Quotes About Disaster

imperialism has always been something of a losing proposition, especially in the modern international system, and our ruling class's attempt to nation-build the world in their own image is doomed to failure and to creating one disaster after another….

it would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations ever held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the grunts and poetry of love. Sit

He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings, disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows. It veered, struck a parked car and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned.

We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us. (p. 1)

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality

The horizon was a biblical disaster.

Surrogate decision making is the common thread in the highly disparate crusades which have captured the imagination and sparked the fervor of the anointed at various times, whether this moral surrogacy was in the form of the eugenics movement, Keynesian economics, or environmentalism. All urgently require the superior wisdom of the anointed to be imposed on the benighted masses, in order to avert disaster.

Disaster calls us to action. They call us to levels of compassion and courage we did know we could reach. They smash us with sorrow and lift us with determination and moral resolved, the way a wave both makes and lifts us in the same wild movement. Disaster transforms sorrowful love into a force strong enough to change the trajectory of history….Dear Mary Oliver, do you think this might now be how we do the work of loving a weary, reeling world? And don't we have to try?

For you, he is the seed of destruction.

blew out 5 million acres of fields, and in the space of a day carried off twice as much dirt as had been excavated by the United States in the decade it took to dig the Panama Canal.

S]he had difficulty crediting it could really happen in her own lifetime. She knew this was exactly how people would feel just before the real apocalypse, that nearly everyone who'd faced some intrusive threat to their everyday existence – war, revolution, genocide, purges, disaster – had faced it with the firm conviction that things like this just didn't happen or didn't happen here or didn't happen to people like them.

Man is supreme lord and master Of his own ruin and disaster, Controls his fate, but nothing less In ordering his own happiness: For all his care and providence Is too feeble a defence To render it secure and certain Against the injuries of Fortune; And oft, in spite of all his wit, Is lost by one unlucky hit, And ruined with a circumstance, And mere punctilio of a chance.

This distinctly suggests a renunciation, an envy of one's own youth, of that time of "effortlessness" which one would so gladly cling on to. But the final stanza portends disaster: a gazing towards the other land, the distant coast of sunrise or sunset. Love no longer holds the poet fast, the bonds with the world are broken, and loudly he calls for help to the mother:

His only defense for now was not to think about it until he had to. But everywhere he turned kids were whispering, "Report card, report card." So much anxiety in the air made it hard to breathe. The end of the day came far too quickly and there it was in his hand--a report card that spelled disaster in Ds and Cs.

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.

Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster.

The lamp tipped over, nailing Kane in the head. Sabin shook his head. The man was a walking disaster Literally. Whenever Kane stepped into a room, things went to hell pretty quickly. Sabin expected the ceiling to cave in any moment. And yea, it had happened before.

Kane, north hallway." With a nod, Kane swerved at the next corner. One of the lightbulbs in the chandelier shattered the moment he did so, spraying glass in every direction. There was a hiss, a muttered curse. Then, of course, another bulb exploded. Disaster. Couldn't take him anywhere

FUBAR, meaning "fucked up beyond all recognition.

Like all engineers, she secretly loves hearing disaster stories … as long as she doesn't have the starring role.

Whatever radical wagers we choose to make in the face of capitalism, liberalism, and their occasional fascist and totalitarian guises, there is a very real possibility that we make them in vain. There is no certain victory, even in the longest run or the latest instance—or if there is, it is presently unimaginable. No matter how long and hard the path, it may still end in disaster. This only seems to make Keynesianism more sensible than ever.

One lesson of history is that every gain has its potential loss. The highest human achievements carry the danger of pride, and pride can lead blindly to disaster, just as failure can fortify the determination and so lead slowly towards triumph.