Collapse Quotes - Page 6

• The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.

  George Soros

  Would Be, Events, Imagine

  George Soros (1995). “Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve”, Wiley

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• Time and again-from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the events of 9/11 to the onset of the Arab Spring-events have caught the experts, whether in government or on the outside, completely by surprise. Business owners with comparable performance records go bust. Brokers lose their clients. Physicians get sued for malpractice. Yet think-tankers and policy wonks continue to opine, never pausing to reflect on-or apologize for-their spotty records.

  Andrew Bacevich

  Spring, Thinking, Government

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• Why is no one talking about all the potential savings from a complete economic collapse?

  Eugene Mirman

  Talking, Saving, Economic

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• Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice -- Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (July 11, 1868)

  Karl Marx

  July, Practice, Connections

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• As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.

  Boris Pasternak

  Wall, Shadow, Scarves

  Roger Martin du Gard, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, Gabriela Mistral (1971). “Roger Martin du Gard: Gabriela Mistral ; Boris Pasternak”

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• A faith without some doubts is like a human body with no antobodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask the hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

  Timothy Keller

  Smart, Believe, Reflection

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• And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. Who's turned us round like this, so that we always, do what we may, retain the attitude of someone who's departing? Just as he, on the last hill, that shows him all his valley for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, we live our lives, for ever taking leave.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Attitude, Valleys, May

  Rainer Maria Rilke (1977). “Possibility of Being: A Selection of Poems”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

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• What are you grinning at?" Katsa demanded for the third or fourth time. "Is the ceiling about to cave in on my head or something? You look like we're both on the verge of an enormous joke." "Katsa, only you would consider the collapse of the ceiling a good joke.

  Kristin Cashore

  Ceilings, Looks, Caves

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• Be a man!... What good is religion if it collapses under calamity? Think of what earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes, have done before to men! Did you think that God had exempted [us]? He is not an insurance agent.

  H. G. Wells

  War, Men, Thinking

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• What is the worst, is that you will have the meltdown of Zimbabwe that the IMF is talking about. And indeed what you will have is growing unemployment in Zimbabwe, growing impoverishment among the people, growing social conflict. And I think that is the worst sort of outcome, that collapse of Zimbabwe certainly would have a much, much worse effect on the region than mere image.

  Thabo Mbeki

  Thinking, Talking, Zimbabwe

  Source: www.nelsonmandela.org

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• The collapse of the Soviet bloc ended the massive subsidies that had kept the Cuban economy afloat. The once-vaunted education and health care systems fell into disrepair. Fidel Castro's stubbornness, meanwhile, made political and economic change difficult in Cuba.

  Tom Gjelten

  Political, Subsidies, Care

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The welfare state is collapsing all around us. There are people that realize that we can't go on this way, but I'm not sure how many people realize how close we are to the collapse of the U.S. financial system.

  Rush Limbaugh

  People, Goes On, Way

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• The rise of what's called Islamic fundamentalism is to a significant extent a result of the collapse of secular nationalist alternatives which were either discredited internally or destroyed, leaving few other options. Something like that may be true of American society.

  Noam Chomsky

  Islamic, Leaving, Alternatives

  Source: chomsky.info

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• [Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don`t mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.

  Daniel Fried

  Mean, Feel Better, Unions

  Source: www.msnbc.com

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• What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle but, unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient.

  Tony Kushner

  Hero, Voice, People

  Tony Kushner (1994). “A Bright Room Called Day”, p.67, Theatre Communications Group

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• I was just thinking... isn't it lucky that we decided to become co-editors? If one takes a blow to the head, the other can fill in. If the other's lung spontaneoulsy collapses, the one can fill in. It's a perfect system once you think about it." ~Will Landsman

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Blow, Thinking, Editors

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• Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Being In Love, Illustration

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• It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Love, Sad, Broken Heart

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• How gratifying to be there when arrogance collapses. How much more so to be the instrument. (Alfred Gillette)

  Robert Ludlum

  Arrogance, Instruments

  Robert Ludlum (2013). “The Jason Bourne Series 3-Book Bundle: The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum”, p.332, Bantam

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• Love! Love until the night collapses!

  Pablo Neruda

  Love, Sweet Love, Night

  Pablo Neruda (1990). “Selected Poems”, p.185, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It's interesting sometimes to read about the last days of past civilizations. It's hard not to notice during these readings that those last days were filled with completely irrational ideas and behaviors that could not be explained in any way outside of a mass collapse of reason.

  David Horowitz

  Reading, Past, Civilization

  Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

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• Feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. They teach us to perk up and lean in when we feel we’d rather collapse and back away. They’re like messengers that show us, with terrifying clarity, exactly where we’re stuck. This very moment is the perfect teacher, and, lucky for us, it’s with us wherever we are.

  Pema Chodron

  Teacher, Disappointment, Irritation

  "When Things Fall Apart". Book by Pema Chödrön, December 24, 1996.

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• Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.

  Julian Barnes

  Religious, Numbers, Despair

  Julian Barnes (1985). “Flaubert's parrot”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would smile at the beauty of destruction.

  Markus Zusak

  Life, Death, Together

  Markus Zusak (2014). “Markus Zusak: The Book Thief & I Am the Messenger”, p.406, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast.

  Che Guevara

  Horse, Wall, Powerful

  Ernesto Che Guevara (2013). “The Awakening of Latin America: A Classic Anthology of Che Guevara's Writing on Latin America”, p.58, Ocean Press

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