't stop me being adventurous.

  Paul O'Grady

  Fire, Kitchen, Alarms

  "Paul O'Grady: 'You could torture me on the rack and I'd still refuse to eat balut'" by John Hind, www.theguardian.com. April 16, 2011.

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• Would it be anything like a literary disaster if Gore Vidal were to fall silent? Easy. No. In fact, there is something to be said for the idea.

  Lance Morrow

  Art, Fall, Ideas

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• I have to admit that one of the saddest things I see in ministry is a woman who belittles her husband. Even if he has indeed failed in some way, his wife’s disparaging words compound the disaster exponentially. Her cynicism is utterly emasculating, and many times, incredibly subtle. Like a fine, thin blade, it slices deep, penetrating to the very core of his masculine soul.

  Stu Weber

  Husband, Wife, Soul

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• Each time the losses and deceptions of life teach us about impermanence, they bring us closer to the truth. When you fall from a great height, there is only one possible place to land: on the ground-the ground of truth. And if you have the understanding that comes from spiritual practice, then falling is in no way a disaster, but the discovery of an inner refuge.

  Sogyal Rinpoche

  Spiritual, Fall, Loss

  FaceBook post by Sogyal Rinpoche from Jul 24, 2015

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• If you call [the synagogue] a brothel, a den of vice, the devil's refuge, Satan's fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever else you will, you are still saying less than it deserves.

  St. Jerome

  Saying Less, Soul, Devil

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• To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters.

  William Kentridge

  Strong, Art, Evil

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• Frame every so-called disaster with these words: In five years, will this matter?

  Regina Brett

  Attitude, Years, Matter

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• It is for these reasons that I believe we must expand day-care centers and provide other assistance which I have recommended to the Congress. At present, the total facilities of all the licensed day-care centers in the Nation can take care of only 185,000 children. Nearly 500,000 children under 12 must take care of themselves while their mothers work. This, it seems to me, is a formula for disaster.

  John F. Kennedy

  Mother, Children, Believe

  "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy, 1963".

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• You may be right that people say: You know what, we had Obama. He was inexperienced. The guy had great rhetoric, sounded good, looked good, but has turned out to be an utter disaster. I want someone where I have confidence and credibility that they're up to the job and that I can trust what they tell me.

  Karl Rove

  Confidence, Jobs, People

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• Whether your focus is on preserving and strengthening family ties in a world of increasingly unstable relationships, gaining access to a decent job, growing and evolving as a person, or guiding a company through the stormy seas of a fiercely competitive global marketplace-whether your goals are material, emotional, or spiritual-the price of success is the same: thinking, learning. To be asleep at the wheel-to rely only on the known, familiar, and automatized-is to invite disaster.

  Nathaniel Branden

  Success, Spiritual, Jobs

  Nathaniel Branden (1998). “Nathaniel Brandens Self-Esteem Every Day: Reflections on Self-Esteem and Spirituality”, p.383, Simon and Schuster

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• Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

  Terrence McNally

  Writing, Thinking, People

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• Even in the things that look most frivolous there has to be the threat of something quite painful to make the comedy work. I suppose the play of mine that's best know is NOISES OFF, which everyone thinks is a simple farce about actors making fools of themselves. But I think it makes people laugh because everyone is terrified inside themselves of having some kind of breakdown, of being unable to go on. When people laugh at that play, they're laughing at a surrogate version of the disaster which might occur to them.

  Michael Frayn

  Simple, Thinking, Play

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• Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspiration, Character, Improvement

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• This visit is meant to express my closeness to our brothers and sisters who endured the suffering, loss and devastation caused by Typhoon Yolanda.  Together with many people throughout the world, I have admired the heroic strength, faith and resilience demonstrated by so many Filipinos in the face of this natural disaster, and so many others.

  Pope Francis

  Brother, Loss, People

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• The United Nations Childrens Fund reports that more than 18 million children worldwide have lost both parents to the ravages of AIDS, starvation, war or natural disasters.

  Foster Friess

  Children, War, Parent

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• Kids get a lot of lip service in disaster planning, but they tend to get far fewer resources than they need. The mantra of 'children are our most valuable resource' is almost never matched by actual funding.

  Irwin Redlener

  Children, Kids, Needs

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• My diary is a disaster...I can't spell at all...I'll spell the same word completely differently in the same sentence.

  Liv Tyler

  Diaries, Sentences, Spells

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• People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul.

  David Brooks

  People, Soldier, Soul

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• The humanity and the humility, which are very different than the biological species homo sapiens. Humanity versus homo sapiens - very different things. We are biological creatures, we are animals, no doubt, but when you talk about "humando," you're talking about that particular kind of animals who are aware of their impending extinction, who have the capacity to be sensitive to catastrophe and disaster and calamity and profound crisis.

  Cornel West

  Humility, Animal, Talking

  Source: blogs.ssrc.org

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• Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Government, People, Safety

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• When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand--a center of gravity.

  Adrienne Rich

  Notebook, Prayer, Memories

  Adrienne Rich (2003). “What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)”, p.98, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The disasteris not the money, although the money will be missed. The disaster is the disrespect--this belief that the arts are dispensable, that they're not critical to a culture's existence.

  Twyla Tharp

  Art, Disrespect, Culture

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• Good fortune will elevate even petty minds, and give them the appearance of a certain greatness and stateliness, as from their high place they look down upon the world; but the truly noble and resolved spirit raises itself, and becomes more conspicuous in times of disaster and ill fortune.

  Plutarch

  Greatness, Giving, Mind

  Plutarch (2000). “The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, Volume II: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.64, Modern Library

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• For many of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hostility to organized religion goes so deep and burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility, even at the risk of financial disaster.

  Michael Medved

  Christian, Religious, Powerful

  Michael Medved (1992). “Hollywood vs. America: popular culture and the war on traditional values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Leaving American disaster victims to languish is morally reprehensible and un-American.

  Cedric Richmond

  Leaving, Victim, Languish

  "Season of Calamities Necessitates Compassion Aid: Don’t Require Offsets for Emergency Disaster Relief" by Cedric L. Richmond, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 1, 2011.

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