Catastrophe Quotes - Page 13

• In 2008 we suffered an economic catastrophe, and the rules of the game fundamentally changed forever. A few years ago, you might hear a leader talking about doing things "the way we've always done it." No more. Today, nearly every industry is in the midst of massive upheaval. Today, we live in a world of dizzying speed, exponential complexity, and ruthless competition. Leaders today realize they need to innovate, and their chief concerns now focus on fostering creative and innovation within their organizations.

  Josh Linkner

  Leader, Forever, Focus

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• When people talk about people being left behind - middle wages have not gone up for years, and we should recognize that, and there I think we need growth and skills - but there are these other people who have been left behind. When I say out loud, "Fifty percent of inner-city schoolkids do not graduate from high school," that is a national catastrophe. We should be ringing the alarm bells. It's not fair.

  Jamie Dimon

  School, Thinking, People

  Source: uk.businessinsider.com

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• So many awful things have happened in Karachi, it's true. It has its own crazy rhythm. Even as crazy as other news is in Pakistan, the city manages to beat that in the frequency of catastrophes.

  Steve Inskeep

  Crazy, Rhythm, Manage

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Urban farming appeals to people on the right and the left. People have different reasons for getting into it. Some people are like doomsdayers, they think there's going to be some horrible catastrophe and how will we survive? And then there's people that are more like, "We want to be socialists and have communal chicken coops." It really runs the whole gamut.

  Novella Carpenter

  Running, Thinking, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• My hunch, for what it's worth, is that most of us probably find it much, much harder than we realize to really imagine what catastrophe is like. I have a hunch that we all labor under this rather convenient illusion that if we read about the Syrian refugee crisis, we can imagine what it feels like to set off from your home and your life with all your possessions in two bin liners. We all think that we can imagine that and my guess is that none of us have got a clue.

  Decca Aitkenhead

  Home, Thinking, Refugee Crisis

  "Decca Aitkenhead on Empathy and Memory". Interview with Emma Brown, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 15, 2016.

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• Bolivia is in the lead internationally in talking about the threat of environmental catastrophe. It's generally true where there are indigenous populations, there are important things happening; where the indigenous populations have been marginalized or exterminated, things go to a disaster. This is true worldwide, and Bolivia is striking because it's a majority population and in the lead.

  Noam Chomsky

  Talking, Environmental, Important

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• Expectations are usually predicated on the idea that the everyday things that happen to ordinary people shouldn't happen to you. People hold the idea of being ordinary in absolute contempt, so when they face an illness, poverty, or any kind of catastrophe, they say, "I can't believe this happened to me." And who did you think it was going to happen to - the woman across the street? It makes them think, "I must be on the wrong path." But what if something you thought was bad was the best thing that ever happened to you? What if that was part of your path?

  Caroline Myss

  Believe, Thinking, Ideas

  Source: www.oprah.com

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• Wild globalization has benefited some, but it's been a catastrophe for most.

  Marine Le Pen

  Globalization

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can't control it and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded.

  Noam Chomsky

  Military, Iraq, United States

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe.

  Bill Gates

  Important, Nuclear, Climate

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• One springs to mind: one of our very first gigs in a small East Texas town was not well promoted. At least, that was our conclusion. After the band loaded in and the curtain opened, we realized there was exactly one paying customer in the audience. We kind of made the best of it playing through the first set, took a break and bought him a Coke and then went on to perform for the remainder of the night. It wasn't exactly a catastrophe but it certainly stands as legendary.

  Billy Gibbons

  Spring, Night, Texas

  "BYT Interviews: Billy Gibbons". Interview with Jonny Grave, brightestyoungthings.com. January 18, 2016.

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• I think 99% of climate scientists would agree that we need to reduce emissions as quickly as possible, and then begin removing greenhouse gasses and carbon from the air. And if we don't do that we are looking at some range of catastrophe.

  Margaret D. Klein

  Thinking, Air, Climate

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• So virtuous are the programs said to be - pensions for the elderly, compensation for the unemployed, medicine for the sick, and assistance for the disabled - few dare ring the alarm of looming economic catastrophe that threatens to destabilize the civil society.

  Mark Levin

  Elderly, Medicine, Sick

  Mark R. Levin (2009). “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• Sunshine takes its intelligent and honourable place in the history of grownup science fiction on the screen and on the page: a genre that seeks to break free of parochialism and think about where and why and what we are without the language of religion... I loved Sunshine for its radical proposal that humans can and will do something about a catastrophe, and that our weapons could be used up in the service of preservation.

  Peter Bradshaw

  Sunshine, Intelligent, Thinking

  "Sunshine" by Peter Bradshaw, www.theguardian.com. April 6, 2007.

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• You cannot prevent a major catastrophe, but you can build an organization that is battle-ready, where people trust one another. In military training, the first rule is to instill soldiers with trust in their officers - because without trust, they won't fight.

  Peter Drucker

  Military, Fighting, Organization

  Peter F. Drucker (2010). “Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices”, p.20, Harper Collins

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• Five centuries from now - barring unimaginable catastrophe - the moon will be developed real estate. There's economic incentive to exploit the moon - the helium-3 will be useful in powering fusion reactors, and the rare earth elements could supplant the limited terrestrial supply of these materials.

  Seth Shostak

  Real, Moon, Fusion

  "Armstrong Wasn’t Columbus" by Seth Shostak, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 29, 2012.

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• I just saw Titanic, which is a $200 million film about a real-life disaster at sea, but according to Hollywood Logic, none of the actual passengers was interesting enough, so the writer-director had to invent a Romeo and Juliet-style fictional couple to heat up the catastrophe. This seems a tiny bit like giving Anne Frank a wacky best friend, to perk up that attic.

  Paul Rudnick

  Couple, Real, Sea

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• So many times after a catastrophe like 9/11, Estonia in Sweden, the Holocaust or whatever, we are so fond of lifting up the hero examples, but actually 99 percent of survivors have done something that they feel very guilty about.

  Ruben Ostlund

  Hero, Holocaust, Example

  Source: collider.com

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• It is a catastrophe, all of this virtual being together. I think there are people who get hooked on the internet. If they need to look at explicitly sexual material to be aroused there is a problem.

  Ruth Westheimer

  Thinking, People, Together

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• Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero... Heroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.

  Frank Herbert

  Mistake, Hero, Problem

  "Dune Genesis". "Omni", Vol. 2, No. 2, (p. 72), July 1980.

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• The catastrophe of the atomic bombs which shook men out of cities and businesses and economic relations, shook them also out of their old-established habits of thought, and out of the lightly held beliefs and prejudices that came down to them from the past.

  H. G. Wells

  Past, Men, Cities

  H. G. Wells (2016). “H. G. WELLS Ultimate Collection: 120+ Science Fiction Classics, Novels & Stories; Including Scientific, Political and Historical Works: The Time Machine, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, Modern Utopia, A Short History of the World, What Is Coming, The Story of the Last Trump…”, p.3310, e-artnow

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• With all the catastrophes that are going on, and all the hardships that are going on around the world, you don't do the world any service by walking around in pain and at war with yourself. You'd do a lot better good, a lot better service, if you find that thing within yourself that says ...move forward it's okay. It's are duty to see through it and work through it.

  Gino Vannelli

  Pain, War, Moving

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• The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe.

  Barry Commoner

  Environmental, Signals, Crisis

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• In war, where imperfect intelligence, the threat of a catastrophe, and the number of accidents are incomparably greater than any other human endeavor, the amount of missed opportunities, so to speak, is therefore bound to be greater.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Opportunity, Numbers

  Carl von Clausewitz, Michael Howard, Peter Paret (1989). “On War”, p.502, Princeton University Press

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• Humanity must have a speed of advance higher than the speed of advance of cosmic disasters or big global catastrophes!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Humanity, Speed, Disaster

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