Disaster Quotes - Page 8

• 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 fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response.

  Cameron Sinclair

  Night, Giving, President

  "Chile's earthquake was horrible - but it could have been so much worse" by Rory Carroll, www.theguardian.com. February 28, 2010.

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• In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.

  H. L. Mencken

  Victory, Moral, Conquest

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.199, Vintage

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• I'll destroy you. I am the master of disaster.

  Muhammad Ali

  Vanity, Masters

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• We are dismayed when we find that even disaster cannot cure us of our faults.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Faults, Cures, Dismayed

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• The same wind blows on us all; the winds of disaster, opportunity and change. Therefore, it is not the blowing of the wind, but the setting of the sails that will determine our direction in life.

  Jim Rohn

  Blow, Opportunity, Wind

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• Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the Great Powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war--or war will put an end to mankind.

  John F. Kennedy

  War, Wind, Water

  Address to the United Nations General Assembly, delivered 25 September 1961

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• The opposition is indispensable. A good statesman, like any other sensible human being, always learns more from his opponents than from his fervent supporters. For his supporters will push him to disaster unless his opponents show him where the dangers are. So if he is wise he will often pray to be delivered from his friends, because they will ruin him. But though it hurts, he ought also to pray never to be left without opponents; for they keep him on the path of reason and good sense.

  Walter Lippmann

  Wise, Hurt, Opponents

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• There is such a thing as tempting the gods. Talking too much, too soon and with too much self-satisfaction has always seemed to me a sure way to court disaster. The forces of retribution are always listening. They never sleep.

  Meg Greenfield

  Sleep, Self, Talking

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• 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

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• For a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage.

  James Fallows

  War, People, Vietnam

  "As We Near the 10th Anniversary of the Iraq War" by James Fallows, www.theatlantic.com. March 1, 2013.

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• It's time for the State Department to permanently change its official policy to allow all members of U.S. citizens' families - no matter what size they are or how many legs they have - to evacuate together when disaster strikes.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Together, Citizens, Legs

  "Pets Should Be Evacuated, Too" by Ingrid Newkirk, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 20, 2011.

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• You must not on any account give me credit for being penetrating. I have impressed people that way before, and the result is always disaster.

  T. S. Eliot

  People, Giving, Credit

  Eliot, Thomas Stearns Eliot, Professor T S Eliot (2011). “Letters of T. S. Eliot: 1898-1922”, p.482, Yale University Press

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• 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

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• 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

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• If some appalling disaster befalls, there's Always a way for the rich.

  Euripides

  Way, Wealth, Rich

  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (1959). “Euripides”

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• 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”

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• 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

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• In nature nothing creates itself and nothing destroys itself.

  Maria Montessori

  Nature, Loss

  Maria Montessori (1978). “The Secret of Childhood”, p.160, Orient Blackswan

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