Catastrophe Quotes - Page 15

• Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened and restore some of the missing parts.

  Norman Maclean

  Missing, Fantasy, Willing

  Norman Maclean (2010). “Young Men and Fire”, p.46, University of Chicago Press

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• The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Ignorance, Issues

  Barack Obama (2009). “Barack Obama: Speeches on the Road to the White House”

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• With its array of gadgets and machines, all powered by energies that are destructive of land or air or water, and connected to work, market, school, recreation, etc., by gasoline engines, the modern home is a veritable factory of waste and destruction. It is the mainstay of the economy of money. But within the economies of energy and nature, it is a catastrophe. It takes in the world's goods and converts them into garbage, sewage, and noxious fumes-for none of which have we found a use.

  Wendell Berry

  Money, Home, School

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• Because of Christ, even our catastrophes have purpose. God is preparing our character for the time when we will see Him face to face.

  Kenneth Boa

  Christian, Jesus, Character

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• A clever man reaps some benefit from the worst catastrophe, and a fool can turn even good luck to his disadvantage.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Clever, Good Luck, Men

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• In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate its indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.

  Karl Marx

  Revenge, Class, Sight

  Karl Marx, Frederick Engels (2005). “The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document”, p.36, Haymarket Books

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• He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

  Jack London

  Hurt, Animal, Essence

  Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.116, Wordsworth Editions

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• Newspapers have developed what might be called a vested interest in catastrophe. If they can spot a fight, they play up that fight. If they can uncover a tragedy, they will headline that tragedy.

  Harry Allen Overstreet

  Fighting, Play, Tragedy

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• The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe.

  Daniel Botkin

  People, Historical, Our Society

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• Ecology movements, futurism, feminism, urbanism, protest and disarmament, personal individuation cannot alone save the world from the catastrophe inherent in our very idea of the world. They require a cosmological vision that saves the phenomenon 'world' itself, a move in soul that goes beyond measures of expediency to the archetypal source of our world's continuing peril: the fateful neglect, the repression, of the anima mundi.

  James Hillman

  Moving, Ideas, Our World

  James Hillman (2006). “City and Soul: Uniform Edition”, Spring Publications

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• As the idea imparted by the term Cataclysm, Catastrophe, or Revolution, is extremely vague, and may comprehend any thing you choose to imagine, it answers for the time very well as an explanation; that is, it stops further inquiry. But it also has had the disadvantage of effectually stopping the advance of science, by involving it in obscurity and confusion.

  George Julius Poulett Scrope

  Science, Ideas, Imagination

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• The magic will which makes us see the other side of our natures-dream and disaster, catastrophe and fulfillment-is the great permanent challenge of humanity.

  Herbert Gold

  Dream, Challenges, Humanity

  Herbert Gold (1971). “The Magic Will: Stories & Essays”, p.50, Transaction Publishers

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• Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything to avert it.

  Paul Krugman

  Mean, Fate, Despair

  "Cassandras of Climate". www.nytimes.com. September 27, 2009.

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• Unless we act boldly and quickly to deal with the underlying causes of global warming, our world will undergo a string of terrible catastrophes.

  Al Gore

  Our World, Energy, Causes

  Al Gore (2006). “An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It”, p.10, Rodale

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• Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and create immense suffering and unwanted change in the world forever. This prospect should compel all of us to act to prevent such a catastrophe.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Nuclear Terrorism, Forever, Suffering

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• As modern physics started with the Newtonian revolution, so modern philosophy starts with what one might call the Cartesian Catastrophe. The catastrophe consisted in the splitting up of the world into the realms of matter and mind, and the identification of 'mind' with conscious thinking. The result of this identification was the shallow rationalism of l' esprit Cartesien, and an impoverishment of psychology which it took three centuries to remedy even in part.

  Arthur Koestler

  Philosophy, Science, Thinking

  Arthur Koestler (1969). “The Act of Creation”

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• Notwithstanding, therefore, that we have not witnessed of a large continent, yet, as we may predict the future occurrence of such catastrophes, we are authorized to regard them as part of the present order of Nature.

  Charles Lyell

  Nature, Science, Order

  Charles Lyell (1837). “Principles of Geology0: Being an Inquiry how Far the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface are Referable to Causes Now in Operation : In 4 Volumes”, p.134

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• Marcuse wrote: "Perhaps an accident may alter the situation, but unless the recognition of what is being done and what is being prevented subverts the consciousness and the behavior of man, not even a catastrophe will bring about the change.".

  Daniel Pinchbeck

  Freedom, Men, Done

  Daniel Pinchbeck (2012). “The 2012 Collection”, p.66, Penguin

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• Boy trouble, huh?" "Boy catastrophe is more like it. I'm not sure I can do this." "Do what?" Concern sounded in Holiday's voice. "Do Lucas," Kylie said. Holiday made a funny face and raised one eyebrow.

  C.C. Hunter

  Holiday, Boys, Eyebrows

  C. C. Hunter (2012). “Whispers at Moonrise”, p.223, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for.

  Julian Barnes

  Art, Ambition, Dark

  Julian Barnes (2010). “A History Of The World In 10 1/2 Chapters”, p.137, Random House

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• 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

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• 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs sparked a rising wave of consumer indignation. But...it takes a major catastrophe to carry legal and enforcement action over the hump of lethargy and inaction....Today, nearly forty years later, the situation is worse, not better.

  John Grant Fuller

  Dark, Years, Pigs

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• Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt. It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will soon recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Change, Taken, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.426, Penguin

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• There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Liberty, Finals

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• The choice to 'do nothing' in response to the mounting evidence is actually a choice to continue and even accelerate the reckless environmental destruction that is creating the catastrophe at hand.

  Al Gore

  Science, Hands, Creating

  Al Gore (2013). “Earth in the Balance: Forging a New Common Purpose”, p.37, Routledge

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