Unprecedented Quotes

• The catastrophe now threatening us is unprecedented - and we often confuse the unprecedented with the improbable.

  Al Gore

  Threatening Us, Climate, Catastrophe

  Nobel Peace Prize Lecture, delivered 10 December 2007, Oslo, Norway

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Reality, Accepting

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• You are so busy being YOU that you have no idea how utterly unprecedented you are.

  John Green

  Inspirational, Hipster, Ideas

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.123, Penguin

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... every human being is an unprecedented miracle.

  James A. Baldwin

  Miracle, Humans, Human Beings

  "The shot that echoes still" by James Baldwin, www.esquire.com. January 12, 2018.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• America's leadership is essential. America's resources are vast. America's opportunities are unprecedented.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Opportunity, America, Essentials

  Ford, Gerald R. (1977). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1975”, p.572, Best Books on

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.

  James A. Baldwin

  Pain, Thinking, People

  "Doom and glory of knowing who you are". Jane Howard, Life Magazine, Volume 54, No. 21 (p. 89), May 24, 1963.

  82 Copy quote

  Show source

• This unprecedented racism, bigotry and proto-fascist agenda that Donald Trump is trying to shove down America's throat has unleashed the resistance that will dethrone him.

  Tom Morello

  America, Racism, Trying

  Source: www.billboard.com

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Take young researchers, put them together in virtual seclusion, give them an unprecedented degree of freedom and turn up the pressure by fostering competitiveness.

  James D. Watson

  Science, Giving, Together

  8 Copy quote

• During true revival, thousands of lost people are suddenly swept into the Kingdom of God. Scenes of the lost coming to the Savior in great, and unprecedented numbers, are common.

  Henry Blackaby

  Numbers, People, Kingdoms

  7 Copy quote

• There seems to be a passive alliance between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and that's unprecedented in its form and dangerous in its content, because Russia is our most dangerous geopolitical opponent because of the desires that they have in the Middle East and because of their desire to break up Europe. And in the United States, we spent a lot of blood and a lot of treasure trying to keep Europe intact and democratic, and trying to keep the Middle East from being only influenced by people who are massive fans of [Syrian President] Assad and massive fans of the Iranians.

  Van Jones

  Russia, Blood, Europe

  Source: pen.org

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is a complicated time to govern in the world today because of so much going on and it's coming at us at such an unprecedented rate.

  Chuck Hagel

  World, Today, Complicated

  Source: www.wbur.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Except for fools and madmen, everyone knows that nuclear war would he an unprecedented human catastrophe.

  Carl Sagan

  War, Nuclear, Fool

  7 Copy quote

• The success of this Government, and thus the success of our Nation, depends in the last analysis upon the quality.of our career services. The legislation enacted by the Congress, as well as the decisions made by me and by the department and agency heads, must all be implemented by the career men and women in the Federal service. In foreign affairs, national defense, science and technology, and a host of other fields, they face problems of unprecedented importance and perplexity. We are all dependent on their sense of loyalty and responsibility as well as their competence and energy.

  John F. Kennedy

  Loyalty, Responsibility, Technology

  "Special Message to the Congress on Federal Pay Reform". February 20, 1962.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poor countries are being forced to deal with an unprecedented health crisis without the means to tackle it . Governments can only show how seriously they are taking this crisis by taking immediate action to provide four million extra health workers and to grant those in need access to affordable medicines.

  Annie Lennox

  Country, Health, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

  Martin Buber

  Unique, Men, Tasks

  Martin Buber (2015). “Hasidism and Modern Man”, p.66, Princeton University Press

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.

  Stephen Harper

  Military, Exercise, Order

  7 Copy quote

• The international community... allows nearly 3 billion people - almost half of all humanity - to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.

  Kofi Annan

  People, Community, Humanity

  "Can Globalization Really Solve Our Problems?". Awake! Magazine, May 22, 2002.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.

  Barack Obama

  Government, Creating, Broken Promises

  "Obama's Opaque Presidency" by Shel Israel, www.forbes.com. November 22, 2013.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One set of messages of the society we live in is: Consume. Grow. Do what you want. Amuse yourselves. The very working of this economic system, which has bestowed these unprecedented liberties, most cherished in the form of physical mobility and material prosperity, depends on encouraging people to defy limits.

  Susan Sontag

  People, Society, Liberty

  Susan Sontag (2013). “Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors”, p.117, Penguin UK

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Morning, Personality, Events

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Bend Sinister”, p.77, Penguin UK

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses.

  Robert Ardrey

  Stars, Science, Men

  "African Genesis: A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man". Book by Robert Ardrey, 1961.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• ...let us recognize that extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere. Let us recall that poverty is a denial of human rights. For the first time in history, in this age of unprecedented wealth and technical prowess, we have the power to save humanity from this shameful scourge. Let us summon the will to do it.

  Kofi Annan

  Time, Rights, Humanity

  13 Copy quote

• Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.

  Barry Commoner

  Military, Technology, Survival

  barry commoner (1966). “science and survival”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness.

  Adolf Hitler

  Fashion, Military, War

  "Operation Barbarossa: The Biggest Military Adventure in History" by Erik Sass, mentalfloss.com. June 21, 2011.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a few hundred years, when the history of our time will be written from a long-term perspective, it is likely that the most important event historians will see is not technology, not the Internet, not e-commerce. It is an unprecedented change in the human condition. For the first time - literally - substantial and rapidly growing numbers of people have choices. For the first time, they will have to manage themselves. And society is totally unprepared for it.

  Peter Drucker

  Technology, Important Events, Numbers

  38 Copy quote