Quotes about disaster
page 4

“Baldner contends that is "arrogant" and "paternalistic" morally to condemn something as definitive of the natural order as predation. However, it is in the nature of morality to devise ideals of a better world and to work toward realizing them. This entails judging this world to be less than ideal and working to change it. One could restrict moral evaluations to the products of human activity, but that would be arbitrary: what makes suffering (prima facie) morally bad is not that it is the result of human activity but that it is suffering. Our commitment to making the world a morally better place impels us to make moral evaluations of the natural order. There need be nothing either arrogant or paternalistic in making and acting on such evaluations, provided we recognize the very limited nature of our understanding and our power to make improvements.”

Steve F. Sapontzis (1945)

Steve Sapontzis, " Dicussion: Environmental Ethics and the Locus of Value https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2060&context=bts", Between the Species (Winter 1990), p. 9

World, Making love, Understanding, Nature

“It could be really, really bad. I don't think it's gonna be, because I think we'd be able to do the kind of mitigation. It could be mild. I don't think it's going to be that mild either. It's really going to depend on how we mobilize.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

Source: About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

Thinking, Dependency

“I don't think that we are going to get out of this completely unscathed, I think that this is going to be one of those things we look back on and say boy, that was bad.”

Anthony Fauci (1940) American immunologist and head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

About the 2020 coronavirus pandemic in the United States, quoted in 'You don't want to go to war with a president' https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/03/anthony-fauci-trump-coronavirus-crisis-118961, 3 March 2020, Politico

Boy, Thinking

“That’s why your ratings are so bad because you’re pathetic. Go ahead. Let’s go. Your ratings are terrible. You got to get back to real news. Go ahead.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump interrupting a reporter who started a question with "The first of the month is next week ... " White House coronavirus task force briefing (April 19, 2020), Donald Trump Coronavirus Press Conference Transcript April 19 https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-press-conference-transcript-april-19 2020s, 2020, April

“We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Falling Free (1988), Chapter 11 (p. 194)

Making love

“I hope this begins the end of this project. It is a bad project. It isn’t just undemocratic, it is antidemocratic. It puts in that front row, it gives people power without unaccountability. People who cannot be held to account by the electorate and that is an unacceptable structure.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

EU Farewell Speech, as quoted in Nigel Farage’s Final EU Speech: Mic Gets Cut as He Waves UK Flag in Victory, Breitbart news
2020

People, Hope

“Whilst something is unknown, it could be anything. It could be the worst thing ever and usually when something starts to happen. You realise it’s not so bad.”

Jarvis Cocker (1963) English musician, singer-songwriter, radio presenter and editor

Playing at Bluedot Festival (2019)

“A bad-tempered man will never make a good-tempered horse.”

Anna Sewell book Black Beauty

Black Beauty (1877), Ch. VII, p. 36

Making love, Horse

“Can you tell me who is good and who is bad ? The ancient "we and they" divides us artificially.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

"Beatitudes", Sam Hamill, Poets Against the War 2003

“We can actually change the expression of genes—tumor suppressing genes, tumor activating genes—by what we eat, what we put into our bodies. So, even if you've been dealt a bad genetic deck, you can still reshuffle it with diet.”

Michael Greger (1972) American physician, author, and vegan health activist

Interview in the documentary-film What the Health by Kip Andersen (2017).

Change

“It has always been hard to measure poverty, because poverty is as much a state of mind as a condition of material well-being. Still, we seem to have made a bad situation worse.”

Robert J. Samuelson (1945) American journalist

About poverty in the United States, Will the real poverty rate please stand up? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/will-the-real-poverty-rate-please-stand-up/2019/09/11/7df0bb80-d4ae-11e9-86ac-0f250cc91758_story.html, September 11, 2019, The Washington Post.

“From all evil against which the law bars you, you should be barred, at an infinite distance, by honour, by conscience, and nobility. Does the law require patriotism, philanthropy, self-abnegation, public service, purity of purpose, devotion to the needs of others who have been placed in the world below you? The law is a great thing, — because men are poor and weak, and bad. And it is great, because where it exists in its strength, no tyrant can be above it. But between you and me there should be no mention of law as the guide of conduct. Speak to me of honour, of duty, and of nobility; and tell me what they require of you.”

Anthony Trollope book The Duke's Children

Source: The Duke's Children (1879), Ch. 61

Men, World, Law, Evil

“Censorship...ought to be confined to the temporary suppression of military and naval news which might assist the enemy. ... Public opinion might be fallible, but it was not half as fallible as individual opinion, and, good or bad, the Government had to lean upon it; how could they do that unless public opinion had full, free, and correct information as to facts?”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

Speech in the House of Lords (3 November 1915), quoted in The Times (4 November 1915), p. 9
1910s

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s

War, Truth, Lie, World

“I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone […], only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.[…] Two's company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one's a crowd.”

Kingsley Amis The Green Man

Maurice Allington in Ch. 2
The Green Man (1969)

“Things are simply what they are, neither good nor bad. The potential for evil is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 1 “Camp Zero” (p. 38)

Star, Evil

“Books don’t have a nutritional value. Which is to say, we don’t just read "good" books because they’re good for us. We read to expand our horizons, to understand and connect with something outside ourselves, good and bad. We read to challenge ourselves…”

Mariko Tamaki (1975) Canadian writer and artist

On reading books that might be deemed inappropriate in “We Read To Challenge Ourselves: An Interview With Mariko Tamaki” https://comicsalliance.com/mariko-tamaki-pride-week-interview/ in Comics Alliance (2016 Jun 24)

Books, Understanding, Reading

“Keep your stupid rules
I don't know how to use it
Keep your bad news
I won't read itǃ”

Mara Balls (1983) Finnish musician

Stupidity, Reading

“They call us Reds. I don't know that that is very bad. I do not believe that is a very bad name. We are pretty red. I tell you I am a real Red.”

Lucy Parsons (1853–1942) American communist anarchist labor organizer

"May Day Speech" (1930)

“…The resistance to English, the fear of English, has made us bad readers of English literature, because of our fear of contaminating the Spanish language, of losing it in the avalanche of North American influence…”

Luis Rafael Sánchez (1936) Puerto Rican playwright and novelist

On some people’s resistance to reading English literature in “Luis Rafael Sánchez: Counterpoints" https://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00096005/00024/14j (Sargasso, 1984)

Fear, Literature

“Part of the reason so many Americans are so defensive is because we’ve been led to believe that racist is a fixed category, that it’s a tattoo, it’s a label. Of course they’re going to say, I’m not a racist, I’m not a bad person.”

Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian

But racist is describing what you’re saying in the moment. On why racist is a crucial descriptive term in “How to Be an Antiracist Author Ibram X. Kendi on What We Get Wrong About Racism” https://time.com/5647303/how-to-be-antiracist-author-interview/ in Time Magazine (2019 Aug 8)

Tattoo, Parting, Personality

“We are getting great marks for the handling of the CoronaVirus pandemic, especially the very early BAN of people from China, the infectious source, entering the USA. Compare that to the Obama/Sleepy Joe disaster known as H1N1 Swine Flu. Poor marks, bad polls - didn’t have a clue!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

As quoted by * 2020-05-10

Trump claims he is ‘getting great marks’ for coronavirus response as US death toll nears 80,000

Richard Hall

Independent

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-coronavirus-us-response-barack-obama-joe-biden-a9507346.html
2020s, 2020, May

People, Swine

“The arts objectify subjective reality, and subjectify outward experience of nature. Art education is the education of feeling, and a society that neglects it gives itself up to formless emotion. Bad art is corruption of feeling.”

Susanne K. Langer (1895–1985) American philosopher

Source: Philosophical Sketches (1962), Ch. 5, p. 94

Education, Art, Feeling, Nature

“In a sentence: Life is bad, but so is death. Of course, life is not bad in every way. Neither is death bad in every way. However, both life and death are, in crucial respects, awful. Together, they constitute an existential vise—the wretched grip that enforces our predicament.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: The Human Predicament: A Candid Guide to Life's Biggest Questions (2017), Introduction, pp. 1–2

Life, Death, Way

“I have a line in the last book about how to draw an invisible man, and it says, “I’m trying to be transparent.” I don’t actually want to be invisible, which is the dilemma of people of color, but I would like to be transparent, so people can see what my issues are, good and bad. I just try to be transparent and very present, and then see what happens.”

Terrance Hayes (1971) American poet

On seeking transparency in “Terrance Hayes on Shakespeare, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and What Makes a Good MFA” https://lithub.com/terrance-hayes-on-shakespeare-ol-dirty-bastard-and-what-makes-a-good-mfa/ in Lit Hub (2018 May 9)

People, Books, Color, Drawing

“It is often seen that bad husbands, have very good wives; whether it be, that it raiseth the price of their husband's kindness, when it comes; or that the wives take a pride in their patience.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Marriage and Single Life

Patience

“A Ph.D. in microbiology is not necessary to grasp the concept: Clean water is good. Poopy water is bad.”

Carl Hiaasen (1953) journalist, columnist and novelist from the United States

"Modern world puts evolution into reverse", July 6, 1995 (reprinted in Kick-Ass: Selected Columns)
Columns and articles

Water

“When people are afraid, people become narcissistic. It is not that people are ‘bad’ for doing this. It is simply that the focus naturally shifts to self-preservation. It is a knee jerk reaction… One that is biologically wired into us.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

People, Jerk, Nature, Self-confidence

“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing — I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better. ... So I view it as a badge of honour, really,”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump talked about the 1.59 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, as quoted in * 2020-05-19
Coronavirus: Trump says it’s ‘badge of honour’ for US to lead world in Covid-19 cases
2020s, 2020, May
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-coronavirus-cases-us-covid-death-toll-a9523166.html

“It was a tool for me. I could express what I was feeling, whether it's good feelings or bad feelings. In that case it was bad feelings. But it was like all of a sudden, 'Who cares what Donald Trump or anyone else thinks of you?'”

Kim Novak (1933) American actress

Source: CBS Sunday Morning interview (2020)
Context: Answering the question "What did painting do for you after you came home from the Oscars?"

Feeling, Thinking

“It’s bad business meddling with the devil; it makes you superstitious.”

Marion L. Starkey (1901–1991) American historian & writer

Source: The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Enquiry into the Salem Witch Trials (1949), Preface (p. 18)

Making love, Business

“Technology revolutionaries succeeded not because of some collectivist vision that seeks to regulate “fairness”, “neutrality”, “privacy” or “competition” through coercive state actions, or that views the Internet and technology as a vast commons that must be freely available to all, but rather because of the same belief as America’s Founders who understood that private property is the foundation of prosperity and freedom itself. Technology revolutionaries succeed because of the decentralized nature of the Internet, which defies government control. As a consequence, decentralization has unlocked individual self-empowerment, entrepreneurialism, creativity, innovation and the creation of new markets in ways never before imagined in human history...Around the world, the real threat to Internet freedom comes not from bad people or inefficient markets -- we can and will always route around them -- but from governments' foolish attempts to manage and control innovation. And it is not just the tyrannies we must fear. The road away from freedom is paved with good intentions.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2012-07-06
Rand Paul Wants to Save the Internet, Conservative-Style
Alex
Fitzpatrick
Mashable
http://mashable.com/2012/07/06/ron-rand-paul-internet-freedom/
2015-03-01

People, World, Fear, Way

“I never really liked too much attention, which can be good and bad, if someone gives me a compliment it just goes in one ear and out the other, and if someone says something really horrible it’s the same. I just learned not to value my self-esteem and who I am as a person on the popularity of a film or how famous I am at the time. I guess I had the perspective of how it can be there one time and not another. And life is the most exciting part, really living, you know?”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Liv Tyler On Her Iconic Career, Living Through Fame And The Importance Of Female Friendship http://www.oystermag.com/2018/11/liv-tyler-on-her-iconic-career-living-through-fame-and-the-importance-of-female-friendship-for-oyster-115/ (November 28, 2018)

Life, Learning, Time, Parting

“Bad ideologies such as racism or sexism persist due to ignorance far more than malice.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

“The continuation of diachrony in perceptions of life and death spreads across a form of antinatalism essentially co-opted from a kind of Western fetishism of Buddhism, namely efilism. Coming etymologically from the reverse of 'life', efilism claims it is better never to have been. Efilist philosophers such as David Benatar hinge their arguments on basic binaries of pleasure and pain which roughly correlate to good and bad and extend to a vindication of life and death. Efilism has a vague correspondence with utilitarianism but emphasizes the suffering of life over utilitarianism's greater good. Both are absolute in their perception of the capacity to evaluate which is which, making both dependent on economic measure of value as an either/or, and to an extent both on (anthropocentric) determinism. Efilism's redeeming feature is that it promotes antinatalism, and often veganism, in its aspirations to a reduction in suffering, and this attitude promises potentials for opening the world through the cessation of the human.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 152-153
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Death, Pain, Pleasure

“Individuals are responsible for their actions. And yet . . .No man is an island. We are all subject to influences, good and bad.”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

"Thoughts on El Paso" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/thoughts-on-el-paso/ (August 2019), National Review 2010s

“If the design takes too long to build, it’s a bad design.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

Source: https://qz.com/1718402/elon-musk-says-his-starship-will-fly-to-orbit-in-six-months/
Context: If the design takes too long to build, it’s a bad design. If the schedule is long, it’s wrong; if it’s tight, it’s right.

“Never be ashamed. Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle. How will I know which is which? By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Life, Drink, Wine

“It is intolerable that a whole race should be indicted and banned— each individual, good, bad and indifferent, lumped into one category—as the Jews are in Germany. It is intolerable that we should accept the principle that there is a permanent, irreconcilable and even necessary hostility between workers and the men who employ them—as is positively implied in this country, in the National Labor Relations Act.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

As quoted in "The best quotes from Ralph Klein’s colourful public life" http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/the-best-quotes-from-ralph-kleins-colourful-public-life/article10577310/, The Globe and Mail p. 95 Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)

Men, Hostility, Relation ships, Country

“Liberalism is not being killed by dictators. Liberalism is committing suicide—out of despair and a bad conscience. What liberalism needs is a revival, in the evangelical sense of the word. It needs to admit its sins, as the basis of renewing its life.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 73-74

Life, Sense, Suicide, Despair

“I went fasting, as is the law. My body hurt but not my heart. When the dawn came, I was out of sight of the village. I prayed and purified myself, waiting for a sign. The sign was an eagle. It flew east.
Sometimes signs are sent by bad spirits. I waited again on the flat rock, fasting, taking no food. I was very still — I could feel the sky above me and the earth beneath. I waited till the sun was beginning to sink. Then three deer passed in the valley going east — they did not mind me or see me. There was a white fawn with them — a very great sign.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

Law, Food, Feeling, Waiting

“There is a great affinity in me with the Hindu genius - that mind, vast, imaginative, loving, dreamy and speculative, but destitute of ambition, personality and will. Pantheistic disinterestedness, the effacement of the self in the great whole, womanish gentleness, a horror of slaughter, antipathy to action - these are all present in my nature, in the nature at least which has been developed by years and circumstances. Still the West has also its part in me. What I have found difficult to keep up a prejudice in favor of my form, nationality or individuality whatever. Hence my indifference to my own person, my own usefulness, interest or opinions of the moment. What does it all matter? It is not perhaps not a bad thing,' he says, 'that in the midst of the devouring activities of the Western world there should be a few Brahmanical souls.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Source: Amie1, Henri Frederic Amie! s journal: The Journal intime of Henri-Frederic Amie! p. 159 161,224. and 269.
Quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

Love, World, Making love, Soul

“Time is truly elastic. If you just rock what you have to do, you'll get it done. And another thing, too, that I learned recently, it kind of put me more at ease with the day-to-day, is just there's some kind of energy and balance and something beautiful in the ups and downs of the day-to-day. You'll get great news and you'll get bad news, and this will all be in the same day, but there's something cohesive and the balance of that is comforting. Learning to be comfortable with the ups and downs of every day and knowing that's just the mystery of life and how it is, you know?”

Booboo Stewart (1994) American actor

Booboo Stewart on the Adorable Gift His GF Gave Him and the Last Thing He Watched https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/booboo-stewart-last-call-interview-47953476 (November 9, 2020)

Life, Beauty, Learning, Time

“Fear came in so much in my life that it did everything but completely stop me. When I was a little girl, I so wanted to be sociable, but I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to speak a sentence because I had such a bad stammer...”

Carly Simon (1943) American singer-songwriter, musician and author

On what Simon’s childhood in “Tales From the Trees: An Interview With Carly Simon” https://www.popmatters.com/tales-from-the-trees-an-interview-with-carly-simon-2495407885.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1 in PopMatters (2016 Nov 20)

Life, Fear, Girl

“On my good days and bad days, when I’m shining or standing in the shadows, no matter what I face, God is my strength. My goal is to build a platform where I can spread the Gospel. Share the good news freely and to all who have ears to hear.”

Joel Courtney (1996) American actor

Exclusive Interview With “Super 8” And “The Kissing Booth” Star Joel Courtney https://daman.co.id/exclusive-interview-with-super-8-and-the-kissing-booth-star-joel-courtney/ (June 6, 2011)

God

“No jump is good if the landing is bad.”

Erwan Le Corre (1971)

Source: The Practice of Natural Movement: Reclaim Power, Health, and Freedom (2019), p.344

“In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat. It just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn't be that way. But if you go back, I mean it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. ...But certainly we had some very good economies under Democrats, as well as Republicans. But we've had some pretty bad disaster under the Republicans.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Said in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzner, as quoted by * Trump in '04: 'I probably identify more as Democrat'
CNN
Chris Moody
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/21/politics/donald-trump-election-democrat/index.html
2000s, 2004

Way

“I do not delete any day of my life, the beautiful days have given me happiness, the bad ones have given me experience... the worst ones have taught me never to give up.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Non cancello nessun giorno della mia vita, i giorni belli mi hanno regalato felicità, quelli brutti mi hanno dato esperienza... i peggiori, mi hanno insegnato a non mollare mai.
Source: prevale.net

Life, Happiness, Beauty

“Guiltily people will always think that you are talking bad about them, so do not talk to yourself in the mirror.”

Kadda Sheekoff (1993) Haitian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur

People, Thinking

“So the goal isn’t to get good ideas; the goal is to get bad ideas. Because once you get enough bad ideas, then some good ones have to show up.”

Timothy Ferriss book Tools of Titans

Idea

“Public speaking is only bad if your clothes don’t fit correctly.”

Isaac Mashman (2000) businessman, speaker

Clothes

“No one I imagine is so stupid as to believe that truth or even an approximation of truth is derived from counting pieces of marked paper and that the largest pile of papers is it. What makes democracy so fragile is the certain knowledge, even by the winners, that it is often wrong and if they think it’s right now, then it’s either been wrong at some time in the past or will be at some time in the future. There is then a shaky agreement on both sides of a democratic debate that there is some more fundamental reason for using this method to make decisions than that it is always right. In Western Europe over the last century or so that shaky agreement has not always held together and indeed it still is far from ordinary worldwide. A common everyday reason why most people accept democratic results is that they are rarely always on the losing side. And in the case of government elections they can have another opportunity to persuade the majority that the opinion they hold is correct and hope that the mistakes of the previous few years are not so very bad. On a much deeper level however respecting the “will of the people” comes from a profoundly scary place.”

Justin Barrett (1971) Irish activist

A Republic of Innocent Dead Cannot Live https://nationalparty.ie/a-republic-of-innocent-dead-cannot-live/ (June 4, 2018)

People, Truth, Stupidity, Making love

“It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company—I more hunted them down.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (2012), Chapter 11 (p. 231)

Life

“[…] one of the truly bad effects of religion is that it teaches us that it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion (2006), p. 152 of the Black Swan paperback edition of 2007

Religion, Understanding

“Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck.”

Jerome David Salinger book Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble — Ira's marble — won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it."
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), Seymour: An Introduction (1959)

“The fact is, as actors, everything we do, bad or good, is a contribution. To me, it is a positive thing to give people as wide a range of human behavior with some sense of understanding of that behavior or some clue to it. It may be a very small thing in terms of the problems that exist in the world, but it is a thing, and it's something I can do, and like to do—am thrilled to do actually.”

Grace Zabriskie (1941) American actress

Grace Zabriskie: Methodical Madness https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/grace-zabriskie-methodical-madness-42678/ (June 26, 2001)

People, World, Behavior, Understanding

“A further reason why industrial society cannot be reformed in favor of freedom is that modern technology is a unified system in which all parts are dependent on one another. You can’t get rid of the "bad" parts of technology and retain only the "good" parts.”

Theodore Kaczynski book Industrial Society and Its Future

The ‘Bad’ Parts of Technology Cannot Be Separated From the ‘Good’ Parts, paragraph 121
Industrial Society and Its Future (1995)

Freedom, Parting, Dependency

“I’m not conscious, what I’m really trying to do when I shoot a movie. I was just looking at it as more or less like a toy, something which I like to play with and try to impress people. I think that is actually something not so bad. I mean like doing it for the fun of it, instead of doing it as a real sacred job. I think it should be both.”

Ann Hui (1947) Hong Kong film director

as a comparison of her artistic filmmaking ethos in relation to the Hong Kong New Wave and the Taiwanese New Wave In Conversation with Ann Hui & Man Lim Chung | SGIFF 2020 - 15 Dec 2020 at 39 Min 32 Sec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT-7lyGwm5k Interview at the 31st Singapore International Film Festival

People, Thinking

“In a nutshell, poor education, a poor culture (one that impedes people from operating effectively together), poor infrastructure, and too much debt cause bad economic results. The best results come when there is more rather than less of: a) equal opportunity in education and in work, b) good family or family-like upbringing through the high school years, c) civilized behavior within a system that most people believe is fair, and d) free and well-regulated markets for goods, services, labor, and capital that provide incentives, savings, and financing opportunities to most people.”

Ray Dalio (1949) American businessman

[Economic Principles – Why and How Capitalism Needs to be Reformed, April 5, 2019, lejourdapres.parlement-ouvert.fr, https://lejourdapres.parlement-ouvert.fr/uploads/decidim/attachment/file/308/Economic_Principles_-_Why_and_How_Capitalism_Needs_To_Be_Reformed.pdf] (quote from p. 5 of 42)

People, Education, School, Family

“So the biggest lesson for me was to write what you want. People are going to have their opinions—good and bad. The reality is you’re not going to please everyone, and if you attempt to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. If anything, you can have fun doing it.”

Jason Tanamor (1975) Filipino-American Author and Writer

Esquire Philippines Interview (2020)

People, Reality

“We don't want to make our money selling things that are bad for people.”

Charlie Munger (1924) American business magnate, lawyer, investor, and philanthropist

[Berkshire Hathaway Shareholders Meeting 2021 featuring Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, May 1, 2021, Yahoo Finance, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx-OzwHpM9k] (quote at 4:32:01 of 5:42:25)

Money, People, Making love

“Had I finished off France in '39, then world history would have taken another course. But then I had to wait until 1940. Then a two-front war, that was bad luck. After that, even we were broken.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Source: In a meeting with Mannerheim https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/oct/15/radio.internationalnews, 4 June 1942

War, World, History, Waiting

“There`s only so much bad luck that a person can have. For her to continue to wake up and con-front the alien and resolve the situation, then go back to sleep and wake up to yet another situation-to me, it`s a burden on the whole science-fiction premise of the alien.”

Sigourney Weaver (1949) American actress

“SIGOURNEY WEAVER`S CLOSE SHAVE” (May 16, 1992)

Sleep, Science, Personality

Quotes about disaster page 4

Quotes about disaster
page 4