“The Sichuan disaster is not the first nor the most wrongful. But all the details of this tragedy will be forgotten, and once again it will be like nothing ever happened. Eventually all these disasters will together create a bizarre miracle called civilization and evolution.”
2000-09, Our Duty Is to Remember Sichuan, 2009
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Ai Weiwei218
Chinese concept artist 1957Related quotes
“Birth, n. The first and direst of all disasters.”
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
The Devil's Dictionary (1911)
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
“Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”
William S. Burroughs book Cities of the Red Night
Cities of the Red Night (1981)
Context: There is simply no room left for 'freedom from the tyranny of government' since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.
“And now cruel famine came – famine that is ever first in the train of great disasters.”
Jamque comes semper magnorum prima malorum<br/>saeva fames aderat.
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus book Pharsalia
Jamque comes semper magnorum prima malorum
saeva fames aderat.
Book IV, line 93 (tr. J. D. Duff).
Pharsalia
“Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.”
Emil M. Cioran book A Short History of Decay
A Short History of Decay (1949)
Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War
Book I, 1.78-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I
Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer
Source: The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster