Crisis And Community Quotes & Sayings

Senator Obama will be taking office at a critical juncture. There are many pressing challenges facing the international community, including the global financial crisis and global warming. We look forward to working closely with President-elect Obama and his team to address these challenges. — Helen Clark

I would like to tell our American, British and Spanish friends that the Iraqi crisis is not a problem between the United States and France, but between those who want to move forward in the logic of war and the international community. — Dominique De Villepin

I think the global community always has a responsibility to any humanitarian crisis. And I think it's in our best interest to address a humanitarian crisis because displacement can can lead to a lot of instability and aggression. — Angelina Jolie

It then becomes necessary to stop short and make a choice: Either/Or. Either one drifts with their absurd system of ideas, believing that this is the human community. Or one dissents totally from their system of ideas and stands as a lonely human being. (But luckily one notices that the others are in the same crisis and making the same choices.) — Paul Goodman

Especially when the leaders in your supposed community make it clear that that is exactly how they feel about you when it comes down to the crunch. But no, ignore that. It is in this moment that we must show the true strength of will within us. A few years ago, in the middle of the financial crisis, the artist and musician Henry Rollins managed to express this deeply human obligation better than millennia of religious doctrine ever have: — Ryan Holiday

I did community theater and kids programs at professional theaters and plays at school and voice lessons for seven years. I stopped because it was so time-consuming. But then I realized that I had access to this world where I could go on auditions. And there wasn't too much of an identity crisis when I started acting professionally because I had been acting longer than I had been writing. It didn't feel new. — Tavi Gevinson

During a national crisis, we as a nation become a single community and no one should take advantage of a crisis. — Tom Vilsack

Ultimately, the purpose of a certification is to establish a particular level of proficiency in a discipline. Unfortunately, "social media" in and of itself, is not a discipline. Digital crisis management, on the other hand, is. So are digital customer service and online community management. This means that a certification program that focuses on social media without addressing each specific business function adapted to social media won't end up certifying anyone in much of anything. — Olivier J. Blanchard

Despite all the dire predictions made in 2001, the Afghans have given the international community, its aid workers and soldiers a large window of opportunity to repair the damage done by 25 years of war. That window, which has stayed open for nearly five years, with amazing good will from the Afghans, is threatening to close unless the world wakes up and deals with the crisis. — Ahmed Rashid

We faced a crisis caused by the Federal Reserve, the corporate tax system, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the Community Reinvestment Act. But the response of many people in Washington was to blame it on capitalism. — David Boaz

That's because both the job title and the job itself have never existed before. We used the term 'ground-breaking' to describe this position because that is exactly what it is." Leonard Scott leaned forward. "The current Administration is committed to solving the greatest problems of our time - climate change, sustainability, the deficit, the impending crisis stemming from shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare, healthcare, and the problems that our nation faces as a result of an aging population. We are implementing a plan that will address all of these issues and will revolutionize the way that this country looks at retirement. Rather than continuing on in a bankrupt, broken system that meets the needs of no one, we are going to introduce American seniors to a new way of life - a holistic community that will engage them like nothing ever has before. — Alexandra Swann

No one wishes for crisis, but when crises come, they can call forth our best impulses, those of compassion, courage, creativity, and community. And if there are crimes and evils hidden in the dark places of our society and the darker places of our consciousnesses, all the better they come to the surface to be seen, understood, confronted, and healed. If our generation is called to bear a burden of that healing, it is a powerful calling and honor and one within our capability. — David Spangler

We call on the international community to share equitably the responsibility for protecting, assisting and hosting refugees in accordance with principles of international solidarity and human rights. — Widad Akreyi

It is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an 'environmental crisis' because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, god-given world. — Wendell Berry

The absence of conditions for self-realization in a country, region and community leads to stagnation, social and economic crisis — Sunday Adelaja

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Government alone cannot solve the problems we deal with in our correctional facilities, treatment centers, homeless shelters and crisis centers - we need our faith-based and community partners. — Dirk Kempthorne

The crisis of the community, its dislocation, the distress of most of its members, went hand in hand with technological progress and social differentiation. — Henri Lefebvre

This is extremely significant. Knowing something of when the Pentateuch came to be, even generally, affects our understanding of why it was produced in the first place - which is the entire reason why we are dipping our toes into this otherwise esoteric pool of Old Testament studies. The final form of the creation story in Genesis (along with the rest of the Pentateuch) reflects the concerns of the community that produced it: postexilic Israelites who had experienced God's rejection in Babylon. The Genesis creation narrative we have in our Bibles today, although surely rooted in much older material, was shaped as a theological response to Israel's national crisis of exile. These stories were not written to speak of "origins" as we might think of them today (in a natural-science sense). They were written to say something of God and Israel's place in the world as God's chosen people. — Peter Enns

Life and death in the critical first hours of a calamity typically hinged on the preparedness, resources, and abilities of those in the affected community with the power to help themselves and others in their vicinity. Those who did better were those who didn't wait idly for help to arrive. In the end, with systems crashing and failing, what mattered most and had the greatest immediate effects were the actions and decisions made in the midst of a crisis by individuals. — Sheri Fink

So how does the machine work that you have a financial crisis? How does deleveraging work - what is the nature of that machine? And what is human nature, and how do you raise a community of people to run a business? — Ray Dalio

He's feeling a pull, like gravity, of the approaching TV news. It's a condition of the times, this compulsion to hear how it stands with the world, and be joined to the generality, to a community of anxiety. The habit's grown stronger these past two years; a different scale of news value has been set by monstrous and spectacular scenes. [ ... ] Everyone fears it, but there's also a darker longing in the collective mind, a sickening for self-punishment and a blasphemous curiosity. Just as the hospitals have their crisis plans, so the television networks stand ready to deliver, and their audiences wait. Bigger, grosser next time. Please don't let it happen. But let me see it all the same, as it's happening and from every angle, and let me be among the first to know. — Ian McEwan

The "environmental crisis," in fact, can be
solved only if people, individually and in their communities, recover responsibility for their thoughtlessly given proxies. If people begin the effort to take back into their own power a significant portion of their economic responsibility, then their inevitable first discovery is that the "environmental crisis" is no such thing; it is not a crisis of our environs or surroundings; it is a crisis of our lives as individuals, as family members, as community members, and as citizens. We have an "environmental crisis" because we have consented to an economy in which by eating, drinking, working, resting, traveling, and enjoying ourselves we are destroying the natural, the god-given world. — Wendell Berry

Why should a change of paradigm be called a revolution? In the face of the vast and essential differences between political and scientific development, what parallelism can justify the metaphor that finds revolutions in both?

One aspect of the parallelism must already be apparent. Political revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created. In much the same way, scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution. — Thomas S. Kuhn

Animism is the way humanity has been deeply connected to the land and its seasonal cycles for millennia, in rapport and conversation with the animals, plants, elements, Ancestors and earth spirits. The opposite of animism is the "cult of the individual" so celebrated in modern society, and the loss of the animist worldview is at the root of our spiritual disconnect and looming ecological crisis. Human beings are just one strand woven into the complex systems of Earth Community, and the animistic perspective is fundamental to the paradigm shift, and the recovery of our own ancestral wisdom. — Pegi Eyers

Devastation wrought by crack cocaine and the drug war, and the odd coincidence that an illegal drug crisis suddenly appeared in the black community after - not before - a drug war had been declared. In fact, the War on Drugs began at a time when illegal drug use was on the decline. — Michelle Alexander

Democracy, in the United States rhetoric refers to a system of governance in which elite elements based in the business community control the state by virtue of their dominance of the private society, while the population observes quietly. So understood, democracy is a system of elite decision and public ratification, as in the United States itself. Correspondingly, popular involvement in the formation of public policy is considered a serious threat. It is not a step towards democracy; rather it constitutes a 'crisis of democracy' that must be overcome. — Noam Chomsky

The rules in this new 'post-partisan' era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it's 'stimulus.' If the Republican Party opposes it, it's 'politics' - as in headlines like this: 'Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.' These are serious times: As the president says, it's the worst economic crisis since the Thirties. So politicians need to put politics behind them and immediately lavish $4.19 billion on his community-organizing pals at the highly inventive 'voter registration' group ACORN for 'neighborhood stabilization activities. — Mark Steyn

Strangely, the subsequent AIDS works that have become iconic in our culture rarely mention the movement, or the engaged community of lovers, but both formations were inseparable from the crisis itself. Now, looking back, I fear that the story of the isolated helpless homosexual was one far more palatable to the corporations who control the reward system in the arts.The more truthful story of the American mass - abandoning families, criminal governments, indifferent neighbors - is too uncomfortable and inconvenient to recall. The story of how gay people who were despised, had no rights, and carried the burden of a terrible disease came together to force the country to change against its will, is apparently too implicating to tell. Fake tales of individual heterosexuals heroically overcoming their prejudices to rescue helpless dying men with AIDS was a lot more appealing to the powers that be, but not at all true. — Sarah Schulman

I have put together resources from the private and philanthropic communities to help provide a bridge because you've got to get the federal money. You've got to get the state money, but I'm going to do everything I can. And I will be with Flint all the way through this crisis in whatever capacity I am. — Hillary Clinton

The shaman is a very peculiar figure. He is critical to the functioning of the psychological and social life of his community, but in a way he is always peripheral to it. He lives at the edge of the village. He is only called upon in matters of great social crisis. He is feared and respected. And this might be a description of these hallucinogenic substances. — Terence McKenna

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - two bloated and corrupt government-sponsored programs - contributed heavily to the crisis.In order to prevent another crisis, we need to do what we should have done years ago - reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We also need to repeal Dodd-Frank, the Democrats' failed solution. Under Dodd-Frank, 10 banks too big to fail have become five banks too big to fail. Thousands of community banks have gone out of business. — Carly Fiorina

Only through the struggle of the working class, the main revolutionary force in modern society, can a progressive solution be found to the crisis created by the breakdown of capitalism. The working class is revolutionary because 1) it is the principal productive force in society; 2) the historical and political logic of its resistance to capitalist exploitation and oppression leads to the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, the replacement of the profit motive with the satisfaction of social needs as the driving principle of economic life, and the realization of genuine social equality among all people; and 3) it is an international class whose victory will break down the barriers of national states and unite humanity in a truly global community devoted to the protection and development of its common home, the Earth. — Anonymous

I was reading voraciously about global issues such as clean water, community development, war, human trafficking, economics, disaster relief, the AIDS crisis, unjust systemic evil. Meanwhile, church budgets made room for a brand-new light show and a kickin' sound system or a trip to Disneyland or a video venue in a saturated upscale neighborhood - all in an effort to practice creative-experience marketing. — Sarah Bessey

It is impossible to exaggerate how unprepared the medical community in West Africa was for this crisis. Prior to the Ebola outbreak Liberia had approximately fifty doctors in the entire country. Many clinics and hospitals had no electricity or running water. — Nancy D. Sheppard

Argentine political life is like the life of an ant community or an African forest tribe: full of events, full of crisis and deaths, but life is always cyclical, and the year ends as it begins. — V.S. Naipaul

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on ... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with. I would rather go before the government with two people who have a competent understanding of an issue, and who therefore deserve a hearing, than with two thousand who are vaguely dissatisfied.
But even the most articulate public protest is not enough. We don't live in the government or in institutions or in our public utterances and acts, and the environmental crisis has its roots in our lives. By the same token, environmental health will also be rooted in our lives. That is, I take it, simply a fact, and in the light of it we can see how superficial and foolish we would be to think that we could correct what is wrong merely by tinkering with the institutional machinery. The changes that are required are fundamental changes in the way we are living. — Wendell Berry

Even if we act immediately, the world is doomed to lose many of its animal and plant species and this inturn will reduce the ability of ecosystems to deliver vital services to human populations. The Red List gives all of us a practical tool for raising awareness of the biodiversity crisis and for forging new partnerships within the international community. — Achim Steiner

There's sort of a theory that's going around in the China-watching community about a perfect storm coming up with the 2008 Olympics, a U.S. election and a Taiwanese election, some sort of mutually reinforcing explosion and crisis. — Dennis C. Blair

The crucified but risen Jesus appears in the believing, assembled community of the church. That this sense of the risen, living Jesus has faded in many [churches] can be basically blamed on the fact that our churches are insufficiently 'communities' of God. Where the church of Jesus Christ lives, and lives a liberating life in the footsteps of Jesus, the resurrection faith undergoes no crisis. On the other hand, it is better not to believe in God than to believe in a God who minimizes human beings, holds them under and oppresses them, with a view to a better world to come. — Edward Schillebeeckx

This is a crisis, but there is an opportunity to help revitalize and renew the Catholic community. — William P. Leahy

I want to be really proactive in working with the progressive business community in Australia and also reaching out to rural and regional Australia in order to assist in the sustainability crisis and the food security crisis. — Christine Milne

Non-violent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a community that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored ... I am not afraid of the word tension. I have earnestly worked and preached against violent tension, and there is a type of constructive tension that is necessary for growth. — Martin Luther King Jr.