Catastrophe Quotes - Page 17

• Strong emotional experiences are for the most part impersonal. Anyone who has hated another person so much that only chance stands between that person and death knows this, as does whoever has fallen into the catastrophe of a deep depression, anyone who has loved a woman to the dregs, anyone who has beaten others bloody or ever come up behind another person with muscles trembling. "Losing one's head," language calls it. Emotional experience is, in itself, poor in qualities; qualities are brought to it by the person who has the experience.

  Robert Musil

  Depression, Strong, Emotional

  Robert Musil, Burton Pike, David S. Luft (1995). “Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses”, p.11, University of Chicago Press

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• I am not writing in metaphors. I am writing about catastrophes.

  Aharon Appelfeld

  Writing, Metaphor

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• In his essay, ‘Perpetual Peace,’ the philosopher, Immanuel Kant, argued that perpetual peace would eventually come to the world in one of two ways, by human insight or by conflicts and catastrophes of a magnitude that left humanity no other choice. We are at such a juncture.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Two, Choices, Humanity

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• One day, Annabel saw the sun and moon in the sky at the same time. The sight filled her with a terror which entirely consumed her and did not leave her until the night closed in catastrophe for she had no instinct for self-preservation if she was confronted by ambiguities.

  Angela Carter

  Moon, Night, Sight

  Angela Carter (1971). “Love: a novel”

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• This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.

  Hannah Arendt

  Beautiful, Men, Thinking

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• The heaping together of paintings by Old Masters in museums is a catastrophe; likewise, a collection of a hundred Great Brains makes one big fathead.

  Carl Jung

  Pain, Museums, Brain

  Carl Gustav Jung, Herbert Read, Michael Scott Montague Fordham, Gerhard Adler (1964). “The Collected Works of C.G. Jung: Civilization in transition”

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• Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Interesting, Personality

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.202, Univ of California Press

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• Just remember, without discipline, a clear strategy, and a concise plan, the speculator will fall into all the emotional pitfalls of the market - jump from one stock to another, hold a losing position too long, and cut out of a winner too soon, for no reason other than fear of losing profit. Greed, Fear, Impatience, Ignorance, and Hope will all fight for mental dominance over the speculator. Then, after a few failures and catastrophes the speculator may become demoralised, depressed, despondent, and abandon the market and the chance to make a fortune from what the market has to offer.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Fall, Ignorance, Cutting

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• Very serious mistakes were made by previous governments, and Greece was ready to be abandoned by its partners and to leave the eurozone, which would have created total catastrophe.

  Antonis Samaras

  Mistake, Government, Serious

  "Everybody Knows We Are Serious". Interview with Lally Weymouth, www.slate.com. September 14, 2012.

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• I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration... "Joy and Pain" - sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, in some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.

  Cornel West

  Pain, Moving, Heart

  "Brother West". Book by Cornel West, www.npr.org. 2009.

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• Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern. The country is grey and brown and white in trees, snows and skies of laughter always diminishing, less funny not just darker, not just grey. It may be the coldest day of the year, what does he think of that? I mean, what do I? And if I do, perhaps I am myself again.

  Frank O'Hara

  Beautiful, Country, Laughter

  Frank O'Hara (1995). “The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara”, p.202, Univ of California Press

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• She loved Bram in a clear-eyed way she’d never loved her ex-husband, no rose-colored glasses or mindless giddiness, no Cinderella fantasies or false certainty that he’d put her life in order. What she felt for Bram was messy, honest, and soul-deep. He felt like…part of her, the best and the worst. Like someone she wanted to struggle through life with; share triumphs and catastrophes; share holidays, birthdays, every days

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  Husband, Struggle, Holiday

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• The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

  Albert Einstein

  Peace, Thinking, Atoms

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• The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically.

  Ralph Ellison

  Philosophy, Details, Alive

  Ralph Ellison (2011). “The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison: Revised and Updated”, p.129, Modern Library

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• The nature of catastrophe is, after all, reasonably unvarying in the way it ruins, destroys, wounds and devastates. But if something can be learned from the event - not least something as profound as the theory of plate tectonics - then it somehow puts the ruination into a much more positive light.

  Simon Winchester

  Light, Profound, Events

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• Regardless of the staggering dimensions of the world about us, the density of our ignorance, the risks of catastrophes to come, and our individual weakness within the immense collectivity, the fact remains that we are absolutely free today if we choose to will our existence in its finiteness, a finiteness which is open on the infinite. And in fact, any man who has known real loves, real revolts, real desires, and real will knows quite well that he has no need of any outside guarantee to be sure of his goals; their certitude comes from his own drive.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Philosophy, Real, Ignorance

  "The Ethics of Ambiguity". Book by Simone de Beauvoir. Conclusion, 1947.

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• When opting out from partnership is so easy, every minor disagreement is perceived as a major catastrophe and irreparable disaster.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Partnership, Easy, Disaster

  Interview with Marcelo Dimentstein, Alberto Senderey, Andy Spokoiny and Shira Shnitzer, leatid.org. February 2009.

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• What would've happened, do you think, had the government not intervened in October 2008? The catastrophe to the economy would've been absolutely unbelievable. And yet classical economists say, "Oh, well, no, it would've adjusted perfectly happily, a few weeks of pain and then everything would've gone on as before, without a banking system left." And that's what makes it so maddening, that these bankers are back saying it was all the government's fault. The government saved their skins. It didn't want to, but it needed to save their skins in order to save the rest of us.

  Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky

  Pain, Thinking, Skins

  Source: bigthink.com

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• We hope that as a species we're capable of dealing with environmental catastrophe before it actually does collectively kill most of us.

  Moby

  Environmental, Doe, Species

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The refugees are not only going to be a demand on the country's resources, but also the refugees raise the possibility that the countries that they're going to are themselves not as stable as the citizens would like, I think. We're all just one catastrophe away from ending up as a refugee, and we don't want to be reminded of that.

  Nguyen Viet Thang

  Country, Thinking, Demand

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• It's not just an economic crisis that capitalism has created. We also face an environmental catastrophe created by a handful of gigantic fossil fuel corporations.

  Kshama Sawant

  Environmental, Fuel, Corporations

  Source: www.socialistalternative.org

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• As soon as there's a crisis, there are people who take charge and want to control others. Climate-change catastrophe and human migration and immigration are great for corporate and governmental control over people, and we have to contend with that. I should say, I see corporate control behind everything that the government is working on right now.

  Louise Erdrich

  People, Immigration, Crisis

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Good stuff tends to happen gradually, whereas violence or catastrophes are deemed more newsworthy.

  Bill Gates

  Violence, Stuff, Happens

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• What is the alternative to peace? A catastrophe for both peoples [Palestine and Israel].

  Uri Avnery

  Israel, Alternatives, Palestine

  Source: progressive.org

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• There is plenty of work to do, but big business isn't investing in rebuilding a green economy for the 21st century. Instead, they put their money into a gigantic financial casino, and when that led to catastrophe in 2008-9, they made us pay for it.

  Kshama Sawant

  Investing, Green, Casinos

  Source: www.socialistalternative.org

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