Debacles Quotes

• Finding out exactly what went wrong is key toward preventing future debacles.

  Chuck Grassley

  Keys, Findings, Preventing

  "Grassley lifts hold on the FCC" by Eliza Krigman, www.politico.com. April 27, 2012.

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• My own father had always said the measure of a man wasn't how many times or how hard he got knocked down, but how fast he got back up. I made a pledge to myself that I would get up and emerge from this debacle better for having gone through it. I would live up to the expectation I had for myself. I would be the kind of man I wanted to be.

  Joe Biden

  Father, Men, Expectations

  "Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics". Book by Joe Biden, 2007.

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• I’ve seen all I need to. I’m going to go drink now in a futile effort to wipe away the memory of this debacle.

  Richelle Mead

  Memories, Effort, Needs

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Succubus Revealed”, p.113, Kensington Books

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• A major power can afford a military debacle only when it looks like a political victory.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Military, Political, Victory

  "Portrait of a Planet" by Friedrich Durrenmatt, 1971.

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• The cloud that descended on Black Rock on Monday was not for the past but the future. How much will this debacle chill the pursuit of other risky investigations?

  Tina Brown

  Monday, Past, Clouds

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• Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Peace, Nature

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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• Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Compassion, Animal

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• It is folly to believe that Congress and the president, on their own, will make the necessary and difficult decisions to address the impending financial debacle. After all, they and their predecessors engineered the approaching tsunami. As the situation becomes direr, the federal government's actions will grow more oppressive.

  Mark Levin

  Believe, Government, Congress And The President

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• Just as we teach our children how to ride a bike, we need to teach them how to navigate social media and make the right moves that will help them. The physical world is similar to the virtual world in many cases. It's about being aware. We can prevent many debacles if we're educated.

  Amy Jo Martin

  Children, Moving, Media

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• In the wake of the housing debacle in California, more people are buying less expensive homes, making bigger down payments, and staying away from 'creative' and risky financing. It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

  Thomas Sowell

  Home, California, People

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.30, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The debt ceiling debacle is almost a horrible metaphor: It's as if a bomb went off at 800 Pennsylvania Avenue and sent shrapnel flying in every direction. I don't know what these guys think they're doing, but it looks like they're committing political suicide.

  Charlie Cook

  Suicide, Thinking, Guy

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• Everybody was cratered after Copenhagen. If the movie had worked the way that it should have, if it had been scripted by Holywood, the world would have come together and addressed the biggest problem it ever had faced and delegates would have embraced each other, and it all would have been a good happy scene instead of the complete farce and debacle that it turned into - maybe in certain ways, an absolute low point for human diplomacy.

  Bill McKibben

  Should Have, Together, World

  Source: www.opendemocracy.net

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• A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but today it is caricature. Our world is a world of things. What we dread most, in the face of the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gewgaws, our gadgets, all the little comforts that have made us so uncomfortable. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.

  Henry Miller

  Peace, Giving Up, Our World

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• We just watched this budget debacle right? Seventy-three percent of Americans want to tax the rich. Why can't the politicians respond to that? Because they are the rich. And they are beholden to the rich. It's a captured system.

  Bill Ayers

  Three, Want, Rich

  Source: thepointmag.com

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• Nothing really happened - I was elected in '86 - until 1992, and that's when the Anita Hill debacle happened.

  Barbara Mikulski

  Hills, Happened

  Interview with Brien Williams, digitalcommons.bowdoin.edu. May 4, 2010.

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• I'm always keeping an eye on the court. Also, when the members of Congress came to his office during the budget debacle of a year and a half back and said, "We want to de-fund Planned Parenthood," he said, "Not going to happen." Those apparently were more or less his exact words.

  Anna Quindlen

  Eye, Years, Office

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• And then, of course, Bush won reelection, with everything out there, all of our complaints, all of the issues, all of the troubles with Iraq. So where are we? Bush certainly sees himself as having been given an endorsement. He was asked about accountability in an interview, about why Rumsfeld, Rice, and Wolfowitz have been promoted, these people who led us into the debacle in Iraq. Bush said there was accountability - it was the election. So there we are.

  Seymour Hersh

  Iraq, Issues, People

  Source: www.progressive.org

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• I feel that schools and corporates should help the government in popularising sports in the country. Blaming the government for every sporting debacle will not be fair.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Sports, Country, School

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• Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.

  Keri Hulme

  Artist, Land, Skills

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• In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of un-tethered government debt. I choose the words -“frightful storm' - deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are working right now so hard to correct.

  Richard W. Fisher

  Distance, Government, Long

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• I totally hate when somebody takes a classic and desecrates it. I like Jimmy Page and P. Diddy, but what they did to 'Kashmir' was a debacle.

  Chuck D

  Hate, Kashmir, Pages

  "Chuck D on Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Of Course Hip-Hop Belongs". Interview with Andy Greene, www.rollingstone.com. December 18, 2012.

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• Indeed the early history of rocket design could be read as the simple desire to get the rocket to function long enough to give an opportunity to discover where the failure occurred. Most early debacles were so benighted that rocket engineers could have been forgiven for daubing the blood of a virgin goat on the orifice of the firing chamber.

  Norman Mailer

  Opportunity, Simple, Blood

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• It was a debacle which swept the Columbia Plateau.

  J Harlen Bretz

  Columbia

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• There's plenty of room for finger-pointing for the debacle in Iraq. If it's a problem that the Iraqi military is broken at its core, then there's no point in sending more Humvees and Apaches.

  Bruce Riedel

  Military, Iraq, Broken

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• I wrote that President Bush is passing on to President-elect Obama two wars and an economic debacle. I call it a depression. And he is arming Israel against the Palestinians in every way in Gaza.

  Helen Thomas

  War, Israel, Passing On

  "'An Unconscionable Legacy'–Veteran White House Correspondent Helen Thomas on the Bush Presidency". Interview with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. January 13, 2009.

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