Tragedy Quotes - Page 24

• Our current drug crisis is a tragedy born of a phony system of classification. For reasons that are little more than accidents of history, we have divided a group of nonfood substances into two categories: items purchasable for supposed pleasure (such as alcohol), and illicit drugs.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Two, Alcohol, Drug

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• The tragedy of ignorance is its complacency.

  Robert Quillen

  Ignorance, Complacency

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• The human being is a surprisingly resilient organism. We are impelled toward health not sickness. Your spirit, as surely as your body, will try to heal....So you should not fear tragedy and suffering. Like love, they make you more a part of the human family. From them can come your greatest creativity. They are the fire that burns you pure.

  Kent Nerburn

  Creativity, Fire, Like Love

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• Do not measure the number of tragedies you sustain, but to quantify the success you derive from them.

  Jacqueline Susann

  Numbers

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• The candle glimmers but an hour. The night
  Looms in its ancient hunger. Would you know
  The tragedy of human love and need?
  Gaze on the stars, then on a brother's face!

  George Sterling

  Brother, Stars, Night

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• Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breath and their water is safe to drink.

  Christine Todd Whitman

  New York, Air, Water

  "Whitman Details Ongoing Agency Efforts To Monitor Disaster Sites, Contribute To Cleanup Efforts". yosemite.epa.gov. September 18, 2001.

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• After the tragedy of 9/11 we were on our way to becoming a fledgling Matriotic society until our leaders jumped on the bandwagon of inappropriate and misguided vengeance to send our young people to die and kill in two countries that were no threat to the USA or to our way of life. The neocons exploited patriotism to fulfill their goals of imperialism and plunder. This sort of patriotism begins when we enter kindergarten and learn the nationalist 'Pledge of Allegiance'. It transcends all sense when we are taught the 'Star Spangled Banner', a hymn to war.

  Cindy Sheehan

  Country, Stars, War

  "Matriotism" by Cindy Sheehan, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 22, 2006.

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• The Iraqi people are living a long-running tragedy because of the legacy of the old regime, the Americans and their actions that are unsuitable for Iraqi society, and the weakness of national resolve.

  Ahmed Chalabi

  Running, Long, People

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• Who’s afraid of the big, bad buildings? Everyone, because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don’t know. The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale — and ultimately it is a gamble — demands an extraordinary payoff. The trade center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Tombstone, Triumph, Towers

  "PG&E's real estate rumors" by David Lazarus, www.sfgate.com. October 12, 2001.

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• Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown -- but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you. The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present. I don't mean some vague moment in the present -- next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.

  Maxwell Maltz

  Real, Mistake, Mean

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• Short on glamour and long on tragedy.

  Quentin Reynolds

  Long, Glamour

  Quentin James Reynolds (1963). “By Quentin Reynolds”

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• Oh, the worst of all tragedies is not to die young, but to live until I am seventy five and yet not ever truly to have lived.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Life, Young, Worst

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• However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the lay, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Imagination, Criticism

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• Finally on Sunday morning, October 7, 1849, "He became quiet and seemed to rest for a short time. Then, gently, moving his head," he said, "Lord help my poor soul." As he had lived so he died-in great misery and tragedy.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Life, Morning, Moving

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• The tragedy of our time is that we've got it backwards, we've learned to love techniques and use people.

  Herb Kelleher

  People, Design, Technique

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• We have been counseled to "seek . . . out of the best books words of wisdom." It is pointed out in Proverbs, "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom." (Proverbs 4:7.) But in getting wisdom and getting knowledge, above all we should "get understanding." It is important to learn a profession, learn a trade. That applies not only to the young men, but it applies to you young women as well. You girls should place yourselves in a position to be self-supporting and independent in the event that tragedy or an emergency comes, for emergencies have come and will continue to come.

  Henry D. Taylor

  Girl, Wisdom, Book

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• Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a
  hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond
  himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Inspirational, Fate, Challenges

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.142, Beacon Press

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• The great challenge is to refuse to let the bad things that happen to us do bad things to us. That is the crucial difference between adversity and tragedy.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Adversity, Differences, Challenges

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• When love ceases to be tragic it is something else and the individual again throws himself in search of tragedy.

  Albert Camus

  Happiness And Love, Individual, Tragic

  Albert Camus (2008). “Notebooks, 1951-1959”, Ivan R Dee

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• Optimist: someone who isn't sure whether life is a tragedy or a comedy but is tickled silly just to be in the play.

  Robert Breault

  Attitude, Silly, Humor

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• It is one of the great tragedies of the US, that most learn most of what they know about the government from the government.

  James Bovard

  Government, Knows, Great Tragedy

  Interview with Aaron Zelman, jpfo.org.

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• The Holocaust is not only a tragedy of the Jewish people, it is a failure of humanity as a whole.

  Moshe Katsav

  People, Holocaust, Humanity

  "Anger amid the tears - did the allies do enough to save Jews?" by Owen Bowcott, www.theguardian.com. January 28, 2005.

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• Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while.

  Tom Perrotta

  People, Littles, Awful

  "The Leftovers". Book by Tom Perrotta, August 30, 2011.

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• A price drop in a good stock is only a tragedy if you sell at that price and never buy more. To me, a price drop is an opportunity to load up on bargains from among your worst performers and your laggards that show promise. If you can't convince yourself "When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a buyer" and banish forever the fatal thought "When I'm down 25 percent, I'm a seller," then you'll never make a decent profit in stocks.

  Peter Lynch

  Opportunity, Forever, Promise

  "One Up On Wall Street: How To Use What You Already Know To Make Money In The Market". Book by Peter Lynch and John Rothchild, 1989.

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• If I am a fool then it is no misfortune, for then only one more fool will wander this Earth. Amongst the millions of mentally deranged it would barely be noticed. But what if I am not a fool, and that science itself has erred? Then the tragedy is incalculable!

  Viktor Schauberger

  What If, Earth, Fool

  Viktor Schauberger, Callum Coats (1999). “The Water Wizard – The Extraordinary Properties of Natural Water: Volume 1 of Renowned Environmentalist Viktor Schauberger’s Eco-Technology Series”, p.95, Gill & Macmillan Ltd

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