Tragic Quotes - Page 19

• When America does not lead, the world is a dangerous and a tragic place. This is a bad deal. [Barack] Obama broke every rule of negotiation.Yes, our allies are not perfect, but Iran is at the heart of most of the evil that is going on in the Middle East through their proxy.

  Carly Fiorina

  Heart, Iran, America

  Annotated transcript: The Aug. 6 GOP debate, www.washingtonpost.com. August 6, 2015.

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• Prophetic pragmatism attempts to keep alive the sense of alternative ways of life and of struggle based on the best of the past. In this sense, the praxis of prophetic pragmatism is tragic action with revolutionary intent, usually reformist consequences and always visionary outlook.

  Cornel West

  Struggle, Past, Alternatives

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• Among all the tragic consequences of depression and war, this suppression of personal self-expression through one's life work is among the most poignant.

  Henry Wriston

  Life, War, Self

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• We think of death and loss as tragic twins, but in fact it is loss that hurts us.

  Perry Brass

  Hurt, Loss, Thinking

  Perry Brass (1998). “The Lover of My Soul: A Search for Ecstasy and Wisdom”, p.29, Perry Brass

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• Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true andfalse but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.

  Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

  Character, Evil, Tragedy

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• If I just got up in the morning and had no place to go and was retired or something, I would be sitting there and be thinking, "Gee, what is the purpose of life? Why are we all finite? Why do we get old and die? Is there nothing out there? Why is it so tragic? Why do our loved ones perish? Why do we generate?" Who wants to think about that stuff?

  Woody Allen

  Morning, Thinking, Would Be

  "Woody Allen Discusses "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger". Interview with Raffi Asdourian, thefilmstage.com. October 16, 2010.

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• We really didn't devote a lot of time to investigating the scariest aspects of our flight. It was more challenging and productive to concentrate on the remedies, and leave things that couldn't be solved to happen without thinking about them. There is a morbid human curiosity associated with tragic death-producing events. Though naturally, this needs to be kept in perspective.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Thinking, Perspective, Challenges

  Scholastic Interview, teacher.scholastic.com. November 17, 1998.

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• We know that our life is essentially tragic. I'm absolutely not for handing over that very important department of our psyche to those who say, "Why didn't you say so before? God has a plan for you in mind."

  Christopher Hitchens

  Mind, Important, God Has A Plan

  Source: www.wanliss.com

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• It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world.

  Lester B. Pearson

  Mistake, People, Political

  Lester B. Pearson (1964). “The Four Faces of Peace and the International Outlook: Statements”, McClelland and Stewart

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• But as Van casually directed the searchlight of backthought into that maze of the past where the mirror-lined narrow paths not only took different turns, but used different levels (as a mule-drawn cart passes under the arch of a viaduct along which a motor skims by), he found himself tackling, in still vague and idle fashion, the science that was to obsess his mature years - problems of space and time, space versus time, time-twisted space, space as time, time as space - and space breaking away from time, in the final tragic triumph of human cogitation: I am because I die.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Fashion, Past, Years

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• Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Suffering, Way, Taste

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• Tragic heroes are failed pragmatists. Their ends are unrealistic and their means are impractical.

  Adam Phillips

  Hero, Mean, Ends

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• I do not understand those who take little or no interest in the subject of religion. If religion embodies a truth, it is certainly the most important truth of human existence. If it is largely error, then it is one of monumentally tragic proportions—and should be vigorously opposed.

  Steve Allen

  Errors, Important, Littles

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• Around the time of the Terran Caesar Augustus, a Martian artist had been composing a work of art. It could have been called a poem, a musical opus, or a philosophical treatise; it was a series of emotions arranged in tragic, logical necessity. Since it could be experienced by a human only in the sense in which a man blind from birth might have a sunset explained to him, it does not matter which category it be assigned.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Art, Philosophical, Sunset

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.93, Penguin

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• When we read, even if the characters are tragic or sad or disturbing, these are our brothers and sisters in the human family.

  Julia Alvarez

  Brother, Character, Humans

  Source: ncac.org

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• I've always found the most tragic things funny. I was always the guy laughing at the funeral.

  Andrew Gurland

  Laughing, Funeral, Guy

  "Married showrunner Andrew Gurland is the guy laughing at the funeral". Interview with Erik Adams, tv.avclub.com. September 10, 2015.

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• All of you are aware of the tragic history of racism in America, but for a very long time, African-Americans and their white allies came together and they struggled and they stood up for justice and they stood up to lynching and they stood up to segregation and the stood up to a nation where African-Americans couldn't even vote in America.

  Bernie Sanders

  White, America, Lynching

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• The most difficult task, phase-out over the next 20-25 years of coal use that does not capture CO₂, is Herculean, yet feasible when compared with the efforts that went into World War II. The stakes, for all life on the planet, surpass those of any previous crisis. The greatest danger is continued ignorance and denial, which could make tragic consequences unavoidable.

  James Hansen

  War, Ignorance, Years

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• I don't trust tragedies much. It's easy to make a person sad by showing him something tragic. We all recognize when sad things happen: someone dies, someone loses a loved one, young love is crushed. It's much harder to make a man laugh-what's funny to one person isn't funny to another.

  Ilona Andrews

  Love Is, Men, Laughing

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• Some lives are tragic, some ridiculous. Most are both at once.

  Edward Abbey

  Ridiculous

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.27, RosettaBooks

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• All who are caught in its seductive, tantalizing web and remain so will become addicted to its immoral, destructive influence. For many, that addiction cannot be overcome without help. The tragic pattern is so familiar. It begins with curiosity that is fueled by its stimulation and is justified by the false premise that when done privately, it does no harm to anyone else. For those lulled by this lie, the experimentation goes deeper, with more powerful stimulations, until the trap closes and a terribly immoral, addictive habit exercises its vicious control.

  Richard G. Scott

  Powerful, Lying, Exercise

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• The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?' If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realize what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best conviction, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment, but it was nevertheless a compensation. On the cross his mission deserted him. But because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the Resurrection body.

  Carl Jung

  Tragedy, Body, Want

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• We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.

  Mark Rothko

  Matter, Timeless, Subjects

  Mark Rothko, Miguel López-Remiro (2006). “Writings on Art”, p.36, Yale University Press

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• Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Often Can, People

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• Tragic paradox of freedom: the mediocre men who alone make its exercise possible cannot guarantee its duration.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Exercise, Men, Duration

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

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