2011 Tsunami Quotes & Sayings

You really aren't very good," she said with brutal honesty. "I am not used to striking young girls," I said. "How could you become used to it?" She laughed. "To grow used to a thing, you must do it over and again. I expect you have never struck a woman even once." Celean extended a hand. I took it in what I hoped was a gracious manner, and she helped pull me to my feet. "I mean where I come from, it is not right to fight with women." "I do not understand," she said. "Do they not — Patrick Rothfuss

'Never change' is the thing that probably high school students have written in each other's yearbooks for time immemorial. They think that command is possible! — Jane Hamilton

The power of administrative bodies to make finding of fact which may be treated as conclusive, if there is evidence both ways, is a power of enormous consequence. An unscrupulous administrator might be tempted to say Let me find the facts for the people of my country, and I care little who lays down the general principles. — Charles Evans Hughes

You are a creature meant to be free. Almost always, the person hardest to tell the truth to ... is you. Once you can be honest with yourself, you'll find the strength and desire to be honest with others. It's the most freeing feeling imaginable. Go find a mirror and face yourself and your darkest truths. You have the light within you to chase away the dark demons that hold you down and push you back into the black corners of your past. You deserve better. You are a child of light and light hidden behind dark clouds, does nothing to brighten the world. — Toni Sorenson

You contemplate and you wander without any worries, between heaven and earth, in your own private world, and in this way you acquire supreme freedom. — Gao Xingjian

From the perspective of an effective altruist, Tzu Chi does some surprising things. After the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011, Tzu Chi raised funds to distribute hot meals to survivors, and in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, which battered New York and New Jersey in 2012, Tzu Chi distributed $10 million dollars worth of Visa debit cards, with $600 on each card, to victims of the storm.7 When I visited the Tzu Chi hospital in Hualien, I asked Rey-Sheng Her, a spokesman for Tzu Chi, why the organization would give aid to the citizens of wealthy countries like Japan and the United States, when the money could do much more good if used to help people in extreme poverty. His answer was that it is important for Tzu Chi to show compassion and love for all, rich and poor. — Peter Singer

If it's good enough for beagles, it's good enough for me. — Richard Littlejohn

I felt, even at fifteen, that God meant man to be happy, that He meant to provide him with what he needed to maintain life in order to be happy, and that we did not need to have quite so much destruction and misery as I saw all around and read of in the daily press. — Dorothy Day

At least ten times as many people died from preventable, poverty-related diseases on September 11, 2011, as died in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on that black day. The terrorist attacks led to trillions of dollars being spent on the 'war on terrorism' and on security measures that have inconvenienced every air traveller since then. The deaths caused by poverty were ignored. So whereas very few people have died from terrorism since September 11, 2001, approximately 30,000 people died from poverty-related causes on September 12, 2001, and on every day between then and now, and will die tomorrow. Even when we consider larger events like the Asian tsunami of 2004, which killed approximately 230,000 people, or the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that killed up to 200,000, we are still talking about numbers that represent just one week's toll for preventable, poverty-related deaths - and that happens fifty-two weeks in every year. — Peter Singer