Tragic Quotes - Page 20

• It is tragic to have to realize that the best I had to give as a soldier, obedience, and loyalty, was exploited for purposes which could not be recognized at the time, and that I did not see that there is a limit set even for a soldier's performance to his duty. That is my fate.

  Wilhelm Keitel

  Loyalty, Fate, Giving

  "The Trial of the Germans". Book by Eugene Davidson, p. 341, 1997.

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• The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country - a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old - is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past.

  Barack Obama

  Inspiring, Running, Country

  Barack Obama, (2008). “Change We Can Believe In”, p.237, Canongate Books

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• It is tragic-comic to see that all this knowledge and understanding exercises no power at all over men's lives, that their lives do not express in the remotest way what they have understood, but rather the opposite.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Exercise, Men, Thinking

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• The (capital punishment) controversy passes the anarch by. For him, the linking of death and punishment is absurd. In this respect, he is closer to the wrongdoer than to the judge, for the high-ranking culprit who is condemned to death is not prepared to acknowledge his sentence as atonement; rather, he sees his guilt in his own inadequacy. Thus, he recognizes himself not as a moral but as a tragic person.

  Ernst Junger

  Punishment, Judging, Guilt

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• I think the tragic feeling is invoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing -- his sense of personal dignity.

  Arthur Miller

  Character, Thinking, Feelings

  Arthur Miller (2016). “Collected Essays: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.23, Penguin

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• Dogs have fleas; people have each other. We are born to die. Life is a continuing tragic comedy. Everything and everyone we love suffers. Anybody who doesn't see that has not grown up and known life.

  Frederick Lenz

  Dog, People, Suffering

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• It's a terrible and tragic and counterproductive policy to avoid communicating with people who disagree with us.

  Jimmy Carter

  Communication, People, Terrible

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• There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.

  Louis Leakey

  Art, Aggravation, Painting

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• The tragic reality is that very few sustainable systems are designed or applied by those who hold power, and the reason for this is obvious and simple: to let people arrange their own food, energy and shelter is to lose economic and political control over them. We should cease to look to power structures, hierarchical systems, or governments to help us, and devise ways to help ourselves.

  Bill Mollison

  Simple, Reality, Government

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• Habits are funny things. What's funny, or rather tragic, is that bad habits are so predictable and avoidable. Despite this, there are people by the millions who insist on acquiring habits that are bad, expensive, and create problems. The habit they weren't going to get, got them!

  Zig Ziglar

  Funny Things, People, Problem

  Zig Ziglar (1977). “See You at the Top”

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• If a fish is born in your aquarium and you call him John, write out a birth certificate, tell him about his family history, and in two minutes he gets eaten by another fish - that's tragic. But it's only tragic because you projected a separate self where there was none. You got hold of a fraction of dynamic process, a molecular dance, and a separate entity out of it.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Writing, Two

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• A tragic life is romantic when it happens to somebody else.

  Charles M. Schulz

  Tragedy, Life Is, Happens

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• Nothing is more tragic - or more common - than mental inertia.

  Napoleon Hill

  Common, Inertia

  Napoleon Hill (2008). “The Law of Success: The Master Wealth-Builder's Complete and Original Lesson Plan forAchieving Your Dreams”, p.86, Penguin

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• The comic, more than the tragic, because it ignites hope, leads to more, not less, participation in the struggle for a just world.

  Harvey Cox

  Struggle, World, Comic

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• There are two extremes to be avoided: one is the attitude of contempt toward education, the other is the tragic snobbery of assuming that marching through an educational system is a sure cure for ignorance and mediocrity.

  Henry Ford

  Inspiring, Education, Attitude

  Henry Ford (2015). “My Life and Work: Top Biography”, p.166, 谷月社

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• 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

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• Our epoch is a time of tragic collision between matter and spirit and of the downfall of the purely material world view.

  Wassily Kandinsky

  Views, World, Matter

  Wassily Kandinsky, Kenneth Clement Lindsay, Peter Vergo (1994). “Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art”

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• I was 21 and looking for work in 1932, one of the worst years of the Great Depression. And I can remember one bleak night in the thirties when my father learned on Christmas Eve that he'd lost his job. To be young in my generation was to feel that your future had been mortgaged out from under you, and that's a tragic mistake we must never allow our leaders to make again.

  Ronald Reagan

  Jobs, Father, Mistake

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan)., Ronald Reagan, United States. Office of the Federal Register (1983). “Ronald Reagan”

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• If all the bank loans were paid, no one could have a bank deposit, and there would not be a dollar of coin or currency in circulation. This is a staggering thought. We are completely dependent on the commercial banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar we have in circulation, cash, or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money we are prosperous; if not, we starve. We are absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless situation is almost incredible - but there it is.

  Robert W. Hemphill

  Commercial Banks, Bankers, Dollars

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• Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it, summon it, from even the most tragic of circumstances.

  Toni Morrison

  Art, Bearing Witness, Circumstances

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• Those who try to combat the production of shoddy pictures are enemies of the best art today... It always feels tragic to see people labouring to saw off the branch they are sitting on.

  Asger Jorn

  Art, People, Enemy

  Asger Jorn, Per Hovdenakk, Stine Høholt, Arken museum for moderne kunst (Ishøj, Denmark), Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Amstelveen, Netherlands) (2002). “Asger Jorn”

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• There are a lot of problems in the world, a lot of tragic things that have to be addressed, economic, medical, political, all kinds of things, but, to my way of thinking, they pale in comparison to the overall problem of the environmental deadline.

  Dean Stockwell

  Thinking, Political, Environmental

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• I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. There's a point after the industrial period where it seems like humanity's finally going to make it right. There were advances in medicine and technology and education. People are going to be able to live longer lives; literacy is starting to spread. It seemed like finally, after centuries of toiling and misery, that humanity was going to get to a better stage. And then what happens is precisely the contrary. Humanity betrays itself.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  War, Epic, Technology

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• 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

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

  Taylor Swift

  Beautiful, Love Is, Unpredictable

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