Tragic Quotes - Page 14

• The terrible, tragic fallacy of the last hundred years has been to think that all man's troubles are due to his environment, and that to change the man you have nothing to do but change his environment. That is a tragic fallacy. It overlooks the fact that it was in Paradise that man fell.

  Martyn Lloyd-Jones

  Change, Men, Thinking

  David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1959). “Studies in the Sermon on the Mount”

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• There are parts of a ship which taken by themselves would sink. The engine would sink. The propeller would sink. But when the parts of a ship are built together, they float. So with the events of my life. Some have been tragic. Some have been happy. But when they are built together, they form a craft that floats and is going places. And I am comforted.

  Ralph Washington Sockman

  Taken, Together, Events

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• Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic, chiefly as an almost insane excitement at first, and a worse reaction afterwards.

  Henry Adams

  President, Insane, Firsts

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• Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Compassion, Serenity, Suffering

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• For one thing, I want gesture-any kind of gesture, all kinds of gesture-gentle or brutal, joyous or tragic; the gesture of space soaring, sinking, streaming, whirling; the gestures of light flowing or spurting through color. I see everything as possessing or possessed by gesture. I've often thought of my paintings as having an axis around which everything revolves.

  Elaine de Kooning

  Color, Space, Light

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• Religion is unusual among divisive labels in being spectacularly unnecessary. If religious beliefs had any evidence going for them, we might have to respect them in spite of their concomitant unpleasantness. But there is no such evidence. To label people as death-deserving enemies because of disagreements about real world politics is bad enough. To do the same for disagreements about a delusional world inhabited by archangels, demons and imaginary friends is ludicrously tragic.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Real, People

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• Man's destiny was no longer determined from 'above' by a super-human wisdom and will, but from 'below' by the sub-human agencies of glands, genes, atoms, or waves of probability. ...they could determine his fate, but could provide him with no moral guidance, no values and meaning. A puppet of the Gods is a tragic figure, a puppet suspended on his chromosomes is merely grotesque.

  Arthur Koestler

  Fate, Destiny, Men

  "The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe". Book by Arthur Koestler, 1959.

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• Make your way to death row and speak with the tragic victims of criminality. As they prepare to make their pathetic walk to the electric chair, their hopeless cry is that society will not forgive. Capital punishment is society's final assertion that it will not forgive.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Punishment, Forgiving, Finals

  Martin Luther King (Jr.) (2012). “A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings”, p.36, Beacon Press

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• As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Stars, Hero, Loss

  "In Memoriam — A Rededication to Space" by Buzz Aldrin, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 28, 2011.

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• Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero, and-we must now add-generally extending far and wide beyond him, so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly.

  A. C. Bradley

  Taken, Hero, Suffering

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• The sad and tragic fact is that the civil rights movement, despite its honorable and courageous past, has over the years degenerated into a demagogic hustle, promoting the mindless racism they once fought against.

  Thomas Sowell

  Past, Rights, Years

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• Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work. A land full of places that are not worth caring about will soon be a nation and a way of life that is not worth defending.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Believe, Caring, Land

  Interview with Simmons B. Buntin, www.terrain.org.

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• What looks tragic might be comic on second consideration, and what is comic might bring tears in time.

  Dean Koontz

  Tears, Looks, Might

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Life Expectancy”, p.213, Bantam

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• All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self-evident. Facts are stubborn, and refusal to accept them does not avoid their inexorable effects-the tragic consequences are now upon us

  Helen Keller

  Self, Stubborn, Firsts

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• This death to the logic of emotional commitments of our chance moment in the world of space and time, this recognition of, the shift of our emphasis to, the universal life that throbs and celebrates its victory in the very kiss of our own annihilation, this amor fati, 'love of fate,' love of the fate that is inevitably death, constitutes the experience of the tragic art.

  Joseph Campbell

  Art, Commitment, Fate

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.20, New World Library

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• Ability is not something to be saved, like money, in the hope that you can draw interest on it. The interest comes from the spending. Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy. It is tragic to realize that the majority of human beings, even the so-called educated, call upon only the smallest fraction of their potential capacity. They leave many talents dormant. They fail to develop their mental qualities. They are almost unaware of the degree of energy upon which they might call to build a full and rewarding life.

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Quality, Might, Energy

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• Throughout history we have seen the tyranny of the powerful over the less powerful - think of the history of colonialism or of slavery - and the tragic mistakes made when important information was not "heard" or valued.

  Mary C. Gentile

  Powerful, Mistake, Thinking

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• I have a new theory of history, which is certain things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time. And suburbia seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was a special time and place in history, with special dynamics. And now, we're going to have to live with the consequences of that. And the consequences will be tragic.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Special, Suburbia, Things Happen

  Source: www.slate.com

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• It's often said that elephants are the most human of animals - there's something comical about their acquiescence, and tragic also. The long elephant poem - I was trying to write from the point of view of someone who had been seduced by the logic of his punishers and who, in a kind of awful way, could reproduce the very logic that had put him in this predicament in the first place. And maybe, in some kind of minor way, that's something I feel about myself, or maybe about all selves, that they fall in love with the thing that oppresses them.

  Dan Chiasson

  Falling In Love, Writing, Animal

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Once ignorance is weaponized, violence seems to be a tragic inevitability.

  Henry Giroux

  Ignorance, Violence, Inevitability

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Pope John XXIII was an amoeba of goodness in a sea of waste, mistakenly believing that the Holy See could or would really change in any fundamental way.He was a tragic figure, for he raised a false hope, cast a brief ray of light that was snuffed out when he died.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Believe, Sea, Light

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• It is tragic that so few young people in Western democracies vote. They have forgotten that their ancestors fought for the right to choose and change their leaders. They don't realise that their votes are more important than their tweets or Facebook posts.

  Kofi Annan

  People, Leader, Important

  Source: www.accaglobal.com

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• Cuba cannot go back to capitalism; we know all the tragic experience that it has generated for Latin America and the world. We also know the positive experiences of socialism not only in our geographic environment but also like what we are witnessing in China.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Latin, America, Positive Experiences

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

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• On a more personal note we in this country we have a very tragic situation occur at one of our universities and, it really has taken the country aback and there's a real grieving process that we're going through, And going through it mourning and learning about the victims and-learning about it and showing our support, you know, I hesitate to say, how does your country handle what is that type of carnage on a daily basis?

  Jon Stewart

  Country, Real, Taken

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• It's hard to hear that your good intentions are making things worse and tragic.

  Morgan Spurlock

  Good Intentions, Intention, Hard

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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