Quotes About Collapse

Authoritarian societies are inherently corrupt, and corrupt societies are inherently unstable. Rule of thieves brings collapse, eventually, because they can't stop stealing.

Another vast omission is my failure to have quietly collapsed the Soviet Union and swept the rubble offstage when nobody was looking.

It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence.

Not a gun was fired—not even by the Fascist militia—to save him. Not a voice was raised in his defense. No one seemed to mind the humiliating nature of his departure—being hauled away from the King's presence to jail in an ambulance. On the contrary, there was general rejoicing at his fall. Fascism itself collapsed as easily as its founder.

In the deepest places, where physical norms collapse under the crushing water, bodies still fall softly through the dark, days after their vessels have capsized. They decay on their long journey down. Nothing will hit the black sand at the bottom of the world but algae-covered bones.

the first national economic collapse. The state banks, flush with federal deposits, were instructed to lend it freely, leading to runaway land speculation.

During that Grammy moment, when I nearly collapsed, I was thinking, Are you kidding me? I've always been really good with my heels. Even pregnant, I could perform in heels. Note to self: Never wear a train onstage.

Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed.

Quite a few people think it wouldn't take very much to return to a few warrior bands, with a few breeding women. Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.

Stalin's dethronement meant not only the collapse of one authority, but that of a whole institution.

When the world changed, people were different. Towns closed, cities were boarded up, communities abandoned, their governments collapsed. They seemed to have no qualms that were obvious to you or me about walking away from what they called a useless pile of rubbish, and never looking back.

We were using a hand-held camera to film the scene when Morse collapses. The camera wouldn't start. Three times they said action and it still wouldn't work. To this day, they still don't know what was wrong.

Obviously, the institution of marriage in America has utterly collapsed.

If Syria collapses completely, the United States and the world would have to consider who, and what, fills the vacuum.

The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out. That's why I'm always hoping society never collapses because the first ones to go will be entertainers.

Economies typically do not function well in hyperinflation. The real value of government debt might disappear, but the economy is likely to disappear with it.

At the height of the Enron mania, the company's market value was $65 billion. Once the dust cleared, the final value was $0.

Thus, Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the misfortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment. They committed ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base.

One of the conclusions that we saw emerging from our discussion of Maya kings, Greenland Norse chieftains, and Easter Island chiefs is that, in the long run, rich people do not secure their own interests and those of their children if they rule over a collapsing society and merely buy themselves the privilege of being the last to starve or die.

We mustn't believe we are living the realization of some evil utopia - we are living the realization of utopia, period. That is to say, its collapse into the real.

As a result. the more the hegemony of the global consensus is reinforced. the greater the risk, or the chances, of its collapse.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it.

You know, oil prices from 2007, on the strength of a very robust global economy and a very robust emerging China, many of you will recall, ramped up to near $150 a barrel. Then we had the financial - U.S. financial collapse. Oil prices collapsed all the way down to $40 a barrel.

But I'm the sort of person who, if certain structures topple, it could all go horribly wrong.