National Tragedy Quotes & Sayings

My protest against digital has been me saying, "What's going to happen to film?" The result is that Kodak is out of business. That's a national tragedy. We've got to keep making film. — Oliver Stone

It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, half a million liquidated is a statistic, and one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy. — John Le Carre

The two national powers that dominated the colonies, France and Britain, represented two different models of corruption. Britain was seen as a failed ideal. It was corrupted republic, a place where the premise of government was basically sound but civic virtue - that of the public and public officials - was degenerating. On the other hand, France was seen as more essentially corrupt, a nation in which there was no true polity, but instead exchanges of luxury for power; a nation populated by weak subjects and flattering courtiers. Britain was the greater tragedy, because it held the promise of integrity, whereas France was simply something of a civic cesspool. — Zephyr Teachout

Why isn't the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community? — Tony Abbott

I don't write like this in order to show how clever and well read I am
though I am rather clever and well read as a matter of fact. — John Heath-Stubbs

Scripture says: "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted." I call on every American family and the family of America to observe a National Day of Prayer and Remembrance, honoring the memory of the thousands of victims of these brutal attacks and comforting those who lost loved ones. We will persevere through this national tragedy and personal loss. In time, we will find healing and recovery; and, in the face of all this evil, we remain strong and united, "one Nation under God." — George W. Bush

There is no use complaining about the hidden brain, or wishing it away. The telescope effect in our moral judgment is part of our nature. There is nothing we can do about it. But there is something we can do about our actions. We can choose to allow our actions to be guided by reason rather than instinct, choose to set up national and international institutions that respond instantly to humanitarian crises, rather than wait for our heartstrings to be pulled by stories of individual tragedy. If we rely on our moral telescopes, there will be people in a hundred years who ask how the world could have sat on its hands through so many genocides in the twenty-first century. Making — Shankar Vedantam

When we surrender completely to our Higher Self and we remember that we are Divine Beings, that we are Human Angels, the illusion of having limits vanishes and everything, including miracles, becomes possible in the name of Love. — Human Angels

I was one in a million. I wasn't bright enough to realize the circus fat lady is, too — Stephen King

We must stop criminalizing mental illness. It's a national tragedy and scandal that the L.A. County Jail is the biggest psychiatric facility in the United States. — Elyn Saks

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. — George Eliot

We had a national tragedy this week, and the President of the United States and Sarah Palin both made speeches on the same day. Obama came out against lunatics with guns, she gave the rebuttal. — Bill Maher

The breakup of the Soviet Union is a national tragedy on an enormous scale only the elites and nationalists of the republics gained. — Vladimir Putin

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

I first started going to Chelsea games in the mid-Nineties when I lived off the North End Road, ten minutes' walk from Stamford Bridge. — George Osborne

We perceive, we remember our experiences, we make judgments, we act - and in all of these endeavors, we are influenced by factors that we aren't aware of. — Leonard Mlodinow

It is a national tragedy of incalculable proportions....What is wrong with the United States that it can provide the environment for such an act? There is sickness in the nation when political differences cannot be accepted and settled in the democratic way.
(from The St. Louis Post-Dispatch) — United Press International

Music sets up ladders,
it makes us invisible,
it sets us apart,
it lets us escape;
but from the visible
there is no escape. — Hilda Doolittle

The Iraqi people are living a long-running tragedy because of the legacy of the old regime, the Americans and their actions that are unsuitable for Iraqi society, and the weakness of national resolve. — Ahmed Chalabi

What no tourist bumf will tell you is that this inlet is suffused with an atmosphere of ineffable sadness. Partly a trick of the light and climatic factors, partly also the lingering residue of an historical tragedy which still resonates through rock and water down seven generations of fretful commemorative attempts and dissonant historical hermeneutics. Now think of grey shading towards gunmetal across an achromatic spectrum; think also of turbid cumulus clouds pouring down five centimeters of rainfall above the national average and you have some idea of the light reflected within the walls of this inlet. This is the type of light which lends itself to vitamin D deficiency, baseline serotonin levels, spluttering neurotransmitters and mild but by no means notional depression. It is the type of light wherein ghosts go their rounds at all hours of the day. — Mike McCormack

It isn't fate but fecklessness that has shoved Sarah Palin to the sidelines of national politics. The real tragedy is that she's taken a lot of other serious Republican women with her. — Dee Dee Myers

Southampton's barrage balloons floated gleaming in the moonlight like the ghosts of elephants and hippos. — Elizabeth Wein

The dead must humor the mourners, he thought, and the sick must comfort the visitors. It was always so. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

To change the world , we need to combine Ancient wisdom with new technologies — Paulo Coelho

Real liberation for men means that they can explore and integrate their feminine aspects of consciousness. — Marianne Williamson

Childhood hunger in America is as much a paradox as it is a tragedy. Why, in the wealthiest country in the world, should hunger darken the lives and dreams of 12 million children and their families? I believe that, when Americans learn the facts and understand how their involvement can make a difference, banishing childhood hunger will be a national, local and personal priority. — Martin Sheen

Love ... no such thing.
Whatever it is that binds families and married couples together, that's not love. That's stupidity or selfishness or fear. Love doesn't exist.
Self interest exists, attachment based on personal gain exists, complacency exists. But not love. Love has to be reinvented, that's certain. — Arthur Rimbaud

I was seeing people that were older who didn't create any kind of foundation in their lives, and it scared me to death. — Edie Brickell

I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent
civilians ... What is one more life thrown away in this
sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can
atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the
world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am
ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my
country. — Malachi Ritscher

What makes America great is that we can come together during times of national tragedy. — Dennis Hastert

Because the state necessarily commits aggression, the consistent libertarian, in opposing aggression, is also an anarchist. — Stephan Kinsella

The building is a national tragedy - a cross between a concrete candy box and a marble sarcophagus in which the art of architecture lies buried. — Ada Louise Huxtable

I love Christmas. I never used to. I didn't hate it, but I could take it or leave it. But, as I got to the age of 25 or 26, Christmas became quite a big deal, and I love it now. I love the food, and I love sharing time with people. — James McAvoy

When it happens to you it's a national tragedy - Why aren't the papers reporting this? you wonder. Only when it happens to someone else do you realize what a dull story it really is. — David Sedaris

When we dwell on the enormity of the Second World War and its victims, we try to absorb all those statistics of national and ethnic tragedy. But, as a result, there is a tendency to overlook the way the war changed even the survivors' lives in ways impossible to predict. — Antony Beevor

...9/11 was immediately understood not only as a tragedy for the United States and the city of New York but also as a global outrage, which took the lives of so many citizens from across the world. The headline emphasized the manner in which questions of identity were geographically and emotionally connected - the local (New York, Pennsylvania and Washington), the national (United States), and the global. Shortly afterwards, however, the event became reinscribed in overwhelmingly national terms - 'Attack on America'. Tragically, as former Vice President Al Gore has said, the United States has squandered that global goodwill and solidarity by its largely unilateral engagement in Iraq and other activities which have been judged by others to be inimical to international law, such as extraordinary rendition, detention camps, and the doctrine of pre-emption. We are certainly not all Americans now. — Klaus Dodds

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question. — Richard Flanagan

Humans are born, small, weak and helpless. That's why we have family. And the elders of the family are the honoured guardians of our country's history. Unfortunately, in America, we, you know, lock those elders away out of view in nursing homes and go about our little lives. It's a great national shame and an irredeemable tragedy. Oh well. — Christopher Titus

The tragedy in the lives of most of us is that we go through life
walking down a high-walled lane with people of our own kind, the
same economic situation, the same national background and
education and religious outlook. And beyond those walls, all
humanity lies, unknown and unseen, and untouched by our
restricted and impoverished lives. — Florence Luscomb

When individuals blunder, it is unfortuante and their families go down. When rulers fail, it is a national tragedy — Gurcharan Das

We all walk in a land of dreams. For what are we but atoms and hope, a handful of stardust and sinew? We are weary travelers trying to find our way home on a road that never ends. Am I a part of your dream? or are you but a part of mine? — Libba Bray

We have to be sure [students] understand that racial, national, ethnic, and religious hatred can lead to horrible tragedies. — Rod Blagojevich

The government needs to help those in need, but members of Congress shouldn't take advantage of the situation and use a national tragedy as an opportunity to spend taxpayer dollars on their pet projects. — Chris Chocola