Quotes & Sayings About Disasters

How impossible it is for us to imagine ourselves victims of disaster. We suffer for the poor people who were thrown into the sea from their cruise ship off the coast of Tuscany, some losing their lives. Imagine a world of accelerating natural disasters, one after the other so that nobody can help anyone else. — Vivienne Westwood

A great philosopher once said: 'We are what we Contemplate'
And in these modern times when mankind is constantly confronted with images of conflict and world disasters, it seems very important to contemplate the Beautiful.
It has become my personal crusade as an artist, to create images which uplift and nurture the human heart; to create that which serves as a reminder of what is Sacred and Beautiful within the drama of Life....
Ever since I can remember, my innermost nature has always been to do acts of kindness and to create, from saving lost animals, to organizing charitable events; from mothering my four children to now giving birth to the 'Art of Beauty'. — Ginger Gilmour

Humanity must have a speed of advance higher than the speed of advance of cosmic disasters or big global catastrophes! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As a country with experience of coping with earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters, Japan believes in emphasizing the mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction. We therefore prioritize investment in disaster prevention and post-disaster improvements under a policy of Build Back Better (BBB). — Shinzo Abe

If God cares about our puny species, then disasters prove that he is not all-powerful; and if he is all-powerful, then clearly he doesn't give a damn. — Barbara Ehrenreich

sold to the public on false pretenses, high officials confessing to ordering torture in violation of treaty and domestic law, and an economic meltdown even former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan acknowledges involved massive fraud - and no one has been prosecuted, no one has gone to prison, and Americans continue to dutifully cast their votes for the Democratic/Republican duopoly responsible for these disasters. — Barry Eisler

One of my deep thoughts was that it is not so much particular disasters that make people cry, but something always there in life itself, something that a light falls on when we are trying to enjoy ourselves — Robert Aickman

In the conflict between Israelis and Arabs you have wounded civilizations - the Arabs have been wounded in their dealings with the West, and an insecure Jewish people have gone through terrible disasters and traumas. There is no end to the Jewish quest for security, and there is no end for the Arab quest for redress and dignity. It is very difficult to reconcile the two. — Itamar Rabinovich

Insofar as climate denial hinders technical progress, it might hasten real disasters, which in their turn can make catastrophic thinking still more credible. — Timothy Snyder

In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics. — Thomas Sowell

Where did you learn to ride anyway? Disasters-R-Us? (Tory) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You don't need to conduct autopsies on your disasters. — Elizabeth Gilbert

How many disasters would be averted if we'd go first, in faith, to Jesus? — Max Lucado

Part of the trouble is that I've never properly understood that some disasters accumulate, that they don't all land like a child out of an apple tree. — Janet Burroway

We tend to have tremendous faith in the power of our disasters and far too little faith in the power of miracles. — Marianne Williamson

We face a fundamental question which can be described as both ethical and ecological. How can accelerated development be prevented from turning against man? How can one prevent disasters that destroy the environment and threaten all forms of life, and how can the negative consequences that have already occurred be remedied? — Pope John Paul II

For what it's worth, I think perfect love stories have perfect disasters hidden somewhere. If a genuine relationship comes out of two people screwing before they saw the potential of the 'relationship'? Its perfect, beautiful, a work of art in fact.. Normal is overrated. — Nike Thaddeus

The carbon emissions from tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and grandchildren. — James Hansen

I tell you, the difference for me is between being victimized, terrorized, numbed by reading about different disasters, or reducing the anxiety by getting up and doing something about it, at whatever level. — Ted Danson

Everyone fears catastrophes and disasters and crashes and deaths, and people who attack you in the dark. You made all that worse for me. I felt something might happen which would separate me from you, and I could not deal with life without you. (23) — Sarah Ferguson

Whatever I decide will not work. It's what people want that will work. So no one decided whether you become a vegetarian or anything else. What determines that is the availability of food. If we run out of vegetation due to floods or natural disasters, people will consume meat and if we run out of meat they will consume vegetables. I have no control over that. That would be up to people. — Jacque Fresco

If by 'miracle kids' you mean innocent test-tube babies whose DNA was forcibly unraveled and merged with two percent avian genes, yeah, I guess that would be us," I said. "Because it's a miracle that we're not complete nut jobs and mutant disasters. — James Patterson

It's fine when you careen off disasters and terrifyingly bad reviews and rejection and all that stuff when you're young; your resilience is just terrific. — Harold Prince

The world's natural calamities and disasters-its tornados and hurricanes, volcanoes and floods-its physical turmoil-are not created by us specifically.
What is created by us is the degree to which these events touch our life — Neale Donald Walsch

What we are now witnessing in the 21st century is the fracture or complete breakdown of families, societies, and governments as a result of centuries of dehumanization that have taken a toll. More natural disasters (tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, etc.) merely uncover the reality of the national disasters we have created by granting sanctuary to dehumanization via the law. — Liza Lugo

The world has been experiencing a whole pattern of auto-destruction, whether in environmental disasters like Chernobyl or health disasters like AIDS. — Niki De St. Phalle

At the end of the day I'm writing comedy. If you get too realistic as a comedy writer with your disasters, it stops being funny. — Simon Rich

War is a series of disasters which result in a winner. — Georges Clemenceau

The burden of mankind is very heavy: When a cosmic or an earth-based disaster hits us in this chaotic universe, He must not only save the human race but he must also save all other living creatures! He carries the terrific burden of being the Holy Protector of existence! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Oh." My spirits fell. I remembered Grover as being quite resourceful, but if he was dealing with California's natural disasters, he was unlikely to be back anytime in the next decade. — Rick Riordan

With so much evidence of depleting natural resources, toxic waste, climate change, irreparable harm to our food chain and rapidly increasing instances of natural disasters, why do we keep perpetuating the problem? Why do we continue marching at the same alarming beat? — Yehuda Berg

I should have known by then that it's never the disasters you see coming that finally come to pass; it's the ones you don't expect at all. — Karen Thompson Walker

It went on for a month. Those who had taken it for a cosmic sign cringed beneath the sky each nightfall, imagining ever more extravagant disasters. Others, for whom orange did not seem an appropriately apocalyptic shade, sat outdoors on public benches, reading calmly, growing used to the curious pallor. As nights went on and nothing happened and the phenomenon slowly faded to the accustomed deeper violets again, most had difficulty remembering the earlier rise of heart, the sense of overture and possibility and went back once again to seeking only orgasm, hallucination, stupor, sleep, to fetch them through the night and prepare them against the day. — Thomas Pynchon

Too many Americans who are uninsured or under-insured do not receive regular checkups because they can't afford coverage or their insurance doesn't cover enough of the costs. The lack of preventive care results in countless emergency room visits and health care disasters for families. — Jeff Merkley

Your highest patriotism today is to respect the memory of those who have died in the uniform of their country by vowing that it will never happen again. The basest treason is to permit yourself to shamefully and cowardly follow the false patriots into another war, one surely bringing in its wake even greater disasters for our beloved America than any before. — Willis Carto

your body is a museum of natural disasters can you grasp how stunning that is — Rupi Kaur

All problems, depressions, wars, disasters, assassinations, all of them were planned, caused, instigated, and implemented by the International Bankers and their attempt to establish a central bank in every country in the world, which they have now done, thanks to corrupt politicians who have been bought and paid for. This is all you need to know about the history of the world. — John F. Kennedy

Are you kidding? I'm a terrible cook, but John is a really great one. Literally, I never cook. The whole time we were dating, I prepared two officially romantic meals. Both of them were such disasters that he begs me never to go into the kitchen again. — Rebecca Romijn

He comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. He saves us in our disasters, not from them. He emphatically does not promise to meet only the odd winner of the self-improvement lottery. He meets us all in our endless and inescapable losing. — Robert Farrar Capon

Up or down, it seemed to us that we were always going toward something terrible that had existed before us yet had always been waiting for us, just for us. When you haven't been in the world long, it's hard to comprehend what disasters are at the origin of a sense of disaster: maybe you don't even feel the need to. Adults, waiting for tomorrow, move in a present behind which is yesterday or the day before yesterday or at most last week: they don't want to think about the rest. Children don't know the meaning of yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or even of tomorrow, everything is this: the street is this, the doorway is this, the stairs are this, this is Mamma, this is Papa, this is the day, this is the night. — Elena Ferrante

Now, instead of treating bad writing days as random, unavoidable disasters to be weathered, like thunderstorms, I started treating them as red flags. — Rachel Aaron

We were told that we had to win. Against whom? The atom? Physics? The universe? Victory is not an event for us, but a process. — Svetlana Alexievich

I mistrust total competence. I've always felt life is a series of small disasters we try to get through. — Michael Palin

I can't wait to get my face lifted but my husband says, 'No, don't do it.' I think if it makes you feel better, go for it, but it would be nice if it looked good. There are a lot of people out there who are disasters and you think, 'Why did you do that?' — Felicity Huffman

We visit the Launch Control building, where on one wall of the seventies-style lobby are hung the mission patches of every human spaceflight that has ever been launched from here, 149 to date. Beneath each mission patch is a small plaque showing the launch and landing dates. Two of them - Challenger's STS-51L and Columbia's STS-107 - are missing landing dates, because both of these missions ended in disasters that destroyed the orbiters and killed their crews. The blank spaces on the wall where those landing dates should have been are discolored from the touch of people's hands. This would be unremarkable if this place were a tourist attraction, or regularly open to the public. But with the rare exception of Family Days, this building is open only to people who work here. In other words, it's launch controllers, managers, and engineers who have been touching these empty spaces with their hands, on their way to and from doing their jobs. After — Margaret Lazarus Dean

The things that are meant to be are the things we can't control, the things we don't cause, the things that happen regardless of who or what we are. Like sunsets and snow-fall and natural disasters. I've never believed hardship or suffering was meant to be. — Amy Harmon

I understood why those who had lived through war or economic disasters, and who had built for themselves a good life and a high standard of living, were rightly proud to be able to provide for their children those things which they themselves had not had. And why their children, inevitably, took those things for granted. It meant that new values and new expectations had crept into our societies along with new standards of living. Hence the materialistic and often greedy and selfish lifestyle of so many young people in the Western world, especially in the United States. — Jane Goodall

This may read like a mad journey through some of the most dangerous places on earth, but it is much more than that as well. Sheets witnessed most of the wars, disasters, and revolutions that followed the end of communism, and his accounts of them
from Chechnya to Chernobyl, and from Abkhazia to Afghanistan
serve as a passionate but considered obituary for the vanished Soviet empire. — Oliver Bullough

Until we get to the point where we've had enough of things that hurt and long more than anything for a peaceful love, we are bound to take painful roads. We are destined to play out our frivolous disasters until we declare ourselves finished and done with them. How much pain do we have to suffer before we are sure we want no more? As much, it seems, as we have to until we don't. — Marianne Williamson

fruits of rationalism, the fatal error and great plague of our century, the pestilential source from which our revolutions and social disasters arise, is the absence of the sense of the supernatural and the profound neglect of the great truths of the future life. The earth is afflicted with a dreadful desolation, — Charles Arminjon

We make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villians by compulsion. — William Shakespeare

Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions. — Coventry Patmore

I knew then that life was no respecter of circumstance. The force that flings disasters at us doesn't say " Well, I won't give her that lump in her breast for another year. Best to let her recover from the death of her mother first." It just goes right on ahead and does whatever it feels like, whenever it feels like it. — Marian Keyes

Did you know that the word 'tsunami,' which is now being used worldwide, is a Japanese word? This is indicative of the extent to which Japan has been subject to frequent tsunami disasters in the past. — Junichiro Koizumi

Indian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters; success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure. — Paul Theroux

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

There was another thought which a scanning of those tiny electronic headlines often invoked. The more wonderful the means of communication, the more trivial, tawdry or depressing its contents seemed to be. Accidents, crimes, natural and man-made disasters, threats of conflict, gloomy editorials - these still seemed to be the main concern of the millions of words being sprayed into the ether. Yet Floyd also wondered if this was altogether a bad thing; the newspapers of Utopia, he had long ago decided, would be terribly dull. From — Arthur C. Clarke

Confronted with the twin disasters of climate change and an impending oil peak, it is hard to see how anyone could justify the assertion that the need to drive a car which can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles an hour in 4.5 seconds (the Audi S4 for example) overrides the Ethiopians' need to avoid recurrent famines, or the whole world's need to avoid the economic catastrophe we'll suffer if petroleum peaks too soon. — George Monbiot

That was the thing about playing with a band, Peter thought. There was always someone else to rescue you when it seemed certain you might fall behind. Only the solo acts left themselves open to those kinds of disasters. — Jennifer E. Smith

The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and the waste of human potential. — Paul Di Filippo

We're the bridge across forever, arching above the sea, adventuring for our pleasure, living mysteries for the fun of it, choosing disasters triumphs challenges impossible odds, testing ourselves over and again, learning love and love and love! — Richard Bach

And I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president. — George W. Bush

You don't need another Human Being to make your life complete, but let's be honest. Having your wounds kissed by someone who doesn't see them as disasters In your soul, but cracks to put their love into, Is the most calming thing In this World. — Emery Allen

Allah sends down natural disasters to control population explosion. He encourages us to go to war, He creates Pakistan and Akhand Bharat. In doing this, He teaches humans new and innovative methods of birth control. — Saadat Hasan Manto

We have become a force of nature Not long ago, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, forest fires, even earthquakes and volcanic explosions were accepted as "natural disasters or "acts of God." But now, we have joined God, powerful enough to influence these events. — David Suzuki

I do a lot of work with the Red Cross, too. As a reporter, before I went to entertainment news, I tended to follow natural disasters. I went to Charleston, South Carolina, after Hurricane Hugo. I went to Miami the year after they were recovering from Hurricane Andrew. I came to California when they were recovering from a big earthquake. I've seen the Red Cross and how they stay there years after a natural disaster. They're not just there when a disaster is happening. — Nancy O'Dell

So let those people go on weeping and wailing whose self-indulgent minds have been weakened by long prosperity, let them collapse at the threat of the most trivial injuries; but let those who have spent all their years suffering disasters endure the worst afflictions with a brave and resolute staunchness. Everlasting misfortune does have one blessing, that it ends up by toughening those whom it constantly afflicts. — Seneca.

Our disasters have been some of the best things that ever happened to us. And what we swore were blessings have been some of the worst. — Richard Bach

When you think I've been wounded by a good five bullets, one in the face, one in the shoulder, one in the head, two in the body, and that the last one stuck in the barrel because the trigger jammed ... You have to believe in miracles. I've had so many air disasters, and yet I've always come out unscathed - thanks to a miracle while by God and the prophets. — Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

Making decisions quickly isn't for everyone, and I've had my disasters, but overall, it works for me. — Gerry Harvey

Disasters teach us humility. — Anselm Of Canterbury

Like raindrops, beautiful women were every-where. Like raindrops, only a few ever landed on you. They would either soak into your constitution or drip away into that puddle of other former love disasters drying out; dying in the Bangkok sun.
Red Night Zone - Bangkok City — James A. Newman

If the truth is boring, civilization is irksome. The constraints inherent in civilized living are frustrating in innumerable ways. Yet those with the vision of the anointed often see these constraints as only arbitrary impositions, things from which they-and we all-can be 'liberated.' The social disintegration which has followed in the wake of such liberation has seldom provoked any serious reconsideration of the whole set of assumptions-the vision-which led to such disasters. That vision is too well insulated from feedback. — Thomas Sowell

The water of such a nation (living godly) will not fail. Talking of harmony between the people of the land and nature. Natural catastrophes and disasters shall be far from such a people. There shall be rain in its time, sun in its time. Nature will respond adequately to the needs and desires of such a people. — Sunday Adelaja

The great ecosystems are like complex tapestries - a million complicated threads, interwoven, make up the whole picture. Nature can cope with small rents in the fabric; it can even, after a time, cope with major disasters like floods, fires, and earthquakes. What nature cannot cope with is the steady undermining of its fabric by the activities of man. — Gerald Durrell

Birth, n.: The first and direst of all disasters. — Ambrose Bierce

U.N. officials said today they desperately need $7 billion to help people cope with disasters, but they're having a hard time getting people to send rescue money. Here's what the UN should do: Invest in bad mortgages, run a bank into the ground, give yourself a bonus, get some spa treatments and, in no time, the government will send you $750 billion. — Jay Leno

While natural disasters capture headlines and national attention short-term, the work of recovery and rebuilding is long-term. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

The reason why there is more pessimism about technology in Europe has to do with history, the use of databases to keep track of people in the camps, ecological disasters. — Evgeny Morozov

All Earthquakes and Disasters are warnings; there's too much corruption in the world — Aristotle.

Good decisions can turn into disasters when communicated poorly. — Dianna Booher

It is vital that the entire international system is ready to meet the challenges of future disasters. — Andrew Mitchell

Champion Ven knelt in the ruins of the village. Sifting through the rubble, he lifted out a broken doll, its pink dress streaked with dirt and its pottery face cracked.
There was always a broken doll.
Why did there always have to be a damn doll? — Sarah Beth Durst

Disasters, therefore, and losses, and wrongs, have only the same power over virtue that a cloud has over the sun. — Seneca.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want. — Irving Kristol

The pack of all disasters has moulded together and fallen on my neck." FRANCISCO PELSAERT — Mike Dash

But I have gone back to work; I try to intoxicate myself with ink, the way others intoxicate themselves with brandy, so as to forget the public disasters and my private sorrows. — Gustave Flaubert

You cannot change the direction of the wind, but you can adjust your sails to always reach your destination." So it is that when disasters occur in our lives and we go within to discover our inner strength or to seek discernment, we have choices to continue in the same direction the storm of life has paved for us, or adjust our sail and get back on track to what we believe and know to be our path in life. — Stephen R. Covey

I invite you, citizens, to open your eyes and to give serious attention to the future. Reflect on the disasters which may ensue from longer obstinacy. Submit to lawful authority, if you wish to preserve the South untouched. Save your families and your property. — Toussaint Louverture

The nature will continue, it's our existence that is finite and you are given this gift of life and you make your way with it, but fate and natural disasters will continue on. — Larry Fessenden

It would be a very accurate historian who could pinpoint the precise day when the Japanese changed from being fiendish automatons who copied everything from the West, to becoming skilled and cunning engineers who would leave the West standing. But the Wasabi had been designed on that one confused day, and combined the traditional bad points of most Western cars with a host of innovative disasters the avoidance of which had made firms like Honda and Toyota what they were today. Newt — Terry Pratchett

There was one big rule in life - the things you worried about never happened, and the things that happened were never the ones you expected. Not that this bit of advice helped Johnny much. It simply meant that he spent more time guessing at what the unexpected disasters in his life would be. — John Bellairs

The United States turned its back on the Jewish people and an awesome tragedy occurred, starting a pattern that continues until this day. There are literally dozens of examples like the Great Hurricane of 1938 where disasters strike America on the very day the United States meddles with God's covenant land of Israel. — John P. McTernan

The Italians were getting so accustomed to tragedies and disasters that their appetite for sensation was becoming jaded. — Timothy Holme

In the darkness you could hear the crying of women, the wailing of infants, and the shouting of men. Some prayed for help. Others wished for death. But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness. — Pliny The Younger

At that time my notions of nuclear power were utterly idyllic. At school and at the university we'd been taught that this was a magical factory that made "energy out of nothing," where people in white robes sat and pushed buttons. Chernobyl blew up when we weren't prepared. — Svetlana Alexievich

we had pulled a bait and switch on the National Guard and Reserves - most men and women had joined the Guard in particular expecting to go to monthly training sessions and summer training camp, and to be called up for natural disasters or a national crisis; instead, they had become an operational force, deploying for a year or more to join an active and dangerous fight and potentially deploying more than once. — Robert M. Gates

Everyone deserves the chance to survive. I think of this every time I see another disaster. There are probably people dying who don't have to. — James Hubbard

I am a limitless series of natural disasters and all of these disasters have been unnaturally repressed. — Kathy Acker

Recorded history is largely an account of the crimes and disasters committed by banal little men at the levers of imperial machines. — Edward Abbey