Source: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 521-522, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.
“The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder.”
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)
Context: The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic.
If we amplify everything we hear nothing.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "The country’s 24 hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence make…" by Jon Stewart?
Jon Stewart 121
American political satirist, writer, television host, actor… 1962Related quotes
P. W. Botha
(1916–2006) South African prime minister
As Prime Minister in a Business Week interview, USA, 4 April 1982, as cited in the Sunday Express, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 15, 41
Angus King
(1944) United States Senator from Maine
Stating that he was considering a run as an Independent for US Senate after Olympia Snowe's surprise announcement that she would be retiring from it, as quoted in "Olympia Snowe Retirement Causes Maine Scramble" in the Associated Press (29 February 2012) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/olympia-snowe-retirement-maine_n_1310524.html
Context: I'm giving it some thought for the very reason that Olympia quit. It's just not working down there and maybe we need to try something different. … We have serious problems in this country but we can't begin to solve them until we solve this shrill deadlock.
Source: Man, the State, and War (1959), Chapter II, The First Image, p. 38
“The problem of destroying enemy rockets in flight has been successfully solved in our country.”
Sergei Biriuzov
(1904–1964) Soviet military commander
Quoted in "Military Deception and Strategic Surprise" - by John Gooch, Amos Perlmutter - 1982
“The human race believes in not taking its problems seriously enough to solve them.”
Celia Green
(1935) British philosopher
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
Augustin-Jean Fresnel
(1788–1827) French engineer and physicist
in
Context: If one was sometimes led astray by trying to simplify the elements of a science, it is because one has established systems before putting together a fairly large number of facts. Some assumption, which would be very simple when one considers only a class of phenomena, requires many other assumptions if one wants to leave the narrow circle in which we had initially withdrawn. If nature has offered to produce the maximum effect with minimum causes, it is in all of its laws that it had to solve this major problem. It is without doubt difficult to discover the foundations of this wonderful economy, i. e. the simplest causes of phenomena considered from such a wide point of view. But if this general principle of the philosophy of physics does not lead immediately to the knowledge of truth, it can direct the efforts of the human spirit, by leading it away from theories which relate the phenomena to too many different causes, and by adopting preferably those based on the smallest number of assumptions, which show to be more fruitful in consequences.
“I saw a bank that said '24 Hour Banking,' but I didn’t have that much time.”
Steven Wright
(1955) American actor and author