Global Crisis 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 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

Capitalism, the ogre of those protesting Wall Street, has suffered a public relations crisis in the wake of the global economic collapse. But any remedy to the systemic corruption that led to the collapse should not displace recognition that capitalism creates wealth. Capitalism, and no other economic system, has raised millions from poverty around the world. — Kathleen Parker

Being a person that others can trust is one of the most sought after qualities in the workplace today. So many leaders and their staff have shown in the recent global financial crisis a lack of trust and integrity amongst themselves and with their clients and other stakeholders. — Nigel Cumberland

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

September and October of 2008 was the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression, — Ben Bernanke

2009 was a tough year, but Australia rose to the challenge of the global financial crisis. It shows what can be done when we all join together and work together, governments of all persuasions state, territory and local; businesses large and small; unions and local communities right across the nation. — Kevin Rudd

The problem the world faces today is that only one-third of the world's population lives in decent circumstances, while half the population of the world lives on one or two dollars a day. And even as we have this poverty and backwardness, we are facing a global environmental crisis. We need developmental models that will take into account the specific and unique position of each country and at the same time will address the environmental crisis. — Mikhail Gorbachev

A society living by the laws of the world is moving towards a global crisis in all its spheres of life. — Sunday Adelaja

We are more capable of turning around our global health crisis than we think. — Kris Carr

After analyzing our current crisis and studying well-established
historical precedents, I must conclude that the global bankers have
only three possible cards left to play.
The first is admitting culpability and working to restore the
American economic engine to its free-market potential. History has
taught us that the ruling class rarely admits error and never concedes
power.
The second is to foment so much civil unrest and fear that the
general population will be clamoring for a global dictator who will
provide them food, shelter, and security in exchange for their individual
freedom and sovereignty. I see the emerging militancy of the
labor union movement playing right into this scenario.
The final play is global conflict where they can try and control
the outcome by means of funding both sides. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Because the global ecosystem is a connected whole, in which nothing can be gained or lost and which is not subject to over-all improvement, anything extracted from it by human effort must be replaced. Payment of this price cannot be avoided; it can only be delayed. The present environmental crisis is a warning that we have delayed nearly too long. — Barry Commoner

Global reinsurance companies are making billions in profits, in part by selling new kinds of protection schemes to developing countries that have done almost nothing to create the climate crisis, but whose infrastructure is intensely vulnerable to its impacts.8 — Naomi Klein

There was no blueprint or how-to manual for fixing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession, all at the same time. — Rahm Emanuel

Everything adds up to a major crisis. Humanity is faced with a global energy crisis ... The core of the crisis lies in the increasing shortage of oil. — George Soros

In 2008, when the global financial crisis struck, it was a bad year for a lot of developing countries, and it manifested itself in consumer confidence. — Adi Godrej

Government "solutions" produced a healthcare crisis resulting in a government takeover of national health care. And now, little by little, fewer and fewer are making more and more healthcare decisions. Little by little we are being prepared for the coming centralized government of the final world order and its global economy. — David Jeremiah

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much. — Paul Samuelson

We are beginning to learn that an empathic moment requires both intimate engagement and a measure of detachment. If our feelings completely spill over into another's feelings or their feelings overwhelm our psyche, we lose a sense of self and the ability to imagine the other as if they were us. Empathy is a difficult balancing act. One has to be open to experiencing another's plight as if it were one's own but not be engulfed by it, at the expense of drowning out the self's ability to be a unique and separate being. Empathy requires a porous boundary between I and thou that allows the identity of two beings to mingle in a shared mental space.
- The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis — Jeremy Rifkin

The war and terrorism in the Middle East, the crisis of leadership in many of the oil-supply countries in the developing world, the crisis of global warming - all these are very clearly tied to energy. — Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American IOUs. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion. Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans - if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. — Joseph E. Stiglitz

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

The crisis is a concrete threatening reality today. It stands to get catastrophically worse unless we take action before the accumulation [of] this global warming pollution reaches such toxic levels that the problem becomes bigger than we can solve. — Al Gore

Although this crisis in some ways started in the United States, it is a global crisis. We bear a substantial share of the responsibility for what has happened, but factors that made the crisis so acute and so difficult to contain lie in a broader set of global forces that built up in the years before the start of our current troubles. — Timothy Geithner

In the end, we must restore a balance within ourselves between who we are and what we are doing. Each of us must take a greater personal responsibility for this deteriorating global environment; each of us must take a hard look at the habits of mind and action that reflect - and have led to - this grave crisis. — Al Gore

With the lessons taken from the financial crisis in 1997, the Republic of Korea has been able to surmount the global economic crisis rather successfully. — Lee Myung-bak

Edward Conard provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading. — Nouriel Roubini

The global financial crisis - missed by most analysts - shows that most forecasters are poor at pricing in economic/financial risks, let alone geopolitical ones. — Nouriel Roubini

The global environment crisis is, as we say in Tennessee, real as rain, and I cannot stand the thought of leaving my children with a degraded earth and a diminished future. — Al Gore

When we talk about global crisis, or a crisis of humanity, we cannot blame a few politicians, a few fanatics, or a few troublemakers. The whole of humanity has a responsibility because it is our business, human business. I call this a sense of universal responsibility. That is a crucial point. — Dalai Lama

Particularly in periods of crisis, governments have the obligation to lead by good example! Instead, many in Europe are confronting this global challenge with a penny-pinching mentality that drives me crazy. — Martin Schulz

The climate crisis is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. From not only the warming of the earth with higher global temperatures, but also from strengthening storms and expanding droughts to melting ice and rising seas, the costs of carbon pollution are already being felt by governments, corporations, taxpayers and families around the world. The climate crisis will affect everything that we love and alter the course of our future. Now, more than ever, we must come together to solve this global crisis. We must act decisively, rise to the occasion and solve this monumental challenge. — Al Gore

The more deeply I search for the roots of the global environmental crisis, the more I am convinced that it is an outer manifestation of an inner crisis that is, for lack of a better word, spiritual ... what other word describes the collection of values and assumptions that determine our basic understanding of how we fit into the universe? — Al Gore

We're in a very, very profound crisis. It's so obvious that no one in the power structure, either the corporate power structure or the political power structure, knows what to do or is willing to do what's necessary in relationship both to global war and global warming. It's so obvious that conditions are getting worse for the great majority of Americans. It's so obvious also that we face a very serious danger from people who feel, see themselves only as victims. And we have to somehow, in a very loving way, help the American people to recover the best that is in our traditions. — Grace Lee Boggs

As many know, the Chinese expression for "crisis" consists of two characters side by side. The first is the symbol for "danger," the second the symbol for "opportunity."
— Al Gore

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident. — Charles Ferguson

Vassals of an outdated ideology unrelated to the real world, they can, when questioned on this issue, only mumble neoliberal mantras that have delivered the world economic stagnation, rising inequality and global environmental crisis — Richard Flanagan

The insistence on complete certainty about the full details of global warming-the most serious threat we have ever faced-is actually an effort to avoid facing the awful, uncomfortable truth: that we must act boldly, decisively, comprehensively, and quickly, even before we know every last detail about the crisis. Those who continue to argue that the appropriate response is merely additional research are simply seeking to camouflage timidity or protect their vested interest in the status quo. — Al Gore

Carolyn Maloney has extensive - she's shown over and over again her creativity, her determination, her tenacity in fighting for women's rights. She has passed a host of bills in many different areas, both national and global, with both national and global importance for women, and she's on a Chair of Finance Committee so essentially in this economic crisis, we thought she would be perfect. — Eleanor Smeal

Global warming activists claim a serious public concern presently exists and the overwhelming majority of scientists agrees humans are creating a global warming crisis. The survey of AMS meteorologists, however, shows no such overwhelming majority exists. Indeed, to the extent we can assign a majority scientific opinion to whether all the necessary components of a global warming crisis exist, the AMS survey shows the majority does not agree humans are creating a global warming crisis. — James Taylor

If you followed this economic crisis and you do not think that the world is getting flatter, you are not paying attention. We saw the entire global economy at one time acting totally in sync. The real truth is the world is even flatter than I thought. Our mortgage crisis is killing Deutsche Bank. You still don't think the world is flat? — Thomas Friedman

The population explosion is the primary force behind the remaining six groups of critical global events [diminishing land resources, diminishing water resources, the destruction of the atmosphere, the approaching energy crisis, social decline, and conflicts/increasing killing power]. — Ron Nielsen

The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift Global Consciousness to a higher level. — Al Gore

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

The current economic crisis ... has numerous causes and sends a powerful message about the need for a profound revision of the model of global economic development. It's an acute symptom that is added to other more grave and already well-known ones, such as the continued imbalance between wealth and poverty, the scandal of hunger, the ecological emergency and the problem of unemployment, which has now become general. In this context a strategic re-launching of agriculture appears decisive. — Pope Benedict XVI

Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently ... recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run. — Alan Greenspan

A Chinese saying describes it well: "As far away as the horizon, and right in front of your face." You can run toward it forever, run faster and faster, and never get any closer. Only when you stop do you realize you are already there. That is exactly our collective situation right now. All of the solutions to the global crisis are sitting right in front of us, but they are invisible to our collective seeing, existing, as it were, in a different universe. When we are trapped in a story, we can only do the things that that story can recognize. Often we are aware of being trapped (the old story is ending) but don't have access to any alternative (we haven't yet inhabited a new story). — Charles Eisenstein

The global crisis is caused by pathologies inherent in the global financial system itself. — George Soros

We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis ... — David Rockefeller

In 2009, at the height of the global economic crisis, it was clear that we were seeing something new: the impacts of the crisis were flowing across borders at unprecedented velocity. — Ban Ki-moon

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

The greatest danger facing our nation isn't terrorism, global warming or the energy crisis. It is out-of-control, unbridled government spending. — R. Lee Wrights

I understand that everyone around the world has the global economy crisis and the budgets on education are being cut and the first thing to go are the musical or arts programs and I definitely have to disagree with that. — Sean Mackin

The environmental crisis is a global problem, and only global action will resolve it. — Barry Commoner

At a time of multiple calamities in the world, we cannot allow the loss of essential antimicrobials, essential cures for many millions of people, to become the next global crisis. — Margaret Chan

Let's start with the most prominent ecological crisis of our time: global warming. When you look seriously at the numbers, you find that switching from a meat-based to a plant-based diet would do more to curb and reverse global warming than any other initiative. — T. Colin Campbell

A society that lives by worldly principles is slowly moving towards a global crisis in all areas. — Sunday Adelaja

The Global Financial Crisis (2008-?); it is not a matter of noblesse oblige as of vitesse oblige. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event - a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning strike, an unfamiliar breeze, a strange tingling on the neck - without immediately invoking the climate crisis. It causes earthquakes, plagues and backyard gardening disappointments. Weird fungus on your tomato plants? Classic sign of global warming. — Joel Achenbach

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

It's easy to see why politicians would be drawn to the populist pose. First, it makes everything so simple. The economic crisis was caused by a complex web of factors, including global imbalances caused by the rise of China. But with the populist narrative, you can just blame Goldman Sachs. — David Brooks

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

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

More than ever before, we need to learn and apply the principles of economic self-reliance. We do not know when the crisis involving sickness or unemployment may affect our own circumstances. We do know that the Lord has decreed global calamities for the future and has warned and forewarned us to be prepared. For this reason the Brethren have repeatedly stressed a 'back to basics' program for temporal and spiritual welfare. — Ezra Taft Benson

Like the effects of industrial pollution and the new system of global financial markets, the AIDS crisis is evidence of a world in which nothing important is regional, local, limited; in which everything that can circulate does, and every problem is, or is destined to become, worldwide. — Susan Sontag

The Death of Money is an engrossing account of the massive stresses accumulating in the global financial system, especially since the 2008 financial crisis. Jim Rickards is a natural teacher. Any serious student of financial crises and their root causes needs to read this book. — John H. Makin

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

The widely mis-interpreted 1998 'meltdown' of East Asia was a financial symptom of the renewed reality: In fact, it was the first round the world recession again to begin in East Asia and spread from there to the West, instead of vice versa. That marked the beginnings of the return back 360 degrees around the world of the world economic center to Asia where it had always been before those two eighty-year period of temporary Western ascendance. The stock market crash in Hong Kong and the devaluation of the Thai baht and the Indonesian rupia took only 80 seconds to make themselves felt in the London City and on New York's Wall Street. How much of a cultural lag do we still need for popular perception and social theory to catch up with global reality? — Andre Gunder Frank

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm. — Stanislav Grof

If we are to maintain our position as a global economic leader, we've got to end the govern-by-crisis mentality that sets us back instead of moving us forward. — Scott Peters

There is either a crisis or a return to the norm of stagnation. One view is the norm is stagnation and occasionally you get out of it. The other is that the norm is growth and occasionally you can get into stagnation. You can debate that but it's a period of close to global stagnation. — Noam Chomsky

The global HIV/AIDS epidemic is an unprecedented crisis that requires an unprecedented response. In particular it requires solidarity - between the healthy and the sick, between rich and poor, and above all, between richer and poorer nations. We have 30 million orphans already. How many more do we have to get, to wake up? — Kofi Annan

Ever since the 2008 global financial crisis, central banks had ventured, not by choice but by necessity, ever deeper into the unfamiliar and tricky terrain of "unconventional monetary policies." They floored interest rates, heavily intervened in the functioning of markets, and pursued large-scale programs that outcompeted one another in purchasing securities in the marketplace; to top it all off, they aggressively sought to manipulate investor expectations and portfolio decisions. — Mohamed A El-Erian

One peek inside his top drawer had been enough for Sophie. Swimming goggles, nail clippers, a Ferragamo tie wound into a tight coil, and packets of Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard. None of that compared to Ira Blumenstein's gold tooth, Kenneth Yang's Darth Vader lollipop, or Rich Angstrom's Magic 8 Ball. — Laura Hemphill

If global warming is not contained, the West will face a choice of a refugee crisis of unimaginable proportions, or direct complicity in crimes against humanity. — George Monbiot

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

We cannot feast on global resources while the world's poor struggle to survive on inhospitable lands.
It is as simple as that.
It is the rich who are making the world poorer.
Environment and Poverty are one crisis, not two. — Petra Kelly

For Al Gore and Paul Ehrlich and Co., whatever the problem, the solution is always the same. Whether it's global cooling, global warming, or overpopulation, we need bigger government, more regulation, higher taxes, and a massive transfer of power from the citizens to some unelected self-perpetuating crisis lobby. — Mark Steyn

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

The two defining issues of this century are both universal but felt locally: the global water crisis and the resources boom. — Jay Weatherill

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

There was, of course, a global financial crisis. But our Labour predecessors left Britain exceptionally vulnerable and damaged: more personal debt than any other major economy; a dangerously inflated property bubble; and a bloated banking sector behaving as masters, not the servants of the people. — Vince Cable

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

Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago, can no longer be postponed ... We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age. — Gordon Brown

So every dollar spent on finding some gene or hormone to explain why becoming fat is not because of sugary drinks, fried foods or unchecked gluttony is a dollar not spent on getting food for the hungry, vaccines for babies, shelter for the homeless. But the rules are made by the ones in power, these neo-Brahmins, and we must follow them if we want to survive in this global village. — Anirban Bose

Pope Benedict XVI was the first to predict the crisis in the global financial system ... Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said. — Michael Lewis

The health care crisis that the world is facing has two interrelated sides: access to health care attention and access to pharmaceuticals. — Ibis Sanchez-Serrano

...Laying blame for the global financial crisis on any single individual, let alone on an eighty-three year old man, seems as ethically flawed as some of the broader moral failures permeating society in the lead-up to the crisis. — Jeremy Balkin

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

Fortunately there is more wealth in the world than there was at the time of the global economic crisis of 1929 - Chinese, Indian, Arab and Russian. — Karl Lagerfeld

Here at home, ... while the most likely scenario remains solid growth and low inflation
subject to the usual ups and downs
certain sectors have been impacted by the crisis, some because of increased imports and others because of decreased exports. Moreover, problems in the global economy do constitute a risk to all our overall economic well-being. — Robert Rubin

When the history of our times is written, will we be remembered as the generation that turned our backs in a moment of global crisis or will it be recorded that we did the right thing? — Nelson Mandela

As Secretary of State I thought of our choices and challenges in three categories: The problems we inherited, including two wars and a global financial crisis; the new, often unexpected events and emerging threats, from the shifting sands of the Middle East to the turbulent waters of the Pacific to the uncharted terrain of cyberspace; and the opportunities presented by an increasingly networked world that could help lay the foundation for — Hillary Rodham Clinton

I got plenty of guesses wrong on things in the past as well. I don't want to pretend I have some great insight ... But when the global financial crisis came along in 2008 it was scary times if you were in the middle of building $5 billion buildings. It wasn't perfect ... I think that I am the luckiest person in Australia. — James Packer

The crisis in the natural world is one of awareness as much as any other cause. As a global majority has moved into cities, a feedback loop is increasingly clear. In the city, we tend not to pay much attention to nature; for most of us, familiarity with corporate logos and celebrity news really is of more practical day-to-day use than a knowledge of local birds and edible wild plants.* With nature out of focus, it becomes easier to overlook its decline. Then, as the richness and abundance of other species fade from land and sea, nature as a whole becomes less interesting - making it even less likely we will pay attention to — J.B. MacKinnon

Climate change was a point of division between Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney. The president declared climate change a global threat, acknowledged that the actions of humanity were deepening the crisis, and pledged to do something about it if elected. — Ron Fournier

To maintain, in this new situation, the old missionary attitude is not merely inexcusable but positively dangerous. In a world threatened with nuclear war, a world facing a global ecological crisis, a world more and more closely bound together in its cultural and economic life, the paramount need is for unity, and an aggressive claim on the part of one of the world's religions to have the truth for all can only be regarded as treason against the human race. — Lesslie Newbigin

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

The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

What we cannot expect is that the people least responsible for this crisis will foot all, or even most, of the bill. Because that is a recipe for catastrophic amounts of carbon ending up in our common atmosphere. Like the call to honor our treaties and other land-sharing agreements with Indigenous peoples, climate change is once again forcing us to look at how injustices that many assumed were safely buried in the past are shaping our shared vulnerability to global climate collapse. — Naomi Klein