Quotes about collapse
page 3

“As part of the spring ritual of National Poetry Month, poets are symbolically dragged into the public square in order to be humiliated with the claim that their product has not achieved sufficient market penetration and must be revived by the Artificial Resuscitation Foundation (ARF) lest the art form collapse from its own incompetence, irrelevance, and as a result of the general disinterest among the broad masses of the American People. The motto of ARF's National Poetry Month is: "Poetry's not so bad, really."”

Charles Bernstein (1950) American writer

" Against National Poetry Month As Such http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/044106.html", from My Way: Speeches and Poems, 1999, University Of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226044092

People, Art, Spring, Parting

“Whatever the other failures of the U. S. government were, it had managed to print an excess of dollars which, combined with the collapse of trade and communication, had severely eroded the currency's value.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 30, p. 146

Communication, Failure

“Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)

Love, God, War, Rage

“My whole thing is I’m not into civilization as a whole. The only actual solution is the eventual collapse and demise of civilization... I think it needs to happen, but no one, not even me, really wants it to happen.”

Andrew Hurley (1980) American musician

The Boys With the Car-Crash Hearts (March 8, 2007)

Thinking

“This view that the action of the Federal Reserve authorities in 1927 was responsible for the speculation and collapse which followed has never been seriously shaken. There are reasons why it is attractive. It is simple, and it exonerates both the American people and the economic system from substantial blame… Yet the explanation obviously assumes that people will always speculate if only they can get the money to finance it. Nothing could be farther from the case. There were times before and there has been long periods since when credit was plentiful and cheap -- far cheaper than in 1927-29 -- and when speculation was negligible. Nor was speculation out of control after 1927, except that it was beyond the reach of men who did not want in the least to control it. The explanation is a tribute only to a recurrent preference, in economic matters, for formidable nonsense.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Source: The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929), Chapter I, "Vision and Boundless Hope and Optimism" p. 10

Men, Money, People, Time

“We've teed up this situation for Iraqis, and I think the next six months really are going to determine whether this country is going to collapse into three parts or more or whether it's going to come together.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Face the Nation, December 18, 2005
"The next … months" in Iraq

Thinking, Parting, Country

“Everything can collapse. Houses, bodies, and enemies collapse when their rhythm becomes deranged.
In large-scale strategy, when the enemy starts to collapse you must pursue him without letting the chance go. If you fail to take advantage of your enemies' collapse, they may recover.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Chance, Housing

“We have been in recess since July, and during that time there have been a fuel crisis, a Danish no vote, the collapse of the Euro and a war in the middle east, but what is our business tomorrow? The Insolvency Bill [Lords]. It ought be called the Bankruptcy Bill [Commons], because we play no role.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech in the House of Commons (23 October 2000) http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/2000/oct/23/election-of-speaker, cited in Adam Tomkins, "What is Parliament for?" in Bamforth N. and Leyland P. (eds.), Public Law in a Multi-Layered Constitution, Oxford, Hart, 2003, p. 53. 2000s

War, Business, Time

“We have to do it for our children and for our grandchildren and so that this profound experiment in ordered liberty that was bequeathed to us by Madison and Washington and Hamilton and Adams and by Lincoln doesn't collapse. That republican government, which is ultimately what's at stake here, because a licentious people is not going to sustain republican government. We've got to make sure that republican government, government not only of the people as all government is but by and for the people doesn't perish from the Earth. If we lose it here, it's not as if it's going to be restarted somewhere else. People look to the United States to see if whether self-government can actually work and it's not going to work unless we as individual people and as members of small communities, institutions of civil society, are able to govern ourselves or are able to control our own passions and desires.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2016, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Children, People, Communication, Passion

“They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?”

Yuan Tengfei (1972) history teacher in Beijing, China

Reported in Didi Kirsten Tatlow, "A System Afraid of Its Own History", The New York Times (September 16, 2010).

Truth

“…a few years back, in the 1980s, in our efforts to bring peace and democracy to the world we assisted the freedom fighters of Afghanistan, and in our infinite wisdom we gave money, technology and training to Bin Laden, and now, this very year, we have declared that Bin Laden was responsible for the bombing in Africa. So what is our response, because we allow our President to pursue war too easily? What was the President's response? Some even say that it might have been for other reasons than for national security reasons. So he goes off and bombs Afghanistan, and he goes off and bombs Sudan, and now the record shows that very likely the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan was precisely that, a pharmaceutical plant… As my colleagues know, at the end of this bill I think we get a hint as to why we do not go to Rwanda for humanitarian reasons… I think it has something to do with money, and I think it has something to do with oil… they are asking to set up and check into the funds that Saddam Hussein owes to the west. Who is owed? They do not owe me any money. But I will bet my colleagues there is a lot of banks in New York who are owed a lot of money, and this is one of the goals…
Dana Rohrabacher: This resolution is exactly the right formula… Support democracy. Oppose tyranny. Oppose aggression and repression… We should strengthen the victims so they can defend themselves. These things are totally consistent with America's philosophy, and it is a pragmatic approach as well… Our support for the Mujahedin collapsed the Soviet Union. Yes, there was a price to pay, because after the Soviet Union collapsed, we walked away, and we did not support those elements in the Mujahedin who were somewhat in favor of the freedom and western values. With those people who oppose this effort of pro democracy foreign policy, a pro freedom foreign policy rather than isolation foreign policy, they would have had us stay out of that war in Afghanistan. They would never have had us confronting Soviet aggression in different parts of the world… Mr. Speaker, the gentleman does not think it is proper for us to offer those people who are struggling for freedoms in Iraq against their dictatorship a helping hand?
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I think it would be absolutely proper to do that, as long as it came out of the gentleman's wallet and we did not extract it from somebody in this country, a taxpayer at the point of a gun and say, look, bin Laden is a great guy. I want more of your money. That is what we did in the 1980s. That is what the Congress did. They went to the taxpayers, they put a gun to their head, and said, you pay up, because we think bin Laden is a freedom fighter.
Dana Rohrabacher: Well, if the gentleman will further yield, it was just not handled correctly.
Ron Paul: Mr. Speaker, again reclaiming my time, the policy is flawed. The policy is flawed.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Debate on the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, October 5, 1998 http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec98/cr100598.htm 1990s

Wisdom, Money, War, People

“Since ’91, it was more of poker because again, it’s America, even today is much more powerful than all the enemies combined. It’s probably the first time after the collapse of the Soviet Union that the forces of freedom, the free world, had overwhelming military and economic advantage. And also politically, it dominated the field because even the worst dictatorships now they’re trying to pretend that they have elections. Not pressing it’s advantages looks quite odd because it again create this vacuum, and also I think it affects ordinary people in these countries. Whether it’s Iran, Arab countries, Russia, because they used to look at America as a beacon of freedom and the country that stood firm defending the free world. And now it’s quite odd because America is there, but America is not there. The whole stories about current political climate here and elections, they’re for the eroding reputation of the United States, and I think the damage caused by this administration to the prestige of the country, and especially to the prestige of the presidency, this damage could take years to recover and rebuild.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

People, World, Thinking, Freedom

“Nothing mankind had done in its short and bloody history had made the slightest bit of difference to this patient geographical realignment.
Meanwhile the Earth, left to its own devices, had deployed a variety of healing mechanisms, physical, chemical, biological, and geological, to recover from the devastating interventions of its human inhabitants. Air pollutants had been broken up by sunlight and dispersed. Bog ore had absorbed much metallic waste. Vegetation had recolonized abandoned landscapes, roots breaking up concrete and asphalt, overgrowing ditches and canals. Erosion by wind and water had caused the final collapse of the last structures, washing it all into sand.
Meanwhile the relentless processes of variation and selection had worked to fill an empty world.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Source: Evolution (2002), Chapter 18 “The Kingdom of the Rats” section II (p. 579)

World, History, Water

“The collapse of the standard of living, engineered as result of macro-economic policy, is without precedent in Russian history: " We had more to eat during the Second World War."”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 16, The "Thirdworldization" of the Russian Federation, p. 241

War, World, History

“Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.”

Jared Diamond book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

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 "If we don't solve them..." (Penguin Books, 2011, page 498, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Children, World, Disease, Way

“Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 8: Gift for the Darkness

Dance

“The real alternative to co-EXistence is co-REsistance. Experts in the field have been saying for years that Communism does not have to be tolerated. It has no moral, economic or political excuse for existing. Furthermore, it is extremely vulnerable to many types of peaceful pressures which free men have not yet used. We will discuss these in a later section. At this point it is important simply to emphasize that Communism can be beaten - and it can be done without atomic war. Therefore the whole basis for arguing coexistence collapses. Coexistence is a contradiction of terms because it means trying to coexist with world conquest, which is impossible. One must resist or be conquered. It also means accepting the status quo of one-third of the human race in bondage as a permanent working arrangement. It means accepting Communism in spite of its deceit, subversion and broken covenants. It means tolerating Communism without resistance.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men, War, World, Peace

“Make a list of all the environmental and social problems that today afflict us and our poor battered planet. – not just the extinction of species and animals and plants, that fifty years ago was the first signs of impending global disaster, but traffic congestion, oil prices, pressure on the health service, the growth of mega-cities, migration patterns, immigration policies, unemployment, the loss of arable land, desertification, famine, increasingly violent weather, the acidification of the oceans, the collapse of fish stocks, rising sea temperatures, the loss of rain forest. The list goes on and on. But they all share an underlying cause. Every one of these global problems, environmental as well as social becomes more difficult – and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

People, Health, Problem, Fish

“If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilization due to climate change becomes inevitable.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 22 (p. 209)

Business, Change

“There are three kinds of writing in economics: Greek-letter, up-and-down, and airport. Greek-letter writing formal, theoretical, mathematical is how professors communicate. Like any academic field, economics has its fair share of hacks and phonies, who use complicated language to hide the banality of their ideas; it also contains profound thinkers, who use the specialized language of the discipline as an efficient way to express deep insights. […] Up-and-down economics is what one encounters on the business pages of newspapers, or for that matter on TV. It is preoccupied with the latest news and the latest numbers, hence its name. […] Finally, airport economics is the language of economics bestsellers. These books are most prominently displayed at airport bookstores, where the delayed business traveler is likely to buy them. Most of these books predict disaster: a new great depression, the evisceration of our economy by Japanese multinationals, the collapse of our money. A minority have the opposite view, a boundless optimism: new technology or supply-side economics is about to lead us into an era of unprecedented economic progress. Whether pessimistic or optimistic, airport economics is usually fun, rarely well informed, and never serious.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Preface
The Age of Diminished Expectations (1990; 1994; 1997)

Money, Books, Way, Travel

“The process which we see is the process of an upset which forces the gradual learning of how to become unattached from everything which seemed divine and holy, the collapse of zeal for the Lord of hosts. At the same time it leads to an apprenticeship in listening to the still, small voice, and the reinvention of a new type of zeal.”

James Alison (1959) Christian theologian, priest

Source: Faith Beyond Resentment: Fragments Catholic and Gay (2001), " Theology amidst the stones and dust http://girardianlectionary.net/res/alison_elijah.htm", p. 31.

Learning, Time

“If now, after the collapse, any of these lackeys of Adolf Hitler has the insolence to want to be considered as a harmless onlooker, then one can only wish he immediately feels the scourge of avenging mankind.... Whoever cries about having lost the totalitarian system or wants to resurrect National Socialism is to be treated as an incorrigible lunatic.”

Friedrich Kellner (1885–1970) German Justice inspector

May 8, 1945; Vol. 2, p. 935.
Diary (1939 - 1945)

Feeling

“Starting from Einstein's theory of general relativity, Oppenheimer and Snyder found solutions… that described what happens to a massive star when it has exhausted its supplies of nuclear energy. The star collapses gravitationally and disappears from the visible universe, leaving behind only an intense gravitational field to mark its presence. The star remains in a state of permanent free fall, collapsing endlessly inward into the gravitational pit without ever reaching the bottom. … In my opinion, the black hole is incomparably the most exciting and the most important consequence of general relativity. But Einstein … was actively hostile to the idea of black holes. … Oddly enough, Oppenheimer too in later life was uninterested in black holes, although… they were his most important contribution to science. … Oppenheimer in his later years believed that the only problem worthy of attention of a serious theoretical physicist was the discovery of fundamental equations of physics. Einstein certainly felt the same way.”

Freeman Dyson (1923) theoretical physicist and mathematician

The Scientist As Rebel (2006)

Life, Hostility, Way, Star

“That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 31 (p. 364)

Cars

“I did say in print, in February, 1929 that there was no hope for economic recovery in Europe before American interest rates came down. That wouldn’t be until the American boom collapsed — which was likely to happen within the next few months. And this did, in fact, happen in October 1929.
What made me expect this, of course, was one of my main theoretical beliefs — that an inflationary boom cannot be maintained indefinitely. I was sure that a very unstable situation was created by the artificial prolongation of the boom in 1927, when the Federal Reserve tried to stave off a collapse by credit expansion.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, Interview in Silver & Gold Report (1980)

Hope

“That the universe, as was once thought, expands and contracts indefinitely, one Big Bang collapsing into another one, seemed reasonable enough. But in both models of the universe, what caused the first Big Bang? Or was there a first Big Bang, any more than a last number? If there was a first cause, was there a first causer? Did Big Bangs just happen to happen? Can we name the first causer “God”? We can name it anything we want. I can name it after myself. It is utterly insignificant what it is called, because we would be giving a name to something that falls outside all categories of thought and must be unknowable and irrelevant to knowledge. So naming it is a futile enterprise. The word “God” is unhelpful because it implies it has a knowable definition.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

God, Knowledge, Universe

“The miracle of physics that I'm talking about here is something that was actually known since the time of Einstein's general relativity; that gravity is not always attractive. Gravity can act repulsively. Einstein introduced this in 1916… in the form of the cosmological constant, and the original motivation of modifying the equations of general relativity to allow this was because Einstein thought that the universe was static, and he realized that ordinary gravity would cause the universe to collapse if it was static. …The fact that general relativity can support this gravitational repulsion, still being consistent with all the principles that general relativity incorporates, is the important thing which Einstein himself did discover..”

Alan Guth (1947) American theoretical physicist and cosmologist

Lecture 1: Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part of a Multiverse? Part I.
The Early Universe (2012)

Motivation, Support, Universe, Time

“She thought of the multitude.
Trillions of human beings, wrappend like a fog about their home star. The mind collapsed at the scale and the numbers. But if ethics meant anything at all, it meant not letting the largeness of the human population overwhelm our moral knowledge that life is lived individually, and that even when agglomerated into billions and trillions individual human beings deserve better han being used as tools. That the overwhelming majority of this vast mass of humanity was poor, living precariously and subsistence lives in leaky shanty bubbles, eating ghunk and drinking recycled water—this made this more, not less, true. These were the people least able to help themselves. Thery should be helped, not exploited.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 13, “Of Multitudes” (p. 239).
Jack Glass (2012)

Life, People, Home, Star

“Paul Tillich wrote that all institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that no institution could ever achieve the morality of the individual. Institutions, he warned, to extend their lives when confronted with collapse, will swiftly betray the stances that ostensibly define them. Only individual men and women have the strength to hold fast to virtue when faced with the threat of death. And decaying institutions, including the church, when consumed by fear, swiftly push those endowed with this moral courage and radicalism from their ranks, rendering themselves obsolete.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

"The Suicide of the Liberal Church", January 24, 2016 http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_suicide_of_the_liberal_church_20160124

Death, Women, Men, Fear

“If one looks back at the short period of time of the Badoglio government, one must remember that the Italian longing and need for peace was no secret to the German command. Since the German retreat at el Alamein in November 1942 and the collapse of the Italian Army on the eastern front, the Italians had repeatedly stated their weariness of battle and had made certain suggestions. In steadily increasing numbers, measures were being taken by the German military command out of fear for the Axis loyalty of Italy. As the course of events showed, the view on betrayal dominated all other German reflections, nourished by the fall of Mussolini and his style of leadership.”

Walter Warlimont (1894–1976) German general

Quoted in "Forgotten Battles: Italy's War of Liberation, 1943-1945" - Page 50 - by Charles T. O'Reilly - History - 2001

Secret, Fear, Peace, Betrayal

“Everything that I did as Governor, and everything that I think needs to occur right now in the Federal Government, needs to be a cost-benefit analysis. What are we spending our money on, and what are we getting for what we're spending? I am of the belief that we are on the verge of a financial collapse. We can not repay fourteen trillion dollars in debt if we're spending one point six trillion dollars more than we're taking in this year and years to come. That is not sustainable… We landed on the moon, we can balance the federal budget. And that means cutting forty-three cents out of every federal dollar that we're currently spending.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement from CNN Interview
YouTube
2011-04-21
http://youtu.be/VFf4P20cWmU
2012-02-24
Sound Government

Money, Thinking

“Most Christians would say that evolution is one of God’s creative methods. But creationists reject that possibility outright, because the issue for them is not whether their God is true; but whether their dogma is true. It can’t be in any case. Even if current concepts of evolution were proven wrong tomorrow, Biblical creationism still couldn’t be true either, because it has already been disproved many times, many ways, and collapses on its own lack of merit. But of course believers can never admit that.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"7th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Q2Db17v5U, Youtube (February 27, 2008) Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

God, Way, Time

“We are confident that our revolution has already succeeded and that the regime of Saleh has in effect, already collapsed.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Our revolution's doing what Saleh can't – uniting Yemen (2011)

Confidence

“At the beginning of the 1980s the world community faces much greater dangers than at any time since the Second World War. It is clear that the world economy is now functioning so badly that it damages both the immediate and longer-run interests of all nations…The problems of poverty and hunger are becoming more serious; there are already 800 million absolute poor and their numbers are rising; shortages of grain and other foods are increasing the prospect of hunger and starvation…Between 20 and 25 million children below the age of five die every year in developing countries…A number of poor countries are threatened with the irreversible destruction of their ecological systems while many more face growing food deficits and possibly mass starvation. In the international economy there is the possibility of… a collapse of credit with defaults by major debtors, or bank failures… [and] an intensified struggle for influence or control over resources leading to military conflicts.”

Willy Brandt (1913–1992) German social-democratic politician; Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany

Attributed in "Are We Nearing Armageddon?", article on The Watchtower magazine, 1980, 10/15.

Hunger, War, Children, Age

“The graph does show one tremendous rise and collapse which stands out starkly from all the other fluctuations. This is commonly called the "new era" stock market of 1927-33. The striking feature of this phenomenon was that the new era existed solely in the minds of market speculators. The whole episode, in retrospect, now seems to have been one of those rare manifestations of mass financial madness which we used to study in our history books under the titles of "the South Sea Bubble", "the Mississippi Bubble" and so on.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 36

Books, History, Study, Sea

“With Yeltsin, the Soviet Union broke apart, the country was totally mismanaged, the constitution was not respected by the regions of Russia. The army, education and health systems collapsed. People in the West quietly applauded, dancing with and around Yeltsin. I conclude therefore that we should not pay too much attention to what the West is saying.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in USA Today (5 April 2006)
1990s

People, Health, Education, Dance

“There’s no denying that a collapse in stock prices today would pose serious macroeconomic challenges for the United States. Consumer spending would slow, and the U. S. economy would become less of a magnet for foreign investors. Economic growth, which in any case has recently been at unsustainable levels, would decline somewhat. History proves, however, that a smart central bank can protect the economy and the financial sector from the nastier side effects of a stock market collapse.”

Ben Bernanke (1953) American economist

"A Crash Course for Central Bankers," http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3272 Foreign Policy (September/October 2000)

History

“Gautier says, “Baudelaire abhorred philanthropy, progressivists, utilitarians, humanitarians and utopianists.” In other words, Baudelaire condemned Rousseausism in all its forms. Today, Rousseausism has so triumphed that the arts and the avant-garde are synonymous with liberalism, an error enforced by literature teachers, with their humanist bias. I follow the Decadents in trying to drive Rousseauist benevolence out of the discourse in art and literature. The Decadents satirized the liberal faith in progress with sizzling prophecies of catastrophe and cultural collapse.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 429

Faith, Art, Error, Literature

“I don't know how long the North Korean regime can last. But we can't just wait for them to collapse, because in the meantime, they can do lasting damage to our security.”

Ash Carter (1954) United States Secretary of Defense

pbs.org interview http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/interviews/acarter.html

Waiting

“But now that war has become seemingly total and seemingly permanent, the free sport of kings has become the forced and internecine business of people, and diplomatic codes of honor between nations have collapsed. Peace is no longer serious; only war is serious. Every man and every nation is either friend or foe, and the idea of enmity becomes mechanical, massive, and without genuine passion. When virtually all negotiation aimed at peaceful agreement is likely to be seen as 'appeasement,' if not treason, the active role of the diplomat becomes meaningless; for diplomacy becomes merely a prelude to war or an interlude between wars, and in such a context the diplomat is replaced by the warlord……In other words 'the morale of the State Department is so broken that its finest men flee from it, and advise others to flee.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

The Power Elite (1956)

Men, War, People, Peace

“We are in no position to withstand a prolonged static war. Wherever the allies concentrate their forces they will break through. For us there can be no question of military victory or of winning the war. Our only hope is to hold on long enough to allow some development on the political front to save Germany from complete collapse.”

Gerd von Rundstedt (1875–1953) German Field Marshal during World War II

Quoted in "Hitler's last gamble: the Battle of the Bulge" - Page 61 - by Jacques Nobécourt - History - 1967

War, Hope, Question, Victory

“I do not remember any other term when the force that had captured the political power in this country had become so vulgar as it is today, so corrupt, and so hypocritical; when the legal system had been so downtrodden, deteriorated, collapsed and turned into a means of cruelty.”

Ataol Behramoğlu (1942) Turkish writer

"Two Heart Pain" ["İki Kalp Ağrısı"], in Republic [Cumhuriyet] (16 June 2012)

Country

“I want to bring down civilization. It's really clear that civilization is killing the planet. I’m interested in living in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before. A world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. A world that has less dioxins and flame retardants in mothers' breast milk. A world not being destroyed. A world where krill populations aren’t collapsing. A world where there are not dead zones in the oceans. A world not being systematically dismantled. I want to live in a world that is not being killed. I will do whatever it takes to get there.”

Derrick Jensen (1960) American environmentalist

Interview with No Compromise, 2005. http://www.nocompromise.org/issues/26jensen.html

World, Dead

“This breakdown in the bicameral mind in what is called the Intermediate Period is reminiscent at least of those periodic breakdowns of Mayan civilizations when all authority suddenly collapsed, and the population melted back into tribal living in the jungles.”

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book II, Chapter 2, p. 197
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“You can't save free markets by socialism, I don't know where this idea ever came from. You save free markets by promoting free markets and sound money and balanced budgets. The whole reason why nobody wants to address the real problem is, we're spending a trillion dollars a year overseas running an empire, and it's coming to an end. This country is bankrupt, and we won't admit it. Eventually though, the dollar will go bust, and we will bring our troops home, and we will live within our means, but we ought to do it sensibly, rather than waiting for the collapse of the dollar, and this is what we're doing, we're on the verge of destroying our dollar. And then, you think we have problems now, problems then will be a lot worse, it'd look like the Weimar Republic, or a third world nation. And a lot of people know that, and they're scared to death, but we don't need to be making the problem worse by just propping up everything with more government programs, more inflation, and more helicopters, it won't work.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fox Business Network, October 14, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qzUtPq8pLE 2000s, 2006-2009

Death, Money, People, World

“Though today's quantum theory shows no sign of weakness, someday it may collapse.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 3, Quantum Theory takes Charge, p. 52

“"Whatever problems anyone may have with the Capitol, believe me when I say that if it released its grip on the districts for even a short time, the entire system would collapse." […]
"It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down."”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

President Snow and Katniss, p. 21
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Problem, Time

“Let it collapse, it will be the fault of Israel and the Americans.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

Edward G. Abington, a former State Department official who is now a Washington consultant to the Palestinian Authority regarding the future of the Palestinian Authority http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17536-2004Feb29.html (2004-02-29) --> 2000s

“I believe that historical analogies are always wrong. This a long discussion, but, to me, the most dangerous thing about Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler at Munich is not the fact that Munich happened and it led to further Nazi aggression and so on and so forth, but that the example of Munich has been used to support thousands upon thousands of bad policies and inappropriate decisions. LeMay called JFK’s recommendation for a “quarantine” (that is, a blockade) in the Cuban Missile Crisis “worse than Munich”. Would nuclear war have been a better alternative? But nuclear war was averted by Kennedy’s policies. And thirty years later the Soviet Union collapsed without the need for nuclear war. Was LeMay right? I don’t think so. But again, the example of Munich was invoked to justify the invasion of Iraq. Appeasing Saddam, appeasing Hitler. The use of the Munich analogy does not clarify, it obscures. History is like the weather. Themes do repeat themselves, but never in the same way. And analogies became rhetorical flourishes and sad ex post facto justifications rather than explanations. In the end, they explain nothing.”

Errol Morris (1948) American filmmaker and writer

Source: It Becomes a Self-fulfilling Thing http://errolmorris.com/content/interview/believer0406.html

War, Sadness, Way, History

“How many gay people have not had children as a result of coming out of the closet and being gay? Millions, isn't that correct? Some of our most talented, wonderful, intelligent people, because of the openness of modern American society going back for now 40 years, have opted out of being hidden or closeted. In the old days, if a person was gay, or felt an attraction to the same sex, they probably would have gotten married to hide it. And they probably would've had a family, producing children. But because of this 'let it all hang out,' 'if you feel gay, act gay,' 'if it feels good, do it,' they've opted not to have children. And as a result, number one, society has lost millions of remarkable children. That's one point that is almost irrefutable. And for years I have thought about this. Why is society devolving so rapidly? One of the reasons is some of our most talented intelligent people have not had children. That's one point. And then there's another point I wanna make, and this is more important… I kept asking myself, why are gay people liberal? Why are most of them so liberal? Why is society unraveling on so many other levels, putting aside the issue of sexuality. And one of the reasons is because some of our most intelligent…passionate people happen to be gay. And while in the past they would've taken on other causes that are so critical for the betterment of society, they've been single-focused only on gay issues. And as a result society has again devolved, because the gay movement has sucked so many people into a single issue. They've ignored all the other important issues of our society, which is why we're collapsing. Why would a gay person want open borders? Why would a gay person want unlimited welfare? Why would a gay person want to be tolerant for Islamists coming into America? Because they're not focused on any of it. Their community has focused them only on one issue. And as a result the entire society has lost out. … And therefore I would say to you that a traditional society has offered us protections, both obvious and not so obvious, that we may not be aware of, and that openness is not necessarily for the betterment of the people or for society.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-04-29 Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFNm7C_uJpI&feature=youtu.be&t=40m27s) 2015

Children, People, Family, Sex

“So here’s a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse, that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nassariyeh — the latter a city which briefly rose in successful revolt against Saddam in 1991 — why should Saddam’s forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Anglo-American Lies Exposed http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles191.htm, March 24, 2003 2003

Question, Success, Fight

“The West may collapse very suddenly. Complex civilizations do that, because they operate, most of the time, on the edge of chaos.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

Source: "TED Talks: Niall Ferguson" http://www.ted.com/speakers/niall_ferguson.html TED

Time

“[T]here has been little, if any, doubt that nothing short of a massive regime collapse, or (even more violent and bloody) full-scale war, will ever produce a non-nuclear North Korea. The regime is run by cold-minded and rational people who cannot afford to be emotional…”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

"After the Pyongyang debacle, it’s not clear where U.S. policy goes from here" https://www.nknews.org/2018/07/after-the-pyongyang-debacle-where-can-u-s-policy-go-from-here/ (9 July 2018), NK News

War, People

“I believe in God. When everything collapses, we grip the last hold, we look from the secure haven how the godless society of the old, holy Europe falls apart. May the game begin.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich glaube an Gott. Wenn alles stürzt, fassen wir die letzte Planke und schauen vom sicheren Port, wie die entgötterte Gesellschaft des alten, heiligen Europa zusammenstürzt. Möge das Spiel beginnen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

God, Game

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

God, People, Help

“Let's stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm. In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse…. We have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy. So we're now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Hope, Parting

“Yes, sex may be at least in part inflected by politics, our fantasies may be at least in part a compendium of cultural myths, but the ways in which sex and fantasy ripen within the individual seem to me to vary so greatly that summaries become useless, even dangerous.But if I were to venture my own generalizations, I would say that with the collapse of other social values (those of religion, patriotism, the family and so on), sex has been forced to take up the slack, to become our sole mode of transcendence and our only touchstone of authenticity. The cry for scorching, multiple orgasms, the drive toward impeccable and virtuoso performance, the belief that only in complete sexual compatibility lies true intimacy, the insistence that sex is the only mode for experiencing thrills, for achieving love, for assessing and demonstrating personal worth — all these projects are absurd.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 282).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Love, Family, Religion, Sex

“CLINTON: Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse.
TRUMP: That's called business, by the way.”

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

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Hope, Way

“A staggering 50,000 M Devices were shipped to Russia: British aerial attacks using them began on 27 August 1919, targeting the village of Emtsa, 120 miles south of Archangel. Bolshevik soldiers were seen fleeing in panic as the green chemical gas drifted towards them. Those caught in the cloud vomited blood, then collapsed unconscious. The attacks continued throughout September on many Bolshevik-held villages: Chunova, Vikhtova, Pocha, Chorga, Tavoigor and Zapolki. But the weapons proved less effective than Churchill had hoped, partly because of the damp autumn weather. By September, the attacks were halted then stopped. Two weeks later the remaining weapons were dumped in the White Sea. They remain on the seabed to this day in 40 fathoms of water.”

Giles Milton (1966) British writer and historian

Winston Churchill's shocking use of chemical weapons https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/sep/01/winston-churchill-shocking-use-chemical-weapons (1 September 2013), The Guardian.

Hope, Autumn, Water, Weather

“After the Sixties there was a collapse in almost everything we believed in. It culminated in the biological disaster of AIDS — an answer to every one of us who preached free love. … AIDS is a price paid for sins committed in the Sixties, and by gay men who took free love to extremes throughout the Seventies and had unrestrained, decadent, pagan sex. I support paganism in all its forms, but a price must be paid. I believed in free love, too, but we were wrong. It wasn't the Pope who was the problem. It wasn't the struggle with old-fashioned moral codes that was the problem. It was nature. Nature said, "Guess what? If you're going to be that promiscuous, I will off you."”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

… I believe that nature rewards things that are in its best interest and punishes things that are not.
Playboy interview (May 1995)

Love, Men, Sex, Fashion

“Reification, the essential tendency of capitalism, can never be wholly realized. If it were, if the system were actually able to change individuals into things moved only by economic “forces,” it would collapse not in the long run, but immediately. The struggle of people against reification is, just as much as the tendency towards reification, the condition for the functioning of capitalism. Capitalism can function only by continually drawing upon the genuinely human activity of those subject to it, while at the same time trying to level and dehumanize them as much as possible.”

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) Greek-French philosopher

Source: The Imaginary Institution of Society (1975), p. 16.

People, Change, Time, Drawing

“The reason liberals despise Clarence Thomas or caricature a Ben Carson, more so than they do white conservative justices or public figures, is the threat that they pose to the entire engine of liberal condescension — and Democratic politics. When successful blacks prove that they easily compete in the marketplace of talent and ideas without liberal racial policies and their political henchmen, then the entire architecture of liberal racial politics collapses. The disdain shown a Thomas or Carson suggests that liberal racial politics serve as private medieval penance in the abstract, and at little personal cost for assuaging guilt over liberal apartheid.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2010s, "Black Lives Matter"—a Year From Now (2015)

Justice, Idea, Success, Personality

“By its sudden collapse, … the proud German army has once again proved the truth of the saying, 'The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech before a Joint Session of Congress (May 19, 1943), Washington, D.C., in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 352 ISBN 1401300561
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Truth

“… we are approaching a time when, in Moravec's words, 'almost all humans work to amuse other humans.' In rich countries, that time has already arrived. The old industries have been exported to the developing world. At home, new occupations have evolved, replacing those of the industrial era. Many of them satisfy needs that in the past were repressed or disguised. A thriving economy of psychotherapists, designer religions and spiritual boutiques has sprung up. Beyond that, there is an enormous grey economy of illegal industries supplying drugs and sex. The function of this new economy, legal and illegal, is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless. Industrialisation created the working class. Now it has made the working class obsolete. Unless it is cut short by ecological collapse, it will eventually do the same to nearly everyone.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

Non-Progress: An Irony of History (p. 160)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World, Religion, Sex, Home

“There is a vast mythology surrounding meat, but all the myths are in one way or another related to what I refer to as the Three Ns of Justification: eating meat is normal, natural, and necessary. The Three Ns have been invoked to justify all exploitative systems … When an ideology is in its prime, these myths rarely come under scrutiny. However, when the system finally collapses, the Three Ns are recognized as ludicrous.”

Melanie Joy book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

Source: Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows (2010), pp. 96-97

Way, Nature

“We did stop the meltdown. We avoided what would have been, I think, a collapse of the global financial system. That was obviously a good thing. But one thing that I was always sure of and the Federal Reserve was always sure of was that a collapse of some of these big financial firms was going to have very serious collateral consequences. There were people arguing even as late as September 2008, “Well, why don't you just let the firms collapse? There is a system that can take care of it: bankruptcy. Why don't you let them fail?” We never thought that was a good option. Particularly, if the whole system had collapsed, we would have had extraordinarily serious consequences.”

Ben Bernanke (1953) American economist

Lecture 3: The Federal Reserve's Response to the Financial Crisis
The Federal Reserve and the Financial Crisis (2012)

People, Thinking

“The economic crisis was a reflection of narcissism and very primitive defense mechanisms (such as a complete denial of economic reality) built into the financial system. The best and brightest MBA students have been going into investment banking; many of them used their brains essentially to play casino games, and not to add much value to society.
Now, we’ve seen the result. Look at the least-admired professions in most countries over the years: telemarketers and used-car salesmen. Today, you have bankers and CEOs achieving the same low rating. Companies like Citibank — which was the brainchild of one of the most visibly narcissistic executives in the world, Sanford Weill — have essentially collapsed. They have grown too complex for the people who work there to understand. I strongly question what the different parts of Citibank have in common. No matter what kinds of regulatory reforms are initiated, more companies will collapse this way, because narcissism breeds this kind of unmanageable grandiosity.”

Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries (1942) Dutch academic

Manfred Kets de Vries in: " The Thought Leader Interview: Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries http://www.strategy-business.com/article/10209?gko=cbe31," in: Strategy + business. May 10, 2010. Originally published by Booz & Company.

People, World, Cars, Way

“Hands in his pockets he began to walk aimlessly down the sidewalk runnel. And, each minute, feeling more and more scared and desperate. Everything was falling apart around him. And he seemed helpless to halt the collapse; he could only witness it, completely impotent, snatched up and gripped by processes too powerful for him to understand.”

Philip K. Dick book Clans of the Alphane Moon

Source: Clans of the Alphane Moon (1964), Chapter 9 (p. 139)

Feeling, Understanding

“The average man of the present age … does not want to be a sentimentalist in his endeavors; he wants some measure for purposeful activity; he wants to feel that through the world some increasing purpose runs. … But since his metaphysic calls only for magnitude and number, since it is becoming without a goal, it is not a source of distinctions in value. It is a system of quantitative comparison. Its effect therefore has been to collapse the traditional hierarchy and to produce economic man, whose destiny is mere activity.”

Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar

Source: Ideas have Consequences (1948), p. 51.

Age, World, Feeling

“My Nuts are just under critical mass, a few inches away from collapsing into a super dense vortex of nutsaqutron (a type of radiation given off by enormous balls).”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

My balls are huge. http://maddox.xmission.com/c.cgi?u=balls_are_huge The Best Page in the Universe

“The question rather is how we should do science and theology in light of the impending collapse of Enlightenment rationalism and scientific naturalism. These ideologies are on the way out. They are on the way out.”

William A. Dembski (1960) American intelligent design advocate

Source: 1990s, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology (1999), p. 14

Way, Question, Nature, Light

“[The] Third (problem with Darwinism), which I think is overwhelming, and just sort of blows the whole theory of Random Mutation out of the water, is, at least, let me say, raises big questions, that is. Assuming it all did happen by Random Mutation and Natural Selection, where did the laws of gravity come from. Where did the laws of thermodynamics come from? Where did the laws of motion and, of heat come from? Where, I guess that's the same as thermodynamics. Where did all these laws, that make it possible for the universe to function, where did they all come from? Why isn't all just chaos and everything collapsing in on itself and killing everything?”

Ben Stein (1944) actor, writer, commentator, lawyer, teacher, humorist

The Search for Truth, God and Braver Scientists in 'Expelled', 'Expelled' Press Conference Transcript, 27 March 2008, 2008-04-18 http://www.coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=3463,

Law, Question, Nature, Problem

“Men were only made into "men" with great difficulty even in primitive society: the male is not naturally "a man" any more than the woman. He has to be propped up into that position with some ingenuity, and is always likely to collapse.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

"Call Yourself a Man!"
The Art of Being Ruled (1926)

Men, Nature

“This was a new generation but now that they are all grown up, probably fathers and grandfathers but at that time, this concept (of a nation) was not even part of the imagination of adults, let alone children. So the best way to create a nation is to start from the schools. Once this is embodied and thinking by pure repetition everyday, that becomes part of the psyche of the people. So let me tell you if you are a Singaporean - two and a half million - no place to run - no more. Whether you are a Singapore Chinese, Singapore Malay and Singapore Indian, you cannot run away. This is your last stand, last outpost. So how do you do it? If you think of yourself as Chinese, Malays, Indians and Sri Lankans, then Singapore will collapse. You must think of Singapore - this is my country. I fight and die for Singapore if necessary.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

undated

Children, People, School, Way

“If you think of yourself as Chinese, Malays, Indians and Sri Lankans, then Singapore will collapse. You must think of Singapore: 'This is my country.' I fight and die for Singapore if necessary.”

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam (1915–2006) Early life

A speech in 1984. http://viweb.freehosting.net/SRajaratnam.htm

Thinking, Fight, Country

“In the last few years, we have seen the executive branch declare itself outside the law — in prosecuting a war on terror. The law against torture has been suspended. The balance between the executive and legislative branch has been dismissed by signing statements and the theory of the unitary executive. The executive has declared its right to suspend habeas corpus indefinitely, to tap anyone's phones without court warrants and to detain and torture anyone it decides is an "enemy combatant." In that sense, we have already left the realm of constitutional government in favor of a protectorate outside the law promising to keep us safe (but never from itself).
But this new move to create a de facto dictator for the financial markets, to invest a Treasury secretary with unprecedented powers to buy and sell at close to a trillion dollar level — with no oversight or accountability: this is a new collapse in democratic life and constitutional norms.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"How Democracies Become Dictatorships," http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/how-democracies.html The Daily Dish (29 September 2008)

Life, War, Law, Sense

“[T]he enemy of totalitarian Nazism is not in the East. It is not Russian communism. The complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxist socialism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian, purely negative, noneconomic society of unfreedom and inequality which Germany has been following… During the last few years Russia has therefore been forced to adopt one purely totalitarian and fascist principle after the other; not, it must be emphasized, because of a ‘Stalinist conspiracy,” but because there was no other possibility.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), pp. 245-246

Travel, Communication, Freedom

“Progressives have convinced people that they are fighting theft. If a greedy capitalist has looted your possessions, you would want the government to do something about it. An essential function of government is to bring thieves to justice and to restore stolen possessions to their rightful owners. If the progressive critique is valid, then it doesn't matter if government does it inefficiently, since there is no one else to do the job: inefficient justice is better than no justice. Moreover, when we ask the police to go after bad guys and repossess their stolen goods, we aren't concerned with whether we foster virtue among the "giver" and gratitude in the "receiver." That's because the giver isn't really giving; he's merely giving back, and the receiver has no cause for gratitude since he (or she) is merely being made whole. In this scenario, Americans who are sitting in the bandwagon have earned that right, and the people pulling are the thieves who deserve to be penalized and castigated. This is why I've devoted the bulk of this book to refuting the theft critique. If I've succeeded, then the whole progressive argument collapses and our federal government, far from being an instrument of justice, now becomes an instrument of plunder.”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

Source: Books, America: Imagine a World without Her (2014), Ch. 14

People, Books, Justice, Guy

“A recognition of limits, of boundaries, may be the only thing that prevents power from dizzy collapse.”

William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy

Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Two, The Encounter With Nothingness, p. 32

“We welcome the peace with the militarily and politically entirely collapsed Rumania as a world judgment in world history…Is there anyone to-day who, after the overthrow of the whole of the East, would still doubt a German victory?…Anyone who visualises the collapse of Rumania, this military collapse in three months, this complete political crash of the State that saw itself compelled to sue for peace, must feel that something like a world judgment in world history is taking place…Then there is the question of the war indemnity. In the debate on the Treaty of Brest Litovsk I said that, surely it could not be contradicted from any part of this House that a war indemnity must be demanded from Rumania If Germany receives an indemnity, then it is a matter of indifference to me what it is called, either in the case of the present Treaty or any further ones.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Source: 1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 21 June 1918, p. 175

War, World, Peace, Feeling

“Derangement is the signature expression of the Great Backlash, a style of conservatism that first came snarling onto the national stage in response to the partying and protests of the late sixties. While earlier forms of conservatism emphasized fiscal sobriety, the backlash mobilizes voters with explosive social issues — summoning public outrage over everything from busing to un-Christian art — which it then marries to pro-business economic polices. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends. And it is these economic achievements — not the forgettable skirmishes of the never-ending culture wars — that are the movement’s greatest monuments. The backlash is what has made possible the international free-market consensus of recent years, with all the privatization, deregulation, and de-unionization that are its components. Backlash ensures that Republicans will continue to be returned to office even when their free-market miracles fail and their libertarian schemes don’t deliver and their "New Economy" collapses. It makes possible the police pushers’ fantasies of “globalization” and a free-trade empire that are foisted upon the rest of the world with such self-assurance. Because some artist decides to shock the hicks by dunking Jesus in urine, the entire plant must remake itself along the lines preferred by the Republican Party, U. S. A.The Great Backlash has made the laissez-faire revival possible, but this does not mean that it speak to us in the manner of the capitalists of old, invoking the divine right of money or demanding that the lowly learn their place in the great chain of being. On the contrary; the backlash imagines itself as a foe of the elite, as the voice of the unfairly persecuted, as a righteous protest of the people on history’s receiving end. That is champions today control all three branches of government matters not a whit. That is greatest beneficiaries are the wealthiest people on the plant does not give it pause.”

Thomas Frank book What's the Matter with Kansas?

Introduction: What's the Matter with America (pp. 5-6).
What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004)

Money, War, People, World

“A wise man changes his mind sometimes, but a fool never. To change your mind is the best evidence you have one. The last redoubt holding out for me was the year-day principle (on which I had written a defense in 1972 for the Southern Publishing Association Daniel volume which was published in 1978). This collapsed when I handled hundreds of books of commentary on Revelation in the Library of Congress stacks and found that the respective authors had in many cases suggested dates that seemed appropriate for their own time but ridiculous later. It became clear that we, as Adventists, had done the same as our predecessors.”

Desmond Ford (1929–2019) Australian theologian

Desmond Ford on His Previous Defense of the Year Day Principle http://www.atoday.com/content/desmond-ford-his-previous-defense-year-day-principle", Adventist Today, 2006

Books, Fools, Change, Time

“The collapse of communism as an ideology and of the Soviet Union as a world power has made possible an unprecedented internationalization of current American values, among them free choice in the consumer marketplace, reduced government economic regulation and an emphasis on individual self-fulfillment rather than the social good, all promoted by an internationalized mass media and consumer culture.”

Eric Foner (1943) American historian

2000s, The Century: A Nation's-Eye View (2002)

World, Communication

“Men tend to put all their emotional eggs in the basket of their wives (or womenfriends), it is difficult for a man to communicate feelings of disappointment to his wife because, if she withdraws, it feels to him like his entire emotional support system has collapsed.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000)

Men, Disappointment, Feeling, Communication

“Trump is the proximate, the efficient, cause of the collapse of the conservative movement. The principles of sound conservatism compel us to criticize him, to rebut him, to resist him, and to plan to overcome him.”

William Kristol (1952) American writer

2010s, 2018, The Silent Artillery of Time (2018)

“The dominant propaganda systems have appropriated the term "globalization" to refer to the specific version of international economic integration that they favor, which privileges the rights of investors and lenders, those of people being incidental. In accord with this usage, those who favor a different form of international integration, which privileges the rights of human beings, become "anti-globalist." This is simply vulgar propaganda, like the term "anti-Soviet" used by the most disgusting commissars to refer to dissidents. It is not only vulgar, but idiotic. Take the World Social Forum, called "anti-globalization" in the propaganda system -- which happens to include the media, the educated classes, etc., with rare exceptions. The WSF is a paradigm example of globalization. It is a gathering of huge numbers of people from all over the world, from just about every corner of life one can think of, apart from the extremely narrow, highly privileged elites who meet at the competing World Economic Forum, and are called "pro-globalization" by the propaganda system. An observer watching this farce from Mars would collapse in hysterical laughter at the antics of the educated classes.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Sniježana Matejčić, June 2005 http://www.galerija-rigo.hr/05/chomsky_en_2.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2005

Life, People, World, Education

“I confidently predict the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of history. Something will go wrong in the machinery that converts money into money, the banking system will collapse totally, and we will be left having to barter to stay alive. Those who can dig in their garden will have a better chance than the rest. I'll be all right; I've got a few veg.”

Margaret Drabble (1939) Novelist, biographer and critic

The Guardian, January 2, 1993.

Money, Confidence, History, Chance

“In other words, there are in administration things analogous to, if not identical with, the mechanical tracts or deterministic sequence, of physics. If, for example, it is decided by government to accomplish the purpose of providing compensation at given rates for men and women employed in industry who sustain injuries in connection with their occupations, the administrator can, like the engineer, estimate in advance the probable cost of such a design, indicate the types of officers and employees necessary to administer the design, and the administrative procedures appropriate to the whole process from beginning to end. And, as in the case of the hydro-electric engineer, the administrator, later sees the results of his operations and can compare them with his advance estimates. There are more variables and incalculables in human affairs than in hydroelectric affairs, but even so administration achieves pre-determined results with an approximation which is often amazing for its exactness. If administrative designs and estimates were not realized in practice with a high degree of exactness, both industry and government would collapse.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Source: Philosophy, Science and Art of Public Administration (1939), p. 661

Women, Men

“Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Forty-two. His age had astounded him for years, and each time that he had sat so astounded, trying to figure out what had become of the young, slim man in his twenties, a whole additional year slipped by and had to be recorded, a continually growing sum which he could not reconcile with his self-image. He still saw himself, in his mind's eye, as youthful, and when he caught sight of himself in photographs he usually collapsed … Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this, he had thought from time to time. Oh well, so it went.”

Philip K. Dick book A Maze of Death

A Maze of Death (1970)

Youth, Age, Time

“Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity […] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival..”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

"Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999

History, Nature, Parting

“The leaders of the large firms dominated by the manufacturing conception saw the key problem as low prices. This meant that they were intent on controlling prices by cutting production. But once prices were stabilized, they were cautious about increasing production for fear that prices would again collapse. Since their competitors had roughly equal production capacities and costs, all would lose by too rapid an increase in production.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 117

Fear, Problem

“Our presence will serve as an incentive for al Qaeda to grow in numbers and motivate more suicide bombers. An indefinite presence, whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan, will continue to drain our financial resources, undermine our national defense, demoralize our military and exacerbate our financial crisis. All this will be welcomed by Osama Bin Laden, just as he planned it. It's actually more than he had hoped for. […] The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan will be much bigger, unless the dollar follows the path of the dollar-based world financial system and collapses into runaway inflation. In this case, the laws of economics and the realities of history will prove superior to the madness of maintaining a world empire financed by scraps of paper. Our military prowess, backed by a nuclear arsenal, will not suffice in overcoming the tragedy of a currency crisis. Soviet nukes did not preserve its empire or the communist economy.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

The end is not near https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuPeExhmuQQ, (4 March 2009) 2000s, 2006-2009

War, World, Law, Hope

“I say to the American people: What is this life you are living? Why do you keep silent? What situation are you in? I say to you the American people, according to the Koran: "They drive their people into the house of perdition." Your lives are lost, you will collapse, America will collapse.”

Mohammad Emami-Kashani (1937) Iranian politician

Friday Sermon at Tehran University: America Will Collapse http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/186.htm July 2004. America to collapse

Life, People, Housing

“Within a surprisingly short space of time, however, the fortunes of the neo-roman theory began to decline and fall. … One reason for this collapse was that the social assumptions underlying the theory began to appear outdated and even absurd. With the extension of the manners of the court to the bourgeoisie in the early eighteenth century, the virtues of the independent country gentleman began to look irrelevant and even inimical to a polite commercial age. The hero of the neo-roman writers came to be viewed not as plain-hearted but as rude and boorish; not as upright but as obstinate and quarrelsome; not as a man of fortitude but of mere insensibility.”

Quentin Skinner (1940) British historian

Source: Liberty Before Liberalism (1998), pp. 96-97

Age, Appearance, Time, Heart

“Most devastating for the left as a cohesive political movement was the collapse of their beloved Soviet Union. For decades the Great Issue uniting various forces on the left, from proclaimed communists to soft anti-communists, was the socialist "ideal." … Apart from global warming — coming in a thousand years to a planet near you! — the left's only remaining cause is abortion. For many Democrats, Roe v. Wade is the essence of politics.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Source: 2002, Slander : Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002), p. 252; Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution. That's their cause: Spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that.

“It's real simple. Basically, their message is to stop warring on each other and to stop warring on the planet to be kind to each other and the planet, because we're headed for major environmental collapse. And they've also expressed deep concern about the leadership of the planet. They've made it very clear: You're being led by the oil industry and the war industry.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James explaining one of the messages he says he receives from the extraterrestrials.

War

“I am in the camp that believes that we are on the verge of a monetary collapse given the fact that during the last year up to 70% of the money used to pay our ongoing expenditures were moneys printed up by the Federal Reserve I mean literally out of thin air. Monetary Collapse occurs when we are printing 100% of that money going forward and all of the roll over of treasury is that 15 trillion dollars is out there in existing notes when all of those notes also get rolled over with 100% of that money being printed … that's the monetary collapse. And that’s not something that their going to announce is going to happen two weeks from Thursday that’s just gonna happen literally overnight when we have a complete melt down in the bond market. Which I’m predicting is gonna happen unless we actually balance the federal budget so this is what we are entering into is a real mutual sacrifice on the part of all of us. I would argue let’s have that mutual sacrifice as opposed to all of us having nothing which is what happens during a monetary collapse that our money ends up being worth nothing. That happened in Russia part of that was Afghanistan. We’re not immune to this. We can fix it but we need to do it now and that’s the position that I hold.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Economic Policy

Money, Parting

“In order for music to free itself, it will have to pass over to the other side — there where territories tremble, where the structures collapse, where the ethoses get mixed up, where a powerful song of the earth is unleashed, the great ritornelles that transmutes all the airs it carries away and makes return.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

from Essays Critical and Clinical, p. 104.

Music

“Living by principles is not living your own life. It is easier to try to be better than you are than to be who you are. If you are trying to live by ideals, you are constantly plagued by a sense of unreality. Somewhere you think there must be some joy; it can't be all "must," "ought to," "have to." And when the crunch comes, you have to recognize the truth: you weren't there. Then the house of cards collapses.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: Addiction to Perfection (1982), p. 61

Life, Truth, Thinking, Sense

Quotes about collapse page 3

Quotes about collapse
page 3