Crisis Change Quotes & Sayings

If you are interested enough in the climate crisis to read this post, you probably know that 2 degrees Centigrade of warming (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) is the widely acknowledged threshold for "dangerous" climate change. — Jeff Goodell

Obama was quite serious when he said he was going to change the world. And now he has a national crisis, a personal mandate, a pliant Congress, a desperate public
and, at his disposal, the greatest pot of money in galactic history. — Charles Krauthammer

The crisis of history in France, is a crisis of social bond, a crisis of citizenship. A citizen is the heir of a past more or less mythified, but he makes his own, whatever his personal genealogy. Today, under the pretext that the country has undergone considerable changes, some would like to transform the past in order to adopt it to the new face of France. Nothing, however, will make the past anything other than what it was. To pretend to change history is a totalitarian project: One who has control of the past has control over the future, one who has control over the present has control over the past, as George Orwell wrote in 1984. — Jean Sevillia

If enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one. — Naomi Klein

We are running out of time, we must have a planetary solution to a planetary crisis. — Al Gore

Climate change detonates the ideological scaffolding on which contemporary conservatism rests. A belief system that vilifies collective action and declares war on all corporate regulation and all things public simply cannot be reconciled with a problem that demands collective action on an unprecedented scale and a dramatic reining in of the market forces that are largely responsible for creating and deepening the crisis. — Naomi Klein

I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in. — Stanislav Grof

In adverse circumstances, every creature becomes something else, evolving or devolving. What makes us human is that we know what we once were, and, let us hope, we remember how to change back. — Brian Herbert

A lesson in bringing about true changes of mind and heart comes from a Japanese functionary. By day, he crunched numbers that showed his country was approaching imminent energy crisis and helped to craft policy. By night, he weaved a novel in which a bureaucrat-hero helps see the country through to new energy sources. When the crisis came faster than he expected, he actually put the novel away because he did not want to make the burden of his countrymen worse. When the short-term crisis passed, he published his novel. It's phenomenal and well-timed success fueled the vision that inspired difficult change and maintained a sense of urgency. — Daniel Yergin

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. — Milton Friedman

We should be disciplined and responsible and then our prosperity will be stable despite any economic crisis, inflation or a change of government — Sunday Adelaja

Art is the heart's explosion on the world. Music. Dance. Poetry. Art on cars, on walls, on our skins. There is probably no more powerful force for change in this uncertain and crisis-ridden world than young people and their art. It is the consciousness of the world breaking away from the strangle grip of an archaic social order. — Luis J. Rodriguez

A deep and enduring economic crisis like the Great Depression of the 1930s, or a natural disaster that kills tens of thousands of people, might change America's fundamental calculus about economic justice. Until then, the American public will probably continue to refrain from broadly challenging both male and female corporate leaders who compensate themselves far in excess of their value to society. That — Sebastian Junger

When you have that window of opportunity called a crisis, move as quickly as you can, get as much done as you can. There's a momentum for change that's very compelling. — Anne M. Mulcahy

Entomologist Dr. Ovid Byron speaking to television journalist, Tina, who says, re. global warming, "Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening and whether humans have a role."
He replies:
"The Arctic is genuinely collapsing. Scientists used to call these things the canary in the mine. What they say now is, The canary is dead. We are at the top of Niagara Falls, Tina, in a canoe. There is an image for your viewers. We got here by drifting, but we cannot turn around for a lazy paddle back when you finally stop pissing around. We have arrived at the point of an audible roar. Does it strike you as a good time to debate the existence of the falls?" p.367 — Barbara Kingsolver

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

Climate change is like that; it's hard to keep it in your head for very long. We engage in this odd form of on-again-off-again ecological amnesia for perfectly rational reasons. We deny because we fear that letting in the full reality of this crisis will change everything. And we are right.5 — Naomi Klein

Real change doesn't come without crisis. Childbirth doesn't come without crisis. I think that's happening with humanity now. Our growth has generated multiple crises ... and these are the contractions that are propelling us into a new world, whether we like it or not, but I think we're going to like it. — Charles Eisenstein

People only accept change in necessity and see necessity only in crisis. — Jean Monnet

Nor do piecemeal steps however well intended, even partially resolve problems that have reached a universal, global and catastrophic character. If anything, partial 'solutions' serve merely as cosmetics to conceal the deep seated nature of the ecological crisis. They thereby deflect public attention and theoretical insight from an adequate understanding of the depth and scope of the necessary changes. — Murray Bookchin

Only the change on the international scene, the crisis in the gulf, and the strong, firm position of the United States against aggression between two Arab countries created realities that led to the Madrid Peace Conference. — Yitzhak Rabin

I do think that we are facing a crisis in our democracy. As true patriots, each and every one of us has to speak up, speak out, and change those in charge. Our democracy depends upon it. — Robert Greenwald

It certainly inhibits a man's desire to change companies for a better job. Thus, it is at least a minor pressure against free-spirited enterprise. All the benefits exert pressure, too. There is nothing sinister about them, since admittedly they are for your own material comfort -- and isn't that supposed to be one of the goals of mankind? What happens is that, as the years go by, the temptation to strike out on your own or take another job becomes less and less. Gradually you become accustomed to the Utopian drift. Soon another inhibition may make you even more amenable. If you have been in easy circumstances for a number of years, you feel that you are out of shape. Even in younger men the hard muscle of ambition tends to go slack, and you hesitate to take a chance in the jungle again. — Alan Harrington

Were really trying to make Crisis as accessible as possible, which is extremely difficult to do because it involves so many characters. But, again, you dont need to know all the details. Obviously the mainstays are there Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and heavily focused on. There are a ton of great characters, and a lot happens to them over the course of Infinite Crisis . Some change and evolve, others fall, but it really is about trying to bring everybody on stage. We probably have 90 percent of the DCU showing up, if not more but without losing focus on what the story is. — Geoff Johns

When you are in a hole, stop digging! — Bill McKibben

Computerization brings about an essential change in the way the worker can know the world and, with it, a crisis of confidence inthe possibility of certain knowledge. — Shoshana Zuboff

Even though it's important for all of us to change our light bulbs and the vehicles we drive, it's much more important to change our laws and policies. I drive a hybrid and we've changed our light bulbs and windows and installed solar panels and geothermal ground source heat pumps and most everything else. But putting the burden on individuals to solve this global crisis is ultimately not going to be the most effective way to solve it. — Al Gore

After the riot in Chicago that Summer, I was greatly discouraged. But we had trained a group of about two thousand disciplined devotees of nonviolence who were willing to take blows without retaliation. We started out engaging in constitutional privileges, marching before real estate offices in all-white communities. And that nonviolent , disciplined, determined force created such a crisis in the city of Chicago that the city had to do something to change conditions. We didn't have any Molotov cocktails, we didn't have any bricks, we didn't have guns, we just had the power of our bodies and our souls. There was power there, and it was demonstrated once more. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A company with dysfunctional habits can't turn around simply because a leader orders it. Rather, wise executives seek out moments of crisis - or create the perception of crisis - and cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is finally ready to overhaul the patterns they live with each day. — Charles Duhigg

But another thing I know is this - we can't steer ourselves out of this crisis by heading in the same, disastrous direction. We can't change direction with a new driver who wants to follow the same old map. And that's what this election is all about. — Barack Obama

A crisis can knock us off balance, making us afraid, vulnerable, and ripe for change. This also happens in our spiritual journey. We have a crisis in our faith that causes us to reconsider. It might frighten us, at least make us vulnerable. If we become bitter or too resistant, we can get very stuck. But if we let the change or crisis touch us, if we live with it and embrace it as difficult as that is, we are more likely to grow and to move eventually to another stage or spiral in our journey [of faith]. When we are most vulnerable, we have the best chance to learn and move along the way. In the midst of pain there is promise. — Janet O. Hagberg

People are really in despair today in Greece. They are afraid of tomorrow. They suffer. We have 1.2 million people without jobs. So you understand that this crisis cannot leave the political system untouched. Of course we have to change but we have to change in the right way. — Dora Bakoyannis

It was in 1982 that Milton Friedman wrote the highly influential passage that best summarizes the shock doctrine. " Only a crisis-actual or percieved-produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable. — Naomi Klein

The sequence is suffering, insight, will, action, change. — Allen Wheelis

Switching to all organic food production is the single most critical (and most doable) action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis. — Maria Rodale

A New World Order is required to deal with the Climate Change crisis. — Mikhail Gorbachev

The crisis is not an opportunity to change the character of Louisiana's political order. We must not use the crisis to turn Louisiana into a red state
this is a rainbow state. — Jesse Jackson

The passage of fourteen years had led to another significant change in the international environment. As I told Bush 43 and Condi Rice on more than one occasion, when I had been in government before, problems or crises more often than not would arise, be dealt with, and go away. The Yom Kippur War in October 1973, a serious crisis that risked confrontation with the Soviet Union, was over in a few days. Even the Iranian hostage crisis, as painful and protracted as it was, ended in 444 days. Now hardly any issue or problem could be resolved and put aside; instead problems accumulated. — Robert M. Gates

I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new conciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. — Albert Hofmann

We can never really be prepared for that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling. - Eric Hoffer — David Allen

Since the global economic crisis began, the change in global attitudes is clear to see - and I think it is pitiful. Barack Obama came to China and he is probably the only president of the United States never to mention the words 'human rights' in public. — Ai Weiwei

Because it is such a huge crisis, because it puts us on a firm science-based deadline, it's a once-in-a-century opportunity to build a better society and address raging inequality, create huge numbers of jobs, rebuild our public infrastructure. But, we can't do it unless we break every single rule in the free-market playbook. Which is why the worst people in the world all deny climate change. — Naomi Klein

But sometimes a person who fits none of these categories comes into your life. This is the joker who pops out of the deck at odd intervals over the years, often during a moment of crisis. In the movies this sort of character is known as the fifth business, or the change agent. When he turns up in a film, you know he's there because the screenwriter put him there. But who is screenwriting our lives? Fate or coincidence? — Stephen King

A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle. — Lily Brooks-Dalton

This is by far the most serious crisis civilisation has ever faced. — Al Gore

Capitalism rules worldwide, and a society whose economic fabric depends on constant growth requires that its citizens have ever-expanding needs and wants ... In the West, it will take one with soul force equal to Gandhi's to change the prevailing dogma of ever increasing GNP. We may be forced to change our profligate ways some day, when the soil is depleted, the aquifers drained, the icecaps melted, and all the oil wells pumped dry. But the crisis will wait another fifty years or so; we'll leave those problems to a generation yet unborn. — Philip Yancey

I believe that climate change is the great global crisis that we face, environmental crisis. I believe that if you're serious about climate change, you don't encourage the excavation and transportation of very dirty oil. — Bernie Sanders

Jesus evokes extreme reactions. Some are so furious with him they try to throw him off a cliff and kill him. Others are so terrified they cry out, "Depart. . . . Get away from me!"5 Others fall down before him and worship him. Why the extremes? It is because of the claims about who he is. If he is who he said he is, then you have to center your whole life on him. And if he is not who he said he is, then he is someone to hate or run away from. But no other response makes any sense. Either he is God or he isn't - so he's absolutely crazy or infinitely wonderful. The modern world, however, is filled with people who say they believe in Jesus, they say they understand who he is, but it hasn't revolutionized their lives. There has been no crisis and lasting change. The only way to explain this is that, contrary to what they claim, they haven't really grasped the meaning that he is "God with us." IT — Timothy J. Keller

Our nation has abundant clean energy resources, and tapping them will generate jobs, make the air safer to breathe, and tackle climate change - the greatest environmental crisis of our time. — Frances Beinecke

We're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change
and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes. — Douglas Coupland

In short, we have reached what some activists have started calling "Decade Zero" of the climate crisis: we either change now or we lose our chance.29 — Naomi Klein

Stop shying away from people. If you actually took a moment to listen to what they have to say, they might just say something that will change your life. — S.R. Crawford

By the time you get to year six, there's never a break ... and you get tired. There's always a crisis. It wears you down. This has been a White House that hasn't really had much change at all. There is a fatigue factor that builds up. You sometimes don't see the crisis approaching. You're not as on guard as you once were. — Ed Rollins

The crisis that we inherit when we come to power will be the occasion for fundamental change and not the excuse for postponing it — Tony Benn

I don't believe ... global warming is real. Do we have climate change? Yes. Is it a crisis? No ... Because the science, the real science, doesn't say that we have any major crisis or threat when it comes to climate change. — Herman Cain

We have to abandon the conceit that isolated personal actions are going to solve this crisis. Our policies have to shift. — Al Gore

As can be seen, 'crisis', in its proper sense, expresses something positive, creative and optimistic, because it involves a change, and may be a rebirth after a break-up. It indicates separation, certainly, but also choice, decisions and therefore the opportunity to express an opinion. — Zygmunt Bauman

Every crisis, actual or impending, needs to be viewed as an opportunity to bring about profound changes in our society. Going beyond protest organizing, visionary organizing begins by creating images and stories of the future that help us imagine and create alternatives to the existing system. — Grace Lee Boggs

We're facing growing climate change, more floods, more droughts, more crisis on a planetary level, and the systems we put in place in the twentieth century are just not going to work. We've run out of stuff. Our big problems are going to be energy supplies and food supplies. This is not a right-left issue. It's a people issue, and it cuts across all our categories. — Margaret Atwood

We excel in cut-and-paste solutions. We make promises and provide quick fixes to tide over the crisis at hand, thereby abandoning long-term objectives. We also seem to keep widening the threshold of our tolerance. We see enormous wrong, abysmally high levels of corruption, but accept these as necessary evils and refuse to raise a voice against them. We need to ask ourselves not only why we choose to live with mediocrity, but also when we plan to stand up and say, enough is enough. I daresay - and I am relieved to see this in my lifetime - such change is on its way; we see welcome signs, particularly from GenNext. — Vinod Rai

Women's struggle for equality worldwide is about more than equality between men and women. Our struggle is about reversing the trends of social, economic, political, and ecological crisis - a global nervous breakdown! Our struggle is about creating sustainable lives and attainable dreams. — Bella Abzug

As Development Secretary, I have seen in the developing world that climate change there is not a theory, is not a future threat: it is a contemporary crisis. — Douglas Alexander

They mean, quite simply, that climate change has become an existential crisis for the human species. — Naomi Klein

Having the understanding of God, God's ambassadors are able to bring a country out of crisis, change politics, business and economy — Sunday Adelaja

In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change. — Gary Hamel

It's the invincible arrogance of Europe's elites that gets me. These are people who have seen the euro collapse. These are people who are presiding over a migration crisis on their borders, and yet do they ever acknowledge that they need to change? No. They say they need more integration, more of our money, more control over this country. — Michael Gove

Do you think Western Civilization has come to an end?
"We are clearly going through a cultural crisis at the moment. It's a phase where we are trying to distinguish values of life. People are looking for a solution and perhaps they will find it. But the radicality of the search will change their view of life."
So there is a cultural crises?
"There is a general crisis, but it's not the end of the world.
But the crisis it total?
"And so what? The crisis means that now the world is at the bottom of a sinus curve. In the nature of things, it will now rise and fall again later. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

Our overriding environmental challenge tonight is the worldwide problem of climate change, global warming, the gathering crisis that requires worldwide action. — William J. Clinton

In times of crisis, the incumbent suffers. And the bigger the crisis, the greater the punishment inflicted on those in power unless they do something that makes a change. — Tariq Ali

The main lesson to be learned from the Love Canal crisis is that in order to protect public health from chemical contamination, there needs to be a massive outcry
a choir of voices
by the American people demanding change. — Lois Gibbs

Still, it becomes clearer every day that organizing or joining massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently address the crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are. — Grace Lee Boggs

I think we're in a global crisis of unprecedented scale, with global warming and climate change, and we don't have the solution using any of the separated structures that are attempting to solve these issues, whether it be the United Nations, or the global corporations. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

It's clearly a crisis of two things: of consciousness and conditioning. We have the technological power, the engineering skills to save our planet, to cure disease, to feed the hungry, to end war; But we lack the intellectual vision, the ability to change our minds. We must decondition ourselves from 10,000 years of bad behavior. And, it's not easy. — Terence McKenna

Now, now," my father said. "Let's just get the bags."
This was typical. My father, the lone male in our estrogen-heavy household, had always dealt with any kind of emotional situation or conflict by doing something concrete and specific. Discussion of cramps and heavy flow at the breakfast table? He was up and out the door to change oil on one of our cars. Coming home in tears for reasons you just didn't want to discuss? He'd go make you a grilled cheese, which he'd probably end up eating. Family crisis brewing in a public place? Bags. Get the bags. — Sarah Dessen

I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways. — Tom Shadyac

All the images of carnival are dualistic; they unite within themselves both poles of change and crisis: birth and death (the image of pregnant death), blessing and curse (benedictory carnival curses which call simultaneously for death and rebirth), praise and abuse, youth and old age, top and bottom, face and backside, stupidity and wisdom. — Mikhail Bakhtin

People may indeed be treated as objects and may be profoundly affected thereby. Kick a dog often enough and he will become cowardly or vicious. People who are kicked undergo similar changes; their view of the world and of themselves is transformed ... People may indeed be brainwashed, for benign or exploitative reasons ...
If one's destiny is shaped by manipulation one has become more of an object, less of a subject, has lost freedom ...
If, however, one's destiny is shaped from within then one has become more of a creator, has gained freedom. This is self-transcendence, a process of change that originates in one's heart and expands outward ... begins with a vision of freedom, with an "I want to become ... ", with a sense of the potentiality to become what one is not. One gropes toward this vision in the dark, with no guide, no map, and no guarantee. Here one acts as subject, author, creator. — Allen Wheelis

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

My father's generation's crisis was fighting fascism. Ours is fighting climate change. It is much harder because you can't see it, it is not an obvious threat. But the solution is in our hands. — Nicholas Stern

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The story of humanity is essentially the story of human movement. In the near future , people will move even more, particularly if, as some predict, climate change sparks mass migration on an unprecedented scale. The sooner we recognize the inevitability of this movement, the sooner we can try to manage it. — Patrick Kingsley

Banks have come to realize in the recent crisis that they are paying the price for having designed compensation packages which provide incentives that are not, in the long run, in the interests of the banks themselves, and I would like to think that would change. — Mervyn King

The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny. — Edward Snowden

And certain things around us will change, become easier or harder, one thing or the other, but nothing will ever really be any different. I believe that. We have made our decisions, our lives have been set in motion, and they will go on and on until they stop. But if that is true, then what? I mean, what if you believe that, but you keep it covered up, until one day something happens that should change something, but then you see nothing is going to change after all. What then? Meanwhile, the people around you continue to talk and act as if you were the same person as yesterday, or last night, or five minutes before, but you are really undergoing a crisis, your heart feels damaged ... — Raymond Carver

Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook , Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago. — Thomas Friedman

Global warming may be a 'crisis,' even 'the most pressing environmental problem of our time.' ... Indeed, it may ultimately affect nearly everyone on the planet in some potentially adverse way, and it may be that governments have done too little to address it. It is not a problem, however, that has escaped the attention of policymakers in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our Government, who continue to consider regulatory, legislative, and treaty-based means of addressing global climate change. — John Roberts

The first and most important impact of climate change on human civilisation will be an acute and permanent crisis of food supply. Eating regularly is a non-negotiable activity and countries that cannot feed their people are unlikely to be reasonable about it. — Gwynne Dyer

The human ego tends to defend what we believe, even if the belief is based on a lie. If it is something we were always taught, we seldom make the effort to question it, and belief tends not to change until it shatters against the wall of reality. This is a very painful process and often occurs only in crisis, or when fact is in-congruent with belief.

If we simply learned to question our perceptions instead of demanding that we are right, most of this pain would be eliminated and humanity as a whole would be benefited. — Karlyle Tomms

Truth is always a turning point. — Sheila Walsh

Business is the force of change. Business is essential to solving the climate crisis, because this is what business is best at: innovating, changing, addressing risks, searching for opportunities. There is no more vital task — Richard Branson

Ask, 'What's the meaning in this crisis? What's it trying to teach?' . . . Hard times can be gifts. They can force us to change and get us where we're meant to be. — Kristin Von Kreisler

The birth of crisis is a birth of opportunity to change yourself, to rise on the top,to become more powerful and more knowledgeable. — Arya Vidhan

I think that will only really change when the human races begins to suffer some of the extremely severe consequences of climate change which may be some decades ahead. They will then realise, as we have with the financial crisis, that we are up against the wall and hitting the buffers and we have got to change. — Michael Meacher

Never waste a good crisis ... Don't waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security. — Hillary Clinton

In every life there is a moment. A crisis. One that says: what I believe is wrong. It happens to everyone, the only difference is how that knowledge changes them. In most cases, it is simply a case of burying that knowledge and pretending it isn't there. That is how humans grow old. That is ultimately what creases their faces and curves their backs and shrinks their mouths and ambitions. The weight of that denial. The stress of it. This is not unique to humans. The single biggest act of bravery or madness anyone can do is the act of change. — Matt Haig

Woe to any climate denier who called climate change a hoax when she was nearby. — Donald G. Firesmith

Crisis or transition of any kind reminds us of what matters most. In the routine of life, we often take our families-our parents and children and siblings-for granted. But in times of danger and need and change, there is no question that what we care about most is our families! It will be even more so when we leave this life and enter into the spirit world. Surely the first people we will seek to find there will be father, mother, spouse, children, and siblings. — M. Russell Ballard

Because one thing she's learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new; it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid; — Nathan Hill

The route for the refugees currently goes through Greece and the Balkans or through Italy; if there were a crisis in north-eastern Europe, Poland might just as well be affected. In this case we are dealing with mechanisms that we do not control. We need to change that. — Paolo Gentiloni

Outside events can change a presidential campaign, a president, and the history of the nation: the Iranian hostage crisis, the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the downing of the helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, the suicide attack on the USS Cole, and, of course, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. — Mark McKinnon