Quotes About Catastrophes

Maybe — just maybe — the taboo breached by Velikovsky is this: We are not supposed to think about Planetary Catastrophes.

There are going to be some guaranteed catastrophes bearing down on you that you aren't going to be able to avoid (i.e. death), so evolution has kindly given you a strategically located mental blind spot, an inability to imagine future disasters in any way you can really believe, so that you can continue to function, as pointless as that may be...Useful. Except when disastrously bad.

Why would they plot?" "They'll want the earth righted as soon as possible. Minors like to see dead Majors—because catastrophes end with the close of the game.

I welcome a discussion on a long-term, pro-active approach to disaster relief for Americans. Until Congress arrives at a conclusion, however, we must continue to honor America's honorable tradition of helping Americans recover for natural catastrophes.

I'd read a great many books, even Dharma books, but I was making this itch into one of the worst catastrophes in human history.

Two thousand scientists in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well-organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have long since produced a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.

The biggest stories in 2005 were the national disasters.

The fear of life, the fear of burdens and of duties, of annoyances and of catastrophes! The fear of life, which makes us, through dread of its sufferings, refuse its joys. Ah! I tell you, this cowardliness enrages me; I cannot forgive it. We must live - live a complete life - live all our life.

We cut ourselves off from our own roots, the roots of our being, and the very laws of our human nature. This one-sided focus puts us, today, in grave danger, because the violation of our own laws of nature brings about individual and social catastrophes.

another problem is that many of us are addicted to news itself. And this is a drug that can eat away at rationality and happiness both. No matter how much the news alarms someone with this addiction, or depresses them, or makes them absolutely miserable with the unfairness of the world, or puts them in a state of perpetual rage, they can't help but seek out even more news. And this news stokes even more outrage, and exposes them to even more dire warnings of coming catastrophes.

at one time, long before our recorded history, there existed on Earth a global, highly technological civilization that fell into ruin due to natural catastrophes, war, or both.

Conflicts are not temporary interruptions: they are structural, socio-economic catastrophes, and funding must be allocated accordingly.

Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely.

I gave him a gentle uncomprehending look in return. I am a grown-up woman now; let him unbury his own catastrophes.

We asked ourselves whether, in these days of equality in which we live, there are classes unworthy the notice of the author and the reader, misfortunes too lowly, dramas too foul-mouthed, catastrophes too commonplace in the terror they inspire.

Great breakthroughs are always followed by great catastrophes.

Proposing inner-life solutions to our political and economic catastrophes is something done, say the critics, only by people who've spent more time in la-la land than in the 'real world.'

The dignified catastrophes of tragedy bear little resemblance to the slow ruin inflicted by life.

For life is terribly deficient in form. Its catastrophes happen in the wrong way and to the wrong people. There is a grotesque horror about its comedies, and its tragedies seem to culminate in farce.

In hyperbolic tones he listed the catastrophes that in his view were approaching: one, the decline of the revolutionary subject par excellence, the working class; two, the definitive dispersion of the political patrimony of socialists and Communists, who were already perverted by their daily quarrel over which was playing the role of capital's crutch; three, the end of every hypothesis of change, what was there was there and we would have to adapt to it.

One of the privileges of the great is to witness catastrophes from a terrace.

What catastrophes seem to do—sometimes in the span of a few minutes—is turn back the clock on ten thousand years of social evolution. Self-interest gets subsumed into group interest because there is no survival outside group survival, and that creates a social bond that many people sorely miss.

Later, as his [Cuvier's] list of extinct species grew, his position changed. There had, he decided, been multiple cataclysms. "Life on earth has often been disturbed by terrible events," he wrote. "Living organisms without number have been victims of these catastrophes.

With a strong commitment to inquiring into yourself, the universe does not have to use catastrophes to wake you up.