Tragic Quotes - Page 14

• Don't think that the lack of leaders and of a party ideological line means anarchy, if by anarchy you mean chaos, bedlam, and pandemonium. What a tragic lack of political imagination to think that leaders and centralized structures are the only way to organize effective political projects!

  Michael Hardt

  Party, Mean, Thinking

  8 Copy quote

• Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick.

  Sarah Jio

  Beautiful, Writing, Luck

  5 Copy quote

• Love is unpredictable and it’s frustrating and it’s tragic and it’s beautiful.

  Taylor Swift

  Beautiful, Love Is, Unpredictable

  19 Copy quote

• There's no doubt that when it comes to our treatment of Native Americans as well as other persons of color in this country, we've got some very sad and difficult things to account for. I personally would want to see our tragic history, or the tragic elements of our history, acknowledged. I consistently believe that when it comes to whether it's Native Americans or African-American issues or reparations, the most important thing for the U.S. government to do is not just offer words, but offer deeds.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Believe, Native American

  16 Copy quote

• Shakespeare is the outstanding example of how that can be done. In all of Shakespeare's plays, no matter what tragic events occur, no matter what rises and falls, we return to stability in
  the end.

  Charlton Heston

  Fall, Play, Events

  15 Copy quote

• War is mankind's most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  War, Stupid, Men

  Graduation Exercises at the United States Military Academy, www.dwightdeisenhower.com. June 03, 1947.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.

  Milton Friedman

  Garden, Government, Investing

  6 Copy quote

• Lebanon will be engulfed again in a huge power game that will last quite a long time. This is the tragic destiny of Lebanon.

  Walid Jumblatt

  Destiny, Games, Long

  7 Copy quote

• War and it's tragic repercussions are inclusive of all; surely a model for peace should strive for such inclusiveness.

  Prince Hassan bin Talal

  War, Strive, Should

  10 Copy quote

• I hope the time will never come when I shall feel satisfied. To reach the goal of one's ambitions must be tragic.

  N. C. Wyeth

  Ambition, Goal, Satisfied

  13 Copy quote

• The American culture ideal of the "self-made-man," of everyone "standing on his own feet" seemed as tragic a picture as the initiative-destroying dependence on a benevolent despot. He felt and perceived clearly that we all need continuous help from each other, and that this type of interdependence is the greatest challenge to maturity of individual and group functioning.

  Kurt Lewin

  Maturity, Men, Self

  "The Research Center for Group Dynamics".

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing of forces on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening. With this sense of the splendour of our experience and of its awful brevity, gathering all we are into one desperate effort to see and touch, we shall hardly have time to make theories about the things we see and touch.

  Walter Pater

  Attitude, Sleep, Effort

  Walter Pater (2013). “The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry”, p.154, Courier Corporation

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Have it compose a poem -- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, noble, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter s!

  Stanislaw Lem

  Faces, Six, Heroism

  STANISLAW LEM (1974). “THE CYBERIAD”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

  Franz Liszt

  Moving, Passion, Musical

  60 Copy quote

• All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal, but with a near infinite capacity for folly. . . . He draws blueprints for Utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand--his own part comic, part tragic, part cussed, but part glorious nature.

  Robert McNamara

  Animal, Men, Hands

  "McNamara in Context" by Errol Morris, www.nytimes.com. July 8, 2009.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'd love to be a memorable figure in the history of entertainment in some sexual, comic, tragic way. I'd like to leave the impression that Marilyn Monroe did, to be able to arouse so many different feelings in people.

  Madonna Ciccone

  Memorable, People, Feelings

  9 Copy quote

• Changing directions in life is not tragic. Losing passion in life is.

  Max Lucado

  Passion, Losing, Life Is

  Max Lucado (2013). “Second Chances: More Stories of Grace”, p.64, Thomas Nelson

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Liberty without discipline cannot survive. Without order and authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty during which men forgot the elementary truths of human existence. They forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice.

  Walter Lippmann

  Life, Clever, Sacrifice

  "The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy".

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing more tragic in all the world than to know right and not to do it.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Climate, World, Knows

  8 Copy quote

• Our fiscal ruin and resulting loss of world leadership will, in their [liberals'] eyes, be not a tragic event but a desirable one.

  Mitch Daniels

  Eye, Loss, Events

  Mitch Daniels' keynote speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee at Ronald Reagan Centennial Dinner in Washington, D.C., www.americanrhetoric.com. February 11, 2011.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.

  Ian Hamilton Finlay

  Past, Trying, Different

  8 Copy quote

• Criticism, analysis, and insults are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Communication, Expression, Criticism

  8 Copy quote

• Last, but not least -- in fact, this is most important -- you need a happy ending. However, if you can create tragic situations and jerk a few tears before the happy ending, it will work much better.

  Satyajit Ray

  Important, Tears, Facts

  Satyajit Ray (2004). “Complete Adventures of Feluda”, p.575, Penguin Books India

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• All moralistic judgments, whether positive or negative, are tragic expressions of unmet needs.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Communication, Expression, Negative

  12 Copy quote

• Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?

  Khalil Gibran

  Life, Spiritual, Men

  12 Copy quote