Catastrophe Quotes - Page 14

• Stupid people can cause problems, but it usually takes brilliant people to create a real catastrophe.

  Thomas Sowell

  Real, Stupid, People

  "Random Thoughts". www.realclearpolitics.com. August 18, 2015.

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• Floating high on the waters of catastrophe

  Julien Gracq

  Water, Floating

  Julien Gracq (2017). “Balcony in the Forest”, p.99, New York Review of Books

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• Government cannot solve all our problems, even in normal times, much less during a catastrophe of nature that reminds man how little he is, despite all his big talk.

  Thomas Sowell

  Men, Littles, Normal

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• As the titanic losses were racking up, Fannie Mae's operators, Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick, disguised the catastrophe by orchestrating a $5 billion accounting fraud - all the while continuing to pressure banks to make absurd, politically correct loans and denouncing Republicans as enemies of the poor.

  Ann Coulter

  Loss, Enemy, Pressure

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• I bet Richard Fuld doesn't have an ounce of contrition. It's just megalomania. When it's like that, you need rules to prevent catastrophe. When banks are borrowing the government's credit rating, you need rules to prevent stupid things.

  Charlie Munger

  Stupid, Government, Needs

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• We're running the most dangerous experiment in history right now, which is to see how much carbon dioxide the atmosphere can handle before there is an environmental catastrophe.

  Elon Musk

  Running, Atmosphere, Environmental

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Before the boiling of blood and the searing of skin comes the secret catastrophe: Before Life on Earth becomes finally merely impossible, it will for a long time before have become completely unbearable.

  Tony Kushner

  Blood, Long, Secret

  Tony Kushner (2013). “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition”, p.172, Theatre Communications Group

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• Insofar as Zionism sought to solve the Jewish question, it must be reckoned not just a failure but a catastrophe: Israel is the main cause of anti-Semitism in the world today.

  Norman Finkelstein

  Israel, World, Today

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• The earthquake in Haiti was a class-based catastrophe. It didn't much harm the wealthy elite up in the hills, they were shaken but not destroyed. On the other hand the people who were living in the miserable urban slums, huge numbers of them, they were devastated. Maybe a couple hundred thousand were killed. How come they were living there? They were living there because of-it goes back to the French colonial system-but in the past century, they were living there because of US policies, consistent policies.

  Noam Chomsky

  Couple, Past, Hands

  "Chomsky on Haiti". Interview with Keane Bhatt, www.counterpunch.org. March 9, 2010.

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• I'm convinced that the catastrophes of the next two decades will be so vast as to bring about a world where life, if it survives, will be far simpler - and the technologies, too. Then we will have come full circle to something like life on the savanna.

  Kirkpatrick Sale

  Technology, Circles, Two

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• ... universal adoption of the institutions of the free society would better enable adaptation to climate both now and in the future. It would also ensure that, if at some point in the future, a real catastrophe, whether human-induced or otherwise (including climate change), does loom on the horizon, humanity would be in a better position to address it.

  Julian Morris

  Real, Adoption, Humanity

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• Oil is sixty dollars a barrel. There are terrorists everywhere. We have a catastrophe in our world every ten minutes. I don't know how anybody's getting through anything. Right now, people just need to be entertained.

  Bob Saget

  Our World, Oil, People

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• It is a fact that, up to seven million people a year are dying from fossil fuel pollution. It is a fact that we are already dealing with the catastrophe of climate change in places like California, where people have been burnt out of their homes and where they are dealing with record droughts.

  Mark Ruffalo

  Home, California, Years

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• We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is - on the brink of catastrophe - torn by polarizing hate, and how it's a shame that we can't work together to get things done, but the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day!

  Jon Stewart

  Country, Hate, Working Together

  Keynote Address at the Rally to Restore Sanity, delivered 30 October 2010, Washington Mall

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• Saw Washington Monument. Phallic. Appalling. A national catastrophe.

  Arnold Bennett

  Washington Monument, Saws, Monument

  Arnold Bennett (1935). “The journal of Arnold Bennett”, Viking Press

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• It's the opposite on a sitcom. People crave the character to not learn from their mistakes. They want to just see the situation, and then see how that character is going to react to that particular chaotic catastrophe. That's just my take on it, anyway. I don't really get too hung up on what the future of the show is.

  Ty Burrell

  Mistake, Character, Opposites

  Source: collider.com

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• The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe.

  A. C. Bradley

  Character, Men, Numbers

  A. C. Bradley (2016). “Shakespearean Tragedy”, p.13, A. C. Bradley

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• If I had my way, I would write the word 'insure' over every door of every cottage and upon the blotting pad of every public man, because I am convinced that, for sacrifice that are conceivably small, families can be secured against catastrophes which otherwise would smash them forever.

  Winston Churchill

  Writing, Sacrifice, Men

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• Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Feel Good, Feelings

  "Don't Give Up on ObamaCare Yet, Republicans" by David Harsanyi, www.realclearpolitics.com. March 28, 2013.

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• If everything moves along and there are no major catastrophes we're basically headed towards holograms.

  Martin Scorsese

  Moving, Holograms, Majors

  "Martin Scorsese Talks Hugo Blu-ray" by Brian Gallagher, movieweb.com. February 28, 2012.

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• I beg you to exercise wisdom and restraint and remember that not all opportunities are created equal. Some are nothing but steps leading down toward catastrophe.

  Sherry Thomas

  Exercise, Opportunity, Steps

  Sherry Thomas (2012). “Tempting the Bride”, p.47, Penguin

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• Never think that wars are irrational catastrophes: they happen when wrong ways of thinking and living bring about intolerable situations ... the root causes of conflict are usually to be found in some wrong way of life in which all parties have acquiesced, and for which everybody must, to some extent, bear the blame.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Party, Thinking

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• For years I've wanted to live according to everyone else's morals. I've forced myself to live like everyone else, to look like everyone else. I said what was necessary to join together, even when I felt separate. And after all of this, catastrophe came. Now I wander amid the debris, I am lawless, torn to pieces, alone and accepting to be so, resigned to my singularity and to my infirmities. And I must rebuild a truth-after having lived all my life in a sort of lie.

  Albert Camus

  Inspirational, Lying, Years

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

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• All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution.

  Leon Trotsky

  Communication, Party, Revolution

  Leon Trotsky (2000). “Their Morals and Ours: The Marxist View of Morality”, p.49, Resistance Books

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• An announcement of [Christopher] Zeeman's lecture at Northwestern University in the spring of 1977 contains a quote describing catastrophe theory as the most important development in mathematics since the invention of calculus 300 years ago.

  Stephen Smale

  Spring, Science, Years

  Stephen Smale, Roderick Wong (2000). “The Collected Papers of Stephen Smale”, p.814, World Scientific

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