Catastrophe Quotes - Page 18

• When the regime changed in Japan, the Japanese changed; Russians too can change, as long as the conditions for it are present once again. Today, we are on the verge of a very uncertain situation when either everything will end in catastrophe, or better people will come to power.

  Vladimir Voinovich

  Long, People, Today

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Specialisation paralyses, ultra-specialisation kills. Palaeontology is littered with such catastrophes.

  Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Ultras, Paralysis

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• Like everyone else, I was at least peripherally involved in the antiwar movement. You woke up every morning feeling tormented about what was going on in Vietnam. It seemed to a lot of us like a catastrophe from the very beginning, inflicting immense and needless suffering on not only the American soldiers but on a lot of innocent peasants who were caught in a Cold War proxy battle - two million Vietnamese died during those years, and you woke up every morning knowing that that was going on.

  Robert Hass

  Morning, War, Two

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We helped generate that international law coming out of a very difficult and hard-won experiences in the First and Second World War. And I think we need to abide by that experience and our good judgment coming out of these catastrophes. We need to support that.

  Jill Stein

  War, Thinking, Law

  Source: www.justicenewsnetwork.com

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• There's no growth. If China has a GDP of 7 percent, it's like a national catastrophe. We're down at 1 percent. And that's, like, no growth. And we're going lower, in my opinion. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that our taxes are so high, just about the highest in the world. And I'm bringing them down to one of the lower in the world.

  Donald Trump

  America, Gdp, Growth

  Donald Trump during Presidential Debate at Washington University St. Louis, Missouri, www.nytimes.com. October 10, 2016.

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• If we do nothing, the ensuing climate catastrophe will wreck our economy - including wreaking havoc on our food production systems. All credible scientists agree on this point.

  Van Jones

  Climate, Wrecks, Scientist

  Source: rooseveltinstitute.org

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• What AI could do is essentially be a power tool that magnifies human intelligence and gives us the ability to move our civilization forward. It might be curing disease, it might be eliminating poverty. Certainly it should include preventing environmental catastrophe. If AI could be instrumental to all those things, then I would feel it was worthwhile.

  Stuart J. Russell

  Moving, Civilization, Giving

  "Intelligent robots don't need to be conscious to turn against us". Interview with Guia Marie Del Prado, www.businessinsider.com. August 5, 2015.

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• When you inherit the level of economic catastrophe that President Obama inherited, it was a real touch-and-go situation.

  Hillary Clinton

  Real, President, Levels

  Transcript of the Third Presidential Debate, www.nytimes.com. October 20, 2016.

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• According to Hollywood logic, none of the actual Titanic 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, Interesting, Giving

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• The complicated engines manufactured by men demand, if one really wants to use them, much calm. Ever since our love for machines replaced the love we used to have for our fellow man, catastrophes proceed to increase.

  Man Ray

  Men, Machines, Use

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• Man's civility is lagging behind his technological ability. It could mean disaster and catastrophe for the whole world. We're all sinners, everyone of us, and a radical change is needed for all of us.

  Billy Graham

  Mean, Men, World

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• I don't like to read or write about life in its tiring entirety. Most days, months, even years are just filler between those few moments of modest but decisive catastrophe, misfortunes so fittingly flimsy they're almost welcome. The heart doesn't storm that often on its own, so you have to wait for something outside of yourself to get the wrecking ball rolling, and then you're set: you've finally got an impression to make on others - you're in the world distinctly and distinguishable now. It's only by our ravages that we're recognizable to each other at last.

  Gary Lutz

  Writing, Heart, Waiting

  Source: therumpus.net

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• Most people consume information passively-whatever they're being fed. They're being fed Russian television, which tells them that in the 90s there was a terrible catastrophe, that before that life had been all right, and then when Putin came many people say, "I've never lived as well as I'm living under Putin." That's true-there has never been such a level of affluence. But now, it looks like people will have to tighten their belts, and some are already having doubts.

  Vladimir Voinovich

  People, Doubt, Terrible

  Source: www.thedailybeast.com

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• Few people know anything of the English history but what they learn from Shakespear; for our story is rather a tissue of personal adventures and catastrophes than a series of political events.

  Elizabeth Montagu

  Adventure, English History, People

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• The human species is now at a point where it has to make choices that are going to determine whether decent survival is even possible. Environmental catastrophe, including war, maybe pandemics, these are very serious issues and they can't be addressed within the current structure of institutions. That's almost given. There have to be real significant changes, and only really effective popular mass-based movements can introduce and carry forward such initiatives, as indeed did happen during the 1930s.

  Noam Chomsky

  Real, War, Choices

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• In time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars.

  Paul Davies

  War, Home, Moon

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• The unavoidable kiss, where the minty fresh death breath is sure to outlast his catastrophe.

  Jason Mraz

  Art, Kissing, Media

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• Ive got to get my real skills up; like, I got to get my skills up, cause in case of a crazy catastrophe, I might have to learn how to swim.

  Theophilus London

  Crazy, Real, Skills

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• Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss.

  Mira Bartok

  Mean, Loss, Psychics

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• One accident or terrorist strike involving high-level waste would endanger lives and cause a catastrophe that would leave millions of dollars in damages and take years to clean up

  Shelley Berkley

  Years, Damage, Causes

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• 'Human history, ' H.G. Wells once wrote, 'becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.' You and I cannot be indifferent to the outcome of that race. We care deeply about the winner. Because we do care so deeply about the winner, that is why we are all in the East Room of the White House today.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Education, White, Race

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1966). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965”, p.226, Best Books on

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• I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.

  Karen Thompson Walker

  Real, Worry, Different

  Karen Thompson Walker (2014). “The Age of Miracles”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

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• Americans learn only from catastrophe and not from experience.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Theodore Roosevelt (2013). “Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt”, p.158, Simon and Schuster

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• Preventing global warming from becoming a planetary catastrophe may take something even more drastic than renewable energy, superefficient urban design, and global carbon taxes.

  Jamais Cascio

  Design, Energy, May

  Jamais Cascio “Hacking the Earth”, Lulu.com

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• Ebola is not just a health crisis. Across West Africa, a generation of young people risks being lost to an economic catastrophe.

  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

  Ebola, People, Risk

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