Meltdown Quotes & Sayings

Nothing touches your skin of sweat
(meltdown of oceanic kisses)
when the purple light
whispers to the moon
in silent moonlit clarity — Bear Step

I'm very interested in the more grass-roots consequences of the economic meltdown: issues related to mortgage foreclosures, debt collection, and the practices of credit card companies and others who hold a lot of consumer debt. — Eric Schneiderman

Some people stick with the traditional, feeling struck by the epic beauty or blown away by the insane scale of the universe. Personally, I go for the old existential meltdown followed by acting weird for the next half hour. But everyone feels something. — Enrico Fermi

When I've had a meltdown, people will say to me, "Well, you failed to keep your sense of humor." — Lily Tomlin

Meltdown: noun, def. 1) adult tantrum 2) regressing to the chronological age of three 3) having no ability to express oneself rationally or make a logical case for oneself 4) believing that one's sense of self is compromised or in great danger 5) resorting to slash and burn tactics to try to get needs met Synonym: fit, bad temper, eruption, hysteria Antonym: calm, mature, reasonable, thoughtful — Crystal Ponti

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

Isobel moved farther into the kitchen, not knowing whether to be relieved that her mother hadn't had an atomic meltdown, or mortified that she'd taken it upon herself to play head chef with the nearest thing Trenton High had to a Dark Lord. — Kelly Creagh

Ours is a world which feels so unsettled and dangerous in large ways, whether it's terrorism or global financial meltdown or climate change - huge things that affect us deeply, and yet things about which we can do, individually, very little. — Sarah Waters

As for action movies, I did Tarzan, and I'm also about to shoot Meltdown, which John Carpenter wrote. — Casper Van Dien

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

It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life's worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, Law school was over at last! — Daniel Amory

You'll feel better after a new pair of jeans and a triple fudge meltdown. And if that doesn't work, we'll watch Magic Mike."

Cara laughed as tears welled in her eyes. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. — Melissa Landers

Normal people have an incredible lack of empathy. They have good emotional empathy, but they don't have much empathy for the autistic kid who is screaming at the baseball game because he can't stand the sensory overload. Or the autistic kid having a meltdown in the school cafeteria because there's too much stimulation. — Temple Grandin

Gideon cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, our flavors mingling. "Thank you."
"What are you thanking me for? You did all the work."
"There's no work involved in fucking you, angel." His slow smile was pure satiated male. "I'm grateful for the privilege."
I sank back onto my heels. "You're killing me. You can't be that gorgeous and sexy and say stuff like that. It's overload. It fries my brain. Sends me into a meltdown."
His smile widened and he kissed me again. "I know the feeling. — Sylvia Day

Some patients do seem to have some kind of post-infection meltdown. They don't still have an infection any more in any sense that we understand infection. But someone is going to have to explain these patients to me someday. — Mark Crislip

Accident - A statistical inevitability. Some nuclear power plants are built on fault lines, but ever mine, dam, oil rig, and waste dump is founded upon a tacit acceptance of the worst-case scenario. One a long enough timeline, everything that can go wrong will, however small the likelihood is from one day to the next. The responsible parties may wring their hands about the Fukushima meltdown - and the Gult of Mexico oil spill, and the Exxon Valdez, and Hurricane Katrina, and Chernobyl, and Haiti - but accident is no accident. — CrimethInc.

Considering some of the things I've done, touching another man's dick is not exactly going to send me into a moral meltdown. — Santino Hassell

How can HOW help us repair our faltering global economy?
Only by getting our "hows" right can we ensure that we are sustainable. This can only be achieved when we are rooted in, and inspired by, sustainable values. The global economic meltdown supplied a perfect, but painful, example of how sustainability cannot be guided by situational values. The economic crash occurred because too many financial companies became disconnected from fundamental values and long-term sustainable thinking. Instead of nurturing sustainable collaborations, banks, lenders, borrowers and shareholders pursued short-term relationships founded on situational values. More than ever we need to get out of this cycle of crises and build long-term success and deep human connections so that we achieve enduring significance in today's globally interconnected world. — Dov Seidman

It's not an exaggeration to say that we're on the verge of a meltdown. — John Hart

Hanks grin almost sent me into meltdown. The kind where I killed him, but first I would stick my tongue down his throat and ride him till he was blind. — Robyn Peterman

The lye clinging in the exact shape of Tyler's kiss is a bonfire or a branding iron or an atomic pile meltdown on my hand at the end of a long, long road I picture miles away from me. Tyler tells me to come back and be with him. My hand is leaving, tiny and on the horizon at the end of the road. — Chuck Palahniuk

In order to benefit; however, you must believe that life is plotting for you. We often resist this emerging impulse or this urge to emerge because we are afraid of change, right? To the ego, change is equivalent to danger or death. But when we deny this evolutionary call, it causes an inner pressure that must find an outlet, sometimes in destructive ways. And this can break out as disease, financial collapse, or relationship meltdown. — Derek Rydall

The party lines don't change, that's what makes them a party and you'd be a fool to think that just because there's a black man in there it's not gonna change the real foundation of the system. Especially when you look at his largest contributor to his campaign, AIG, one of the culprits in the economic meltdown itself. — Lupe Fiasco

It's painfully obvious to both of us that you're dangerously close to a sexless-related meltdown. And I went to Alibi last girls' night and there were plenty of straight people there, too, you know, but um. I mean, there were also lots of - "
"People!" Jon shouts, "Plenty of people. With, uh, orifices. — Seventhswan

The peasants have seen the future - Greece and France - and concluded that it does not work. Hence their opposition to Obama's proudly transformational New Foundation agenda. Their logic is impeccable: Only the most blinkered intellectual could be attempting to introduce social democracy to America precisely when the world's foremost exemplar of that model - Europe - is in chaotic meltdown. — Charles Krauthammer

If we are really serious about preventing another crisis like the 2008 meltdown, we should simply ban complex financial instruments unless they can be unambiguously shown to benefit society in the long run. — Ha-Joon Chang

That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot-com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown. — Terence Corcoran

Will you marry me, Olivia? You are the only woman I know how to love. The only woman I want to love. He doesn't lower himself to his knee and he doesn't need to. I am rocking on the edge of an emotional meltdown as is — Tarryn Fisher

The only thing that had tethered her to the earth had been him and it was strange, but she felt welded to him on some core level now. He had seen her at her absolute worst, at her weakest and most insane, and he hadn't looked away. He hadn't judged and he hadn't been burned.
It was as if in the heat of her meltdown they had melted together.
This was more than emotion. It was a matter of soul. — J.R. Ward

I think everyone has one day like this, and some people have more than one. It's the day of the accident, the midlife crisis, the breakdown, the meltdown, the walkout, the sellout, the giving up, giving away, or giving in. The day you stop drinking, or the day you start. The day you know things will never be the same again. — Heather Sellers

It is good to have many personae, to make collections, sew up several, collect them as we go along in life. As we become older, with such a collection at our behest, we find we can portray any aspect of self most anytime we wish. However, at some point, most particularly as one grows into past mid-life and on into old age, one's personas shift and meld in mysterious ways. Eventually, there is a kind of 'meltdown', a loss of personae complete, thereby revealing what would, in its greatest light, be called 'the true self. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

It's not simply that these "cool dudes" deny climate science because it threatens to upend their dominance-based worldview. It is that their dominance-based worldview provides them with the intellectual tools to write off huge swaths of humanity, and indeed, to rationalize profiting from the meltdown. — Naomi Klein

Sometimes. In busy places. I may need to escape. I'm not being rude. I'm helping myself. — Tina J. Richardson

Social media helps me a lot. It also causes a lot of shutdowns — Tina J. Richardson

When a man wants to have an alehouse meltdown, the worst thing you can do is stand in his way — Luke Haines

Radiation doesn't recognize borders. A meltdown in Japan or India, say, is a danger to the whole world. Wind circulates the radiation everywhere. Water quality is affected. We all eat the same fish. We use products from all over the world - if something is contaminated, it will cause harm. — Wladimir Klitschko

As we actually taste the flavor of what he's teaching, we begin to see that it's not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous. He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. He pushes us toward it, teases us, taunts us, encourages us, and ultimately walks us there. — Cynthia Bourgeault

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness. — Keanu Reeves

Steven stared at the detective's gun and realized there was no escape. He had an emotional meltdown, letting his true feelings spill out of him. — Amelia Morgan

Partying at this time of ecological meltdown is not affirming of reality, but an abdication from it. It is a place of false refuge especially so when there is no evidence of an acknowledgement of affirming life as it is, for this would require of these people a heartbrokeness. — Stephen Jenkinson

But I had to admit that maybe the reason I'd had a meltdown wasn't just about the shower. I think the shower door was, like, a metaphor. It represented everything that was bad. — Sarra Manning

Bell Labs was an astonishing place for many decades, though it fell on somewhat hard times during the telecom meltdown some years ago, as its corporate owner had to cope with shrinking markets. — Brian Kernighan

Exercise is really important to me - it's therapeutic. So if I'm ever feeling tense or stressed or like I'm about to have a meltdown, I'll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls. — Michelle Obama

We did everything correctly, following the established plan approved by management!' Just as under socialism--we do and did everything correctly, yet life, the world, continues to collapse beneath our feet like a reactor that has entered a runaway state of nuclear meltdown. Is there any need to explain what those two great liberating words mean: chain reaction? — Georgi Tenev

So, for example, a country was into recession right after I was sworn in, a dot-com bust had taken place. Then the attacks of September the 11th, and then of course the great financial meltdown in the -the fundamental question facing any presidency is how do you deal with the hand you're dealt? — George W. Bush

Regent's Park was looking to the Met for an injection of integrity, it was in serious danger of an irony meltdown. — Mick Herron

Also, even if technocrats provide reasonable estimates of a risk, which itself is an iffy enterprise, they cannot dictate what level of risk people ought to accept. People might object to a nuclear power plant that has a minuscule risk of a meltdown not because they overestimate the risk, but because they feel that the cost of a catastrophe, no matter how remote, are too dreadful. And of course any of these trade-offs may be unacceptable if people perceive that the benefits would go to the wealthy and powerful while they themselves absorb the risks. Nonetheless, understanding the difference between our best science and our ancient ways of thinking can only make our individual and collective decisions better informed. It can help scientists and journalists explain a new technology in the face of the most common misunderstandings. And it can help all of us understand the technology so that we can accept or reject it on grounds that we can justify to ourselves and to others. — Steven Pinker

You can have it all without suffering from a meltdown. — Selena Gomez

Some day everyone will find out everyone else's comp, if it's all over the place, it will be a complete meltdown disaster — Sam Altman

In the case of a meltdown, the regulatory authorities may find themselves obliged to step in to preserve the integrity of the system. It is in that light that the authorities have both a right and an obligation to supervise and regulate derivative instruments. — George Soros

I'm not really a political animal but I am rather fascinated by the meltdown of England and America. In the end, it seems as if America might come out of it, but I'm not sure if England is ever going to recover. — Rupert Everett

Having spent years ruining the housing markets with their interference, leading to a housing meltdown that has taken the whole economy down with it, politicians have now moved on into micro-managing automobile companies and medical care. They are not going to stop unless they get stopped. And that is not going to happen until the voters recognize the fact that political rhetoric is no substitute for competence. — Thomas Sowell

On his way back through the plane Richard had seen women crying-- three women, four women. And he realized that there always were these women on planes, crying, with makeup in meltdown, folded over in the window seat or candidly hideous in the aisle, clutching Kleenex. Before, if he assumed anything, he assumed they were crying about boyfriends or husbands (partings or sunderings), or crying (who cared?) from toothache or curse pains or fear of flying. But now he was forty, and he knew.

Women on planes were crying because someone they love or loved is dead or dying. Every plane has them. — Martin Amis

Sometimes it takes a meltdown to cool down. — Evinda Lepins

Taxpayers have put more than $24 trillion on the line to resuscitate Wall Street after the economic meltdown of last year. With the help of this massive taxpayer support, the nation's largest banks are posting record profits. — Maria Cantwell

I had control issues, enough emotional baggage to excite a team of psychiatrists, and - thanks to my demon half - a penchant for snap decisions driven by instinct. And that was when my demon was subdued. When she came to the party, I was as stable as a nuclear reactor on meltdown. — Pippa DaCosta

We are facing another economic meltdown. The ecosystem, on which the human species depends for life, is being destroyed at a rate that has not even been anticipated by climate scientists. We don't have a lot of time left. So either we get out and fight or we're finished. Fear is the only thing the Democratic Party has to offer - fear that the Republican Party is worse. — Chris Hedges

Starting in 1792 with George Washington, there were financial crises every ten to fifteen years. Panics, bank runs, credit freezes, crashes, depressions. People lost their farms, families were wiped out. This went on for more than a hundred years, until the Great Depression, when Oklahoma turned to dust. "We can do better than this." Americans said. "We don't need to go back to the boom-and-bust cycle." The Great Depression produced three regulations:
The FDIC-your bank deposits were safe.
Glass-Steagall-banks couldn't go crazy with your money.
The SEC-stock markets would be tightly controlled.
For fifty years, these rules kept America from having another financial crisis. Not one panic or meltdown or freeze. They gave Americans security and prosperity. Banking was dull. The country produced the greatest middle class the world had ever seen. — Elizabeth Warren

Terrorists do not actually need nuclear weapons. They have been conveniently supplied with 103 nuclear power plants scattered throughout the United States (438 of these deadly facilities exist throughout the world). A planned meltdown at one of these facilities would make the World Trade Center attacks seem like child's play. The massive concrete containers protecting the reactors are not strong enough to withstand the impact of a jumbo jet. — Helen Caldicott

I can have silent meltdowns called shutdowns. Sensory input becomes too much. I am physically and emotionally exhausted. I curl up into a ball in a safe place to recover. — Tina J. Richardson

Status: Naked. On bed. With boy. Systems overheating. Sudden doubts multiplying. Meltdown imminent. — J.C. Lillis

The thought for a long time was that banks needed to be too controlled, too regulated to be turned over to the Wild West of the Net. Then the credit meltdown hit, and we saw just how reckless these so-called safe and regulated institutions were. — Sarah Lacy

When Marre was two, I was in line at a crowded New York City grocery store, and I gave her a sippy cup of juice in a futile attempt to stop a meltdown. She bellowed at the top of her lungs, "I don't like jews!" Thank God, we live in New York City and my family looks like Hitler's fantasy. Otherwise, that would've been pretty awkward. Jeannie — Jim Gaffigan

Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, in hosting the G20 summit and in the budget, must display the same boldness in tackling the instability at home that they do in promoting a worldwide answer to the global meltdown. — David Blunkett

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

Meltdown when we get home. Mom keeps chocolate for meltdowns. Daddy always has them when Uncle Jonas visits.
-David Lyons from Tanner's Scheme- — Lora Leigh

Britney Spears can't hold a conversation. (mind controlled) The ultimate meltdown was Britney Spears. But she (Spears) can't hold a conversation. No. They have someone who feeds her what she is supposed to say. Like she can't hold a conversation. — Adrienne Bailon

There is a meltdown of authority going on in the world and a corresponding increase of lawlessness. The earth itself is also going through travail to give birth to the messengers of power who are sent to prepare the way for the coming of the kingdom by preaching the gospel of the kingdom throughout the earth. — Rick Joyner

It is all very well for 2% of the population to live in a monastic state of meatlessness while everyone else gorges their way towards environmental meltdown or the nearest heart clinic. Vegetarianism is good for the willing minority, but not much use as a campaign tool. — Tristram Stuart

The first rule of the C.E.O. psychological meltdown is 'Don't talk about the psychological meltdown.' — Ben Horowitz

I've never even seen a great set fight or a great set meltdown. I seem to always be on these incredibly relaxed sets. — Diablo Cody

[A]lthough there are many arguments that strongly support the establishment of a national securities regulator in Canada, it is not entirely clear that the regulatory response to the ABCP meltdown is among them. — Paul Halpern

Some 8,000 nonviolent Occupy protesters were arrested across the nation. Not one banker or investor went to jail for causing the 2008 financial meltdown. The disparity of justice mirrored the disparity in incomes and the disparity in power. — Chris Hedges

Hurtling the Pentagon into an unprecedented budgetary meltdown is horrifically irresponsible. Obama doesn't care. This is war - not against the Taliban, but war against the GOP. He has Republicans on the ropes, and that's a victory he savors and desires - unlike Afghanistan, where he seems only to want to turn tail. — John Podhoretz

If you hear screaming, it's my meltdown. Do me a favor and make sure I stay dressed."
Those hazel eyes took their sweet time taking in every inch of my body. "I make no promises. — Ashlan Thomas

Susan Boyle having a meltdown is not controversial. It's human for a 48-year-old recluse to get a little wigged out when she finds herself on the world stage overnight. — Shawn Amos

One: He's Michael. Two: he's scheduled for a meltdown. Three: Lia had been miss Rosy Sunshine since she got downstairs, and Lia doesn't do roses or sunshine unless she's screwing with someone or deeply upset.
-Dean Redding — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

I need some beef and broccoli before I face any more Mr. Darcy. It's a truth universally acknowledged that if you watch too much television on am empty stomach, your head falls off."
"If your head fall off, " Tessa said, "the hairdressing industry would go into an economic meltdown — Cassandra Clare

The recession, which started in 2007, is ongoing. The
underlying fundamental causes of the meltdown have not been
addressed. Banks are still not lending. Companies are still not hiring.
Congress has still not seriously addressed the growing debt. Neither
has Congress checked its own out-of-control spending. The much
lauded reforms installed by Frank-Dodd are nothing more than another
expansion of federal government control over the engines of wealth
creation. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

But Hannah's friend didn't understand the volatile balancing act between art and sanity, that the act of creation was like walking a tightrope during an earthquake. She didn't understand Hannah's stupid need for validation, or that the size of the audience increased the stakes and multiplied the fear. She didn't understand that creativity was dangerous, that, yes, there were some people who could stand before a canvas, paint a sunset that would bring the world to its knees, and return to their loved ones as a complete person who didn't hurt, didn't cry, didn't spill blood to appease the host of fickle muses. But Hannah did. Hannah's best ideas - sometimes her only ideas - were buried beneath the skin. — Jake Vander Ark

Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of. Quick: try to think of a single movie about the horrors of Stalinism. This is not a failure of imagination. This is moral meltdown. — Mona Charen

My heart is nuclear,
Love is all that I fear
Ready to be let down,
Now I'm heading for a meltdown — Marina And The Diamonds

The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work. — Andrew Nikiforuk

In retrospect, it was the realization that if I HAD claimed to be ill I would have been let off the flight that pushed me to the line between sanity and meltdown. It came on top of the stress of the previous day's life-threatening emergency, my failure to save my marriage, administrative incompetence, and gross invasion of personal space. One more deception, a small deception, and I could have walked off. But I had reached my limits in all dimensions. — Graeme Simsion

A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants. — Steven Pressfield

I make it through the first two weeks of school without a nuclear meltdown. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Everyone is wondering where the Royal twins are, since they happened to miss Grom's kingship ceremony. At least I had the good sense to hold a private mating ceremony-in view of Rayna's absence and all."
Galen scowls. "He's right. We need to go home for a few days. Our father isn't as protective as your mother, but he likes to see us once in a while. Especially Rayna. She's spoiled."
Rayna nods. "It's true. I am. Besides, I need to get our mating-seal overturned."
"Aw, princess, I thought we had a good time today. You know I'll make sure you're still spoiled. Why would you want to unseal us?" Toraf says. She lets him take some of her load but turns up her nose at his attempt to kiss her cheek.
Galen ignores their marriage meltdown. — Anna Banks

Quite apart from our desire to avoid destroying the planet or economic meltdown, I offer another reason to position cooperation at the heart of our political economy: it will mean we are more likely to live sane, fruitful lives — Oliver James

After a quick meltdown in the bathroom, I went downstairs. When I turned the corner at the bottom of the basement steps, Jonah lept at me, waving a plastic bag in my face.
I'd never been so happy to see a Country Market bag in my life. — Carrie Harris

But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution. — Barbara Ehrenreich

I'm talking to myself in two different personas now. I'm reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave? — C.K. Kelly Martin

Financial markets are supposed to swing like a pendulum: They may fluctuate wildly in response to exogenous shocks, but eventually they are supposed to come to rest at an equilibrium point and that point is supposed to be the same irrespective of the interim fluctuations. Instead, as I told Congress, financial markets behaved more like a wrecking ball, swinging from country to country and knocking over the weaker ones.It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the international financial system itself constituted the main ingredient in the meltdown process. — George Soros

We are living in an historic moment. We are each called to take part in a great transformation. Our survival as a species is threatened by global warming, economic meltdown, and an ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. Yet these threats offer an opportunity to awaken as an interconnected and beloved community. — Desmond Tutu

The word meltdown had not yet entered the reactor engineer's vocabulary - Fermi was only then inventing that specialty - but that is what Compton was risking, a small Chernobyl in the midst of a crowded city. — Richard Rhodes

Her body went into meltdown, overwhelmed and unsure whether to heat up in arousal or panic under his scrutiny. Bloody hell. Nobody should be that sinful. A rich, talented, bad boy all rolled up into a package of I-don't-give-a-shit, I-know-how-good-I-look. — Eden Summers

But Empire building also bears the seeds of its own destruction. The closer a state comes to the ultimate goal of world domination and one-world government, the less reason is there to maintain its internal liberalism and do instead what all states are inclined to do anyway, i.e., to crack down and increase their exploitation of whatever productive people are still left. Consequently, with no additional tributaries available and domestic productivity stagnating or falling, the Empire's internal policies of bread and circuses can no longer be maintained. Economic crisis hits, and an impending economic meltdown will stimulate decentralizing tendencies, separatist and secessionist movements, and lead to the break-up of Empire. We have seen this happen with Great Britain, and we are seeing it now, with the US and its Empire apparently on its last leg. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

I'll sit on the floor and cry if I'm having a meltdown. I don't care. — Suki Waterhouse

I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." I didn't want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop. — Michael Stipe

Al Gore is coming out with a movie about global warming called ' An Inconvenient Truth. ' It's described as a detailed scientific view of global warming. President Bush said he just saw a film about global warming, 'Ice Age 2; The Meltdown.' He said, 'It's so much better than that boring Al Gore movie.' — Jay Leno

Since 2001, people have been scared. There's been some really scary stuff that's been happening - 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, anthrax letters, D.C. sniper, global warming, global financial meltdown, bird flu, swine flu, SARS. I think people really feel like the system's breaking down. — Max Brooks