Irreversible Quotes - Page 4

• Look at situations as contingent, not as inevitable, look at them as the result of a series of historical choices made by men and women, as facts of society made by human beings, and not as natural or god-given, therefore unchangeable, permanent, irreversible.

  Edward Said

  Men, Choices Made, Historical

  Edward W. Said (2007). “The Edward Said Reader”, p.378, Vintage

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• The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.

  Ekaterina Sedia

  Regret, Decision, Trying

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• We have 20 years [until 2026] to reduce carbon emissions or climate change will become irreversible.

  Hans Joachim Schellnhuber

  Years, Carbon Emissions, Environmental

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• If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

  James Hansen

  Humanity, Wish, Environmental

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• Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.

  William J. Clinton

  Responsibility, Punishment, Special

  Clinton, William J. (2000). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 2000-2001”, p.2652, Best Books on

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• Thirty years ago, if you said the country was living beyond its means, people would have thought about economics. Now, if you talk about the country, or the planet living beyond its means, you think about the environment. We are taking out more than we are giving back. We are consuming energy, water, and other natural resources in a way that is leading to huge and often irreversible damage to the planet. So too are most other developed nations. And so too will China and India if they follow the same path of economic development as us

  David Miliband

  Country, Mean, Thinking

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• Man has gone to the moon but he does not yet know how to make a flame tree or a bird song. Let us keep our dear countries free from irreversible mistakes which would lead us in the future to long for those same birds and trees.

  Felix Houphouet-Boigny

  Country, Song, Mistake

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• All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.

  June Jordan

  History, African American, Soul

  June Jordan (1981). “Civil Wars”, Beacon Pr

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• Historical chronology, human or geological, depends... upon comparable impersonal principles. If one scribes with a stylus on a plate of wet clay two marks, the second crossing the first, another person on examining these marks can tell unambiguously which was made first and which second, because the latter event irreversibly disturbs its predecessor. In virtue of the fact that most of the rocks of the earth contain imprints of a succession of such irreversible events, an unambiguous working out of the chronological sequence of these events becomes possible.

  M. King Hubbert

  Science, Rocks, Two

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• A challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power, that it alters radically human existence... There is no doubt that the time to act is now.

  Tony Blair

  Impact, Challenges, Doubt

  Tony Blair's Speech on the Environment and the 'Urgent Issue' of Climate Change, www.theguardian.com. September 15, 2004.

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• The Alexander Technique keeps the body alive, at ages when many people have resigned themselves to irreversible decline.

  Robertson Davies

  People, Age, Technique

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• Cruelty signifies rigor, implacable intention and decision, irreversible and absolute determination.

  Antonin Artaud

  Determination, Decision, Intention

  Antonin Artaud (1958). “The Theater and Its Double”, p.101, Grove Press

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• I know that it's easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and irreversible.

  Robert Goolrick

  Sad, Pain, Grief

  Robert Goolrick (2008). “The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life”, p.213, Algonquin Books

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• In Burma, under the present Constitution, the Army can always take over all parts of government if they think this is necessary. so until the Army comes out clearly and consistently in support of the democratic process we cannot say that it's irreversible. But I don't think we need fear a reversal too much either.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Army, Thinking, Government

  Source: www.voanews.com

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• The future will belong to the Germans... ...when we build the House of Europe. In the next two years, we will make the process of European integration irreversible. This is a really big battle but it is worth the fight.

  Helmut Kohl

  Fighting, Years, Europe

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• All life pulsates in time to the Earth and our artificial fields cause abnormal reactions in all organisms... Increasing electropollution could set in motion irreversible changes leading to our extinction.

  Robert O. Becker

  Phones, Abnormal, Earth

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• (1) irreversible processes are as real as reversible ones. (2) irreversible processes play a fundamental constructive role in the physical world. (3) irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics.

  Ilya Prigogine

  Real, Play, Fundamentals

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• What is irreversible in the Arab world is this intellectual revolution, the awakening that we can get rid of dictators. That is here, and the people have this sentiment and this political power. They feel that they can do it, and it's still there. At the same time, we don't know what is going to happen. So to be very quick by saying, "Oh, revolutions and Arab Spring," and - you know, what I'm advocating is to take a cautious optimism as the starting point of our analysis and to look at what is happening.

  Tariq Ramadan

  Spring, Optimism, People

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• The quantum fluctuations within a zero-point field can start the process that builds the process, which builds into matter, an irreversible process. We have some evidence that suggests that. We don't have a Big Bang, but we have a lot of little pops! A continuous set of little pops!

  Edgar Mitchell

  Zero, Bangs, Littles

  Source: www.edgemagazine.net

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• Many genetically "altered" fish escape from the confines of the crowded floating concentration camps to mingle and mate with their wild fish cousins, causing horrible and irreversible damage to wild species.

  Sharon Gannon

  Cousin, Floating, Damage

  "Sharon Gannon on Veganism". jivamuktiyoga.com. November 16, 2016.

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• Once, I discovered the skulls of two impala rams, their horns locked into an irreversible figure-of-eight; the two animals had been trapped in combat, latched to each other during the battle of the rut. The harder they had pulled to escape from each other, the more intractably stuck they were, until they had fallen exhausted, to their knees, in an embrace of hatred that had killed them both.

  Alexandra Fuller

  Animal, Eight, Two

  Alexandra Fuller (2002). “Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood”, p.191, Random House

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• We have crossed the boundary that lies between Republic and Empire. If you ask when, the answer is that you cannot make a single stroke between day and night: the precise moment does not matter. There was no painted sign to say: 'You are now entering Imperium.' Yet it was a very old road and the voice of history was saying: 'Whether you know it or not, the act of crossing may be irreversible.' And now, not far ahead, is a sign that reads: 'No U-turns.'

  Garet Garrett

  Lying, Night, Voice

  Garet Garrett (1961). “Rise of Empire”

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• The taking of life is too absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict on another, even when backed by legal process. Where the death penalty persists, conditions for those awaiting execution are often horrifying, leading to aggravated suffering.

  Ban Ki-moon

  Suffering, Execution, Death Penalty

  "Taking of Life Too Absolute, Irreversible, Says Secretary-General at High-Level Event on Death Penalty, Urging End to Capital Punishment". Ban Ki-moon’s remarks at a high-level event on the death penalty, in New York, www.un.org. July 3, 2012.

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• We suddenly feel fearful and apprehensive, naked in our perishable flesh, and for just a moment we wish we could go back to being stone—crumbling in death rather than rotting, trapped inside an immobile prison of stone rather than reduced to immaterial souls like those that now rattled within our skulls. The moment passes. There is no point in regretting irreversible decisions—one has to live with them, and we try.

  Ekaterina Sedia

  Regret, Skulls, Decision

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• One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

  Aldous Huxley

  Thinking, Two, Self

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