Quotes & Sayings About Crisis

Remember,too,that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start,and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they "arrive". The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at some moment of crisis,through which they are introduced to their "other selves". — Napoleon Hill

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

The environmental crisis is a signal of this approaching catastrophe. — Barry Commoner

The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. — Alexis De Tocqueville

It is the lord's duty to his domain to provide adequate defense for his folk during a time of war or crisis. — Terry Mancour

It is a mistake," he said, " to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not cause cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines. — Isaac Asimov

Although we amplify our cognitive degree of awareness and enhance our appreciation for life experiences by maturing, it also brings us death. Facing a certain death forces a person to examine the worthiness of continuing to live. — Kilroy J. Oldster

causing a refugee crisis rated at ten thousand katrinas. One — Kim Stanley Robinson

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving. — Woodrow Wilson

The ecological challenges we face are the result of billions of ecologically ignorant decisions made by billions of people over centuries. To address the climate crisis, we now need billions of people to make ecologically intelligent decisions. — Allen Hershkowitz

You know that you have officially HIT at total midlife crisis when you get acne on your wrinkles. — Tanya Masse

Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, 'Is this all?' And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, 'Actually, this is pretty good.' — Donald Richie

Women's entry into the public sphere can be seen not merely as the result of contemporary economic pressures, the high rate of divorce, or the success of the feminist movement, but rather as a profound evolutionary response to a pervasive cultural crisis. Feminine principles are entering the public realm because we can no longer afford to restrict them to the private domestic sphere, nor allow a public culture obsessed with Warrior values to control human destiny if we are to survive. — Sally Helgesen

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption for individuals, but widening the opportunities and what Amartya Sen calls the 'capabilities' of all through collective action. But that means, it must mean, public non-profit initiative, even if only in redistributing private accumulation. Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy - not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side. — Eric Hobsbawm

Hospitality is the practice of God's welcome by reaching across difference to participate in God's actions bringing justice and healing to our world in crisis. — Letty M. Russell

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis. — George Montgomery

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

No, but I am,' Elliot says, quick as a flash. 'That's why I need Penny's help.' 'Oh.' Dad frowns and scratches his head. He doesn't look convinced at all. 'Well, when you've sorted your French crisis, come down and have some breakfast. I'm making eggs over easy,' he says in an American accent, 'and we need to talk about New York.' 'Will do,' I call over my shoulder as Elliot and I race up the second flight of stairs. As soon as we're in my room, I shut the door tight. 'Why didn't you tell me?' Elliot says. 'I was too embarrassed.' I sink down on to — Zoe Sugg

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

Together we can remind them there are no excuses to sit back and watch the cycle of extreme poverty continue. — Auliq Ice

She was climbing Mount Everest and the air was invigorating and wonderful. Even if every second verged on crisis, this was part of living - not just watching from the sidelines. — Jacqueline Susann

The crisis of democracy in the West is not the result of falling in love with another system. In Europe and America people who are disillusioned with democracy do not dream about the Chinese model or any other form of authoritarian rule. They do not dream about government that controls Internet and puts in prison those daring to disagree. — Ivan Krastev

Sci-Fi is the genre that explored both possibilities: the end of our existential crisis and the end of our existence. My novel, 'The 5th Wave,' explores the latter scenario, because, frankly, I believe it represents the likeliest outcome of an extraterrestrial encounter. In short, if they're out there, we better hope they never find us. — Rick Yancey

We like democracy because why? The pathologies of the U.S. version are so obvious in the aftermath of the latest averted crisis that we need to ask ourselves whether it's worth it - and why electoral democracy hasn't self-destructed before. Should Tunisians or Egyptians opt for the Chinese model, where rational autocrats may restrict rights, but no one threatens to blow up world markets in the name of an 18th-century tax protest? — Noah Feldman

I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis? — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Instead of facing a crisis as I approached middle age, I discovered that a new and better life lay before me. I called the process of discovery 'halftime,' and the outcome led to my second half. — Bob Buford

And just as the false assumption that we are not connected to the earth has led to the ecological crisis, so to the equally false assumption that we arenot connected to each other that has led to our social crisis. — Al Gore

The question then was not what other countries were doing, but why. Why did these countries have this consensus around rigor? In the education superpowers, every child knew the importance of an education. These countries had experienced national failure in recent memory; they knew what an existential crisis felt like. In many U.S. schools, however, the priorities were muddled beyond recognition. Sports were central to American students' lives and school cultures in a way in which they were not in most education superpowers. Exchange students agreed almost universally on this point. Nine out of ten international students I surveyed said that U.S. kids placed a higher priority on sports, and six out of ten American exchange students agreed with them. Even in middle school, other researchers had found, American students spent double the amount of time playing sports as Koreans. — Amanda Ripley

By giving the name of progress to its own tendency to a fatal precision, the world is seeking to add to the benefits of life the advantages of death. — Paul Valery

Without clean water, we cannot experience optimum health, but by practically every public health standard issued during the past 50 years, humans have not experienced optimum health. One of the reasons for this fact is simple: the Earth's water is in crisis. — Elson M. Haas

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

We have seen the Democrat solution to an energy crisis; it's called California. — J. C. Watts

Obama prefers to look forward, not back, as he has stated. So at least during his tenure, there will be no reliable record compiled as a cautionary tale for lawmakers and presidents in future times of crisis. This is the historical Obama. — David K. Shipler

The crisis of European jurisprudence began a century ago with the victory of legal positivism. — Carl Schmitt

We think it would be safer if the Bank of England had responsibility for solvency regulation of UK-based banks, as well as having an overall duty to keep the system solvent. Otherwise, there could be dangerous delays if a banking crisis did hit. — John Redwood

We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.
[ The Berlin Crisis: Radio and Television Address to the American People (The White House, July 25, 1961)] — John F. Kennedy

She was returning home to be the wife of, mother of, First Lady of, but what did that really mean? — Stacy Hawkins Adams

Too many writers cannot come to terms with the ways in which the past, like the future, is dark. There is so much we don't know, and to write truthfully about a life, your own or your mother's, or a celebrated figure's, an event, a crisis, another culture is to engage repeatedly with those patches of darkness, those nights of history, those places of unknowning. They tell us that there are limits to knowledge, that there are essential mysteries, starting with the notion that we know just what someone thought or felt in the absence of exact information. — Rebecca Solnit

Everyone I meet now is at least ten years younger than me. I feel like Rip van Winkle with a bald spot. — Jaffe Cohen

Men are psychologically unstable, too prone to emotions; not to be relied upon in moments of crisis.' 'That's — Andrzej Sapkowski

I don't hold to the idea that God causes suffering and crisis. I just know that those things come along and God uses them. We think life should be a nice, clean ascending line. But inevitably something wanders onto the scene and creates havoc with the nice way we've arranged life to fall in place. — Sue Monk Kidd

Levity is the lubricant of a crisis. We resort to jokes, pranks and good natured kidding to relieve tension, stress and boredom. — Wally Schirra

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

Democrats are making it clear that they intend to use our economic crisis to rush through their longtime liberal goals without public scrutiny or debate ... This will increase burdens on taxpayers and take a significant step toward socialized medicine. — Jim DeMint

One day very soon, we'll be asked: what did we do. And we will say: we did everything we could ... we have to ... because if we don't there won't be anyone left to ask. We have never faced a crisis this big, that we have never had better ideas to solve. This is our only home. We can choose today to make a world of difference. — Morgan Freeman

Everyone has an identity crisis when they are 16 or 17 years old. — Sara Zarr

It is easy to forget the cohesiveness of a free people in times of peace and prosperity. New York is an extreme example of the great pandemonium that results when countless individuals and groups pursue their diverse interests in the normal course of life. In a crisis, however, a national tribe comes together ... despite the centrifugal forces that pull us in different directions, there is a deep national unity that holds us together.
Unity, however, is not sufficient for the challenges ahead. America also needs the moral self-confidence to meet its adversary ... Americans cannot succeed unless they are convinced of fighting on behalf of the good. — Dinesh D'Souza

These numbers are staggering, in fact incomprehensible. By all accounts, we are dealing with the greatest health crisis in human history. — Nelson Mandela

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

Obama's primary constituency was financial institutions. They were the core of the funding for his campaign. They expect to be paid back. And they were. They were paid back by coming out richer and more powerful than they were before the crisis that they created. — Noam Chomsky

Germany has acted effectively during the euro crisis. It needs to build on this to engage in other spheres too. — Joachim Gauck

We are facing a tipping point of environmental crisis unprecedented in human history and our very survival is dependent on protecting nature. — Leonardo DiCaprio

Much of our understanding of God's action in our lives in achieved in hindsight. When a particular crisis or event in our life has passed we cry out in astonishment like Jacob, 'The Lord is in this place and I never knew it. — Sheila Cassidy

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

The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species. — Stanislav Grof

Heaven is filled with absolute, perfect, confidence in God. This world is filled with absolute mistrust. And you and I will always reflect the nature of the world we are most aware of. What you live conscious of is what you will reproduce in the world around you. I try to live in such a way that nothing ever gets bigger in my awareness than my conscious awareness of the presence of God upon me. I don't care what the problem is; if it's an international crisis or a personal issue, the moment that problem gets bigger than my awareness of the presence of God on me, then I will live in reaction to a problem. — Bill Johnson

The fight against HIV/AIDS requires leadership from all parts of government - and it needs to go right to the top. AIDS is far more than a health crisis. It is a threat to development itself. — Kofi Annan

I am grateful for each and every food bank that helps families in need. Now, more than ever, hunger is a crisis in America, and yet it is not spoken enough and people have yet to give enough to help those in need. Local food banks help fill this need but they need our help, our support, and most importantly, our dollars. No one should ever go hungry. — Marlee Matlin

The fear among economists across the political spectrum was that we were rapidly plummeting toward a second Great Depression. So in the weeks and months that followed, we undertook a series of difficult steps to prevent that outcome. And we were forced to take those steps, largely without the help of an opposition party, which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that had led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve. — Barack Obama

The threat of environmental crisis is the 'international disaster key' to unlock the New World Order. — Mikhail Gorbachev

A true Leader asks advice, when he has time to think; but he never asks advice in a crisis. He acts. — Herbert Newton Casson

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer. — Abraham Lincoln

The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later. — Ezra Klein

President Obama has basically avoided or not done any attempt to intervene in any positive way in the housing market. I think in the financial crisis that's been a shame. — Glenn Hubbard

Poverty is not only about income poverty, it is about the deprivation of economic and social rights, insecurity, discrimination, exclusion and powerlessness. That is why human rights must not be ignored but given even greater prominence in times of economic crisis. — Irene Khan

Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that's through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality - you who have never known any - but to discover it. — Ayn Rand

Don't get distracted by the shiny object [and if a crisis comes], execute on the fundamentals. — Reed Hastings

From the Great Depression, to the stagflation of the seventies, to the current economic crisis caused by the housing bubble, every economic downturn suffered by this country over the past century can be traced to Federal Reserve policy. The Fed has followed a consistent policy of flooding the economy with easy money, leading to a misallocation of resources and an artificial 'boom' followed by a recession or depression when the Fed-created bubble bursts. — Ron Paul

There isn't a more important issue in the world than global warming. Even the Cold War and the Bay of Pigs crisis were a notional threat. — Simon Beaufoy

Our lips met hungrily, and his clever artistic hands wrapped around my hips. A sudden buzz from my regular cell phone startled me from the kissing.
"Don't," said Adrian, his eyes ablaze and breathing ragged.
"What if there's a crisis at school?" I asked. "What if Angeline 'accidentally' stole one of the campus buses and drove it into the library?"
"Why would she do that?"
"Are you saying she wouldn't?"
He sighed. "Go check it. — Richelle Mead

I am asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis. This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners, and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans. — Barack Obama

We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it's almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn't have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender. — Rebecca Solnit

When you've spent half your political life dealing with humdrum issues like the environment, it's exciting to have a real crisis on your hands. — Margaret Thatcher

We warned when the crisis began in 2011 that unless it was resolved quickly, the country [Syria] would be destroyed. Unfortunately, our warnings are coming true. — Adel Al-Jubeir

The way you continue to be a successful business is you don't wait for the car to go off the cliff. You have to manage yourself. And make sure you do it in the right way so you are not making decisions in crisis. — Roger Goodell

We can make these changes if we are willing to unite and stand together. The road to a sustainable future is clear, and the technologies are ready and cost-efficient. The only thing holding us back is the lack of political will. And with the crisis at hand, this is no excuse for failing to fight for the future we want for generations to come. We must move forward fearlessly to build a mass movement with the political power necessary to create a truly sustainable energy future. We must do this - it's a matter of life and death. — Wenonah Hauter

I was talking about no nukes, the farm crisis. People said that wasn't stuff that a state auditor was supposed to be talking about. Maybe they were right. — Paul Wellstone

We have to see that the economy is not "in" crisis, the economy is itself the crisis. It's not that there's not enough work, it's that there is too much of it. — The Invisible Committee

The immersive ugliness of the built environment in the USA is entropy made visible. It indicates not simple carelessness but a vivid drive toward destruction, decay and death: the stage-set of a literal "death trip," of a society determined to commit suicide. Far from being a mere matter of aesthetics, suburbia represents a compound economic catastrophe, ecological debacle, political nightmare, and spiritual crisis - for a nation of people conditioned to spend their lives in places not worth caring about. — James Howard Kunstler

The crisis of our diminishing water resources is just as severe (if less obviously immediate) as any wartime crisis we have ever faced. Our survival is just as much at stake as it was at the time of Pearl Harbor, or the Argonne, or Gettysburg, or Saratoga. — Jim Wright

This is real. This is not a phase. This is not a temper tantrum. The average American who I believe makes this country work thinks the Republican Party is actually oriented against its interests and does not understand or believe the crisis they think the country's in. — Rush Limbaugh

As a physician, I see the earth as a patient in the intensive care unit. We have an acute clinical crisis on our hands and must take urgent action. My prescription for survival is that the American people rise up as they did in the 1980s, when 80 percent of Americans supported the nuclear weapons freeze. — Helen Caldicott

The best work comes from people who are motivated by crisis. When something stops their original idea, they respond by coming up with something even better. — Pharrell Williams

Historical experience shows that a crisis causes either a recovery or catastrophic consequences. — Sergei Lavrov

I've never been a fan of personality-conflict burgers and identity-crisis omelets with patchouli oil. I function very well on a diet that consists of Chicken Catastrophe and Eggs Overwhelming and a tall, cool Janitor-in-a-Drum. I like to walk out of a restaurant with enough gas to open a Mobil station. — Tom Waits

[W]hether it is debates over men sharing housework and child-rearing, the 'crisis' of marriage and behind that the broader crisis of male-female relationships in adjusting to social change, or the increased sympathy for (or at least tolerance of) lesbian and gay demands for equal legal rights, all these developments in heterosexuality are usually approached and conceptualised in piecemeal form and rarely provoke any debate about the changing nature of heterosexuality itself. — Richard Dunphy

We need to expand Social Security to prevent the looming retirement crisis, and we can do it simply by asking billionaires to pay their fair share. — Robert Reich

The place has had a super-conflicted relationship to its mission. In 1956, it opened as the Museum of Contemporary Crafts. Then in 1986 it had a midlife crisis and changed its name to the American Craft Museum. Then in 2002 the name changed again, this time to the Museum of Arts and Design. Maybe in 2025 the place will be called the Designatorium. The big problem with a museum of craft and design is that all art has craft and design. — Jerry Saltz

The first question is something immediate
and immediately, we need humanitarian aid to be allowed into the Sudan before it becomes the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. — George Clooney

A speaking, a crisis, people's lives in tatters, the future of the colony in doubt. And I cry in relief because an overblown computer program is speaking to me again, — Orson Scott Card

We must recover the whole sense of gift, of gratuitousness, of solidarity. Rampant capitalism has taught the logic of profit at all costs, of giving to get, of exploitation without looking at the person ... and we see the results in the crisis we are experiencing! This Home is a place that teaches charity, a "school" of charity, which instructs me to go encounter every person, not for profit, but for love. — Pope Francis

A critical point: Is an inter-phase between crisis and normalcy, life and death, danger and safety, failure and success — Ikechukwu Joseph

To turn Karl [Popper]'s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition of science. Once a field has made the transition, critical discourse recurs only at moments of crisis when the bases of the field are again in jeopardy. Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers. — Thomas Kuhn

He who smiles in a crisis; has fund someone to blame. — Anonymous

If you don't choose to do it in leadership time up front, you do it in crisis management time down the road. — Stephen Covey

That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident; ... — Bernard Bailyn

Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, assessing a Polish crisis in 1984, said: "There's continuing ground for serious concern and the situation remains serious. The longer it remains serious, the more ground there is for serious concern. — William Zinsser

Although I have a variety of obligations, the climate crisis is my central concern. — Al Gore

This is going to be a lot for the Congress to swallow, even on the deck of a sinking ship. — Kenneth Eade

I don't want to be the person who gasps in fear whenever she hears the sound of a doorbell or a phone. I just want to lose myself in these hills, in the river winding west to the city of bridges. — Mira Bartok