Quotes about crisis (691 quotes, page 6)

“The last war simplified the balance of political forces in the world by reducing them to two. For the first time, it made the power of the Communist sector of mankind (embodied in the Soviet Union) roughly equal to the power of the free sector of mankind (embodied in the United States). It made the collision of these powers all but inevitable. For the world wars did not end the crisis. They raised its tensions to a new pitch. They raised the crisis to a new stage. All the politics of our time, including the politics of war, will be the politics of this crisis.”

Whittaker Chambers Witness

Source: Witness (1952), p. 7

War , World , Time

“Blessing without good health is a crisis because you cannot enjoy it.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On the secret of his good health - "TB Joshua Shares Secrets Of His Good Health" http://www.premiumtimesng.com/letter-to-the-editor/174274-letter-t-b-joshua-shares-secrets-good-health.html Premium Times, Nigeria (January 5 2015)

Health

“It is no coincidence that the ABM Treaty was signed midway between the delinking of the U. S. dollar from the gold standard in 1971 and the first oil crisis in 1973. These were the years not only of monetary and economic crises but also of both the beginning of the destruction of the welfare state and the shift of the hegemony of economic production from the factory to more social and immaterial sectors. One might think of these various transformations as different faces of one common phenomenon, one grand social transformation.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

39
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Thinking

“These contributions [federal taxes on consumption of foreign goods] enable us to support the current expenses of the Government, to fulfill contracts with foreign nations, to extinguish the native right of soil within our limits, to extend those limits, and to apply such a surplus to our public debts as places at a short day their final redemption, and that redemption [of debt] once effected," he said, "the revenue thereby liberated may, by a just repartition among the States and a corresponding amendment of the Constitution, be applied, in time of peace, to rivers, canals, roads, arts, manufactures, education, and other great objects within each State. In time of war,—if injustice, by ourselves or others, must sometimes produce war,— increased as the same revenue will be increased by population and consumption, and aided by other resources reserved for that crisis, it may meet within the year all the expenses of the year without encroaching on the rights of future generations by burdening them with the debts of the past. War will then be but a suspension of useful works, and a return to a state of peace a return to the progress of improvement.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Advising the origination of an annual fund from surplus revenue.
1800s, Second Inaugural Address (1805)

War , Education , Peace , Art

“The 2008 financial meltdown is the result of under-regulated markets built on an ideology of free market capitalism and unlimited economic growth. The fundamental problem is that the underlying assumptions of this ideology are not consistent with what we now know about the real state of the world. The financial world is, in essence, a set of markers for goods, services, and risks in the real world and when those markers are allowed to deviate too far from reality, “adjustments” must ultimately follow and crisis and panic can ensue. To solve this and future financial crisis requires that we reconnect the markers with reality. What are our real assets and how valuable are they? To do this requires both a new vision of what the economy is and what it is for, proper and comprehensive accounting of real assets, and new institutions that use the market in its proper role of servant rather than master.”

Robert Costanza (1950) American economist

Source: Toward a New Sustainable Economy, 2008, p. 40

World , Problem , Reality , Future

“More than four years after the financial crisis began, the world's major advanced economies remain deeply depressed, in a scene all too reminiscent of the 1930s. And the reason is simple: we are relying on the same ideas that governed policy in the 1930s. These ideas, long since disproved, involve profound errors both about the causes of the crisis, its nature, and the appropriate response.These errors have taken deep root in public consciousness and provide the public support for the excessive austerity of current fiscal policies in many countries. So the time is ripe for a Manifesto in which mainstream economists offer the public a more evidence-based analysis of our problems.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Paul Krugman and Richard Layard, "A Manifesto for Economic Sense" (June 27, 2012)

World , Error , Idea , Support

“The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

Life , Game , Chance

“This was the first time WND had found a major intellectual leader behind the push to integrate North America suggesting that a crisis of 9-11 proportions might be just what was needed to advance the process toward establishing a North American Union and the amero.”

Jerome Corsi (1946) American conservative author

"North American Union leader says merger just crisis away", http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53378 WorldNetDaily (2006-12-15)

Time

“If in later life she has mastered her hunger drive by ego control, she may assume that she can control her fate herself. But that ego may in fact be very weak, because it has been built by cutting herself off from the mainstream of life through severe dieting. It is built on negative rather than positive need. In a real life crisis, such an ego may fail to operate because she does not know consciously what her own needs are. […] An ego which sets itself up against Fate is attempting to usurp the power of the Self; it swings from light to dark, from inflation to depression. Only when her ego is firmly rooted in her own feminine feeling can a woman be released from her compulsive behavior.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Owl Was a Baker's Daughter (1980), p. 33

Life , Hunger , Fate , Behavior

“I shall always regard this aspect of my dispute with Keynes as the greatest mistake of my professional career, and the book, The Great Depression, which I subsequently wrote, partly in justification of this attitude, as something which I would willingly see be forgotten. […] Now I still think that there is much in this theory as an explanation of a possible generation of boom and crisis. But, as an explanation of what was going on in the early ’30s, I now think it was misleading. Whatever the genetic factors of the pre-1929 boom, their sequelae, in the sense of inappropriate investments fostered by wrong expectations, were completely swamped by vast deflationary forces sweeping away all those elements of constancy in the situation which otherwise might have provided a framework for an explanation in my terms. The theory was inadequate to the facts. Nor was this approach any more adequate as a guide to policy. Confronted with the freezing deflation of those days, the idea that the prime essential was the writing down of mistaken investments and the easing of capital markets by fostering the disposition to save and reducing the pressure on consumption was completely inappropriate. To treat what developed subsequently in the way which I then thought valid was as unsuitable as denying blankets and stimulants to a drunk who has fallen into an icy pond, on the ground that his original trouble was overheating.”

Lionel Robbins (1898–1984) British economist

Autobiography of an Economist (1971), p. 154.

Books , Way , Idea , Thinking

“But to everything in this world there comes an end; there even comes an end to the torments suffered in those intermediate states of transition when the last secret tear of one's soul is bitterly swallowed, and the crisis passes, resolving itself into some new sort of phase, which even as it comes into existence is fated in turn to pass away, to disappear in the eternal changing of the times and seasons.”

Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938) Soviet politician

How It All Began : The Prison Novel, one of Bukharin's final works while in prison, as translated by George Shriver, (1998), Ch.8

Fate , Secret , World , Soul

“But this (a listing of illustrations of how the genome can change other than by mutations) doesn’t constitute a crisis—it’s a very interesting finding that shows that variation in a genome can arise by processes other than mutation of an organism’s own DNA. The disposition of that variation still must occur via either natural selection (it can be good or bad) or genetic drift (no effect on fitness). This hasn’t really changed the theory of evolution one iota, though it’s changed our view of where organisms can acquire new genes.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" Another philosopher proclaims a nonexistent “crisis” in evolutionary biology http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/another-philosopher-proclaims-a-nonexistent-crisis-in-evolutionary-biology/" September 7, 2012

Nature , Change

“The mid-life crisis is when we think that work is what gives meaning to our lives.”

Gian Domenico Borasio (1962) physician, specialist of palliative medicine

"It's not about dying", TEDxCHUV address (13 November 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5WYNf1td-4

Life , Thinking

“It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane (Ch. 23)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Pain , Time

“In the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Modern science has developed effective measures that could solve most of the urgent problems in today's world--combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 219.

Hunger , Lie , World , Disease

“The Englishman is made for a time of crisis, and for a time of emergency. He is serene in difficulties, but may seem to be indifferent when times are easy. He may not look ahead, he may not heed warnings, he may not prepare, but when he once starts he is persistent to the death, and he is ruthless in action. It is these gifts that have made the Englishman what he is, and that have enabled the Englishman to make England and the Empire what it is.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at the annual dinner of The Royal Society of St. George (6 May 1924), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 3-4.
1924

Death , Time , Indifference

“China's post-totalitarian era has two distinguishing characteristics. First, the rulers still want desperately to hold on to their dictatorial system in the midst of a crisis of legitimacy. Second, society no longer approves of such a system of dictatorship. A spontaneously growing civil society is gradually coming into being, and, although it does not yet have the strength to change the existing system, the increasing pluralism of its economy and its values, like water dripping on stone, is gradually eroding our rigid political monism.”

Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017) Chinese literary critic, writer, professor, and human rights activist

The Spiritual Landscape of the Urban Young in Post-Totalitarian China" (2004)
No Enemies, No Hate: Selected Essays and Poems

Water , Change

“Now that the dogs of war are calling for the head of Senator Al Franken I believe it is time to speak up on behalf of all heterosexual males. As a candidate for Governor let me save my opponents some research time. In my last fifty years I was sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females. It ranged form a gorgeous personal secretary to Senator Bob Taft (Senior) who was my first true love and we made passionate love in the hayloft of her parents barn in Gallipolis and ended with a drop dead gorgeous red head who was senior advisor to Peter Lewis at Progressive Insurance in Cleveland.
Now can we get back to discussing legalizing marijuana and opening the state hospital network to combat the opioid crisis. I am sooooo disappointed by this national feeding frenzy about sexual indiscretions decades ago.
Peace.”

Bill O'Neill (1947) Ohio judge

Facebook post, 11-17-2017 AM

Love , War , Peace , Dogs

“Life isn’t like coursework, baby. It’s one damn essay crisis after another.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

"Exams work because they're scary", Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2005, p. 22.
2000s, 2005

Life , Baby

“The Filipino, it seems, has lost his soul, his dignity, and his courage.

We have come upon a phase of our history when ideals are only a veneer for greed and power, (in public and private affairs) when devotion to duty and dedication to a public trust are to be weighted at all times against private advantages and personal gain, and when loyalties can be traded.

…Our government is in the iron grip of venality, its treasury is barren, its resources are wasted, its civil service is slothful and indifferent, its armed forces demoralized and its councils sterile.,

We are in crisis. You know that the government treasury is empty. Only by severe self-denial will there be hope for recovery within the next year…

This nation can be great again. This I have said over and over. It is my articles of faith, and Divine Providence has willed that you and I can now translate this faith into deeds.”

Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989) former President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986

Mandate for Greatness,” First Inaugural Speech of President Ferdinand E. Marcos, 30 December 1965.
1965

Faith , Hope , Soul , History

“[W]e still depend on crisis as the midwife of change, and we must learn to arrange things so that we may depend on it less. Yes, but the particular forms of the advance always remain obscure and controversial. We cannot even agree whether they should occur chiefly at the subnational, national, or supranational levels; whether the ideas that animate them should appear as local heresies—or as a universalizing heresy—doctrines, as liberalism and socialism were in their day that convey a message to all humanity; and how we should understand and practice the relation between change of institutions and changes of consciousness. Because the forms of change are obscure and controversial, they will continue to give rise to conflict and even to war. They will be dangerous. Yes, but all of this will take place, or fail to take place, in the long time of history, not in the short time of biography. We cannot wait; we must find a solution for ourselves nowː a way of foreshadowing in life as we can now live it that which the species has yet collectively failed to achieve.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 143-4

Life , War , Way , History

“These who are represented here were men in whom courage had reached a high moral quality. They had been brave enough not to shrink from looking at facts and institutions. They had been honest enough to admit that they saw there much that was not good. They glossed over no wrongs, they hid away no skeletons. They did not pretend that wrong was right or ever could be right. They had put much thought to the lessons of hard experience, and had frankly acknowledged that they must deal with a crisis in the Nation's life. They were sure that union was a blessing, that slavery was a wrong, and that domestic war was the supreme human tragedy. This settled, they saw that one of three courses must be taken. They could have had peace with disunion, or they could have had peace and union, with slavery. Freedom with union, they saw at last, meant war. We know how they decided. We know at what fearful cost they supported their decision.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Life , Men , War , Fear

“What are the choices that we must make if we are now to succeed, and not to fail? […] Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial to tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. One of those choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. […] The other crucial choice illuminated by the past involves the courage to make painful decisions about values. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches?”

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 "Reasons for hope" (Penguin Books, 2011, pages 522-523, ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1.

Pain , Failure , Courage , Problem

“In a cruel irony, speculators - rather then elected politicians - are the shots on crisis management. In an absurd logic, those who foster financial turbulence have been invited by the G7 Finance ministers to identify policies which attenuate financial turbulence.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Economic Warfare, Chapter 21, p. 327
The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003)

“Sparrow: Listen, Mo. I have been doing crisis intervention with battered, homeless women and kids all week long. Tonight, I am going to vegetate in front of the TV. If you're so worried about Bosnia, go join the Red Cross.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#157, "Diversions" (1993), collected in Spawn of DTWOF (1993).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Women

“Will we solve the crises of next hundred years? asked Krulwich. “Yes, if we are honest and smart,” said Wilson. “The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Until we understand ourselves, concluded the Pulitzer-prize winning author of On Human Nature, “until we answer those huge questions of philosophy that the philosophers abandoned a couple of generations ago—Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?—rationally,” we’re on very thin ground.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Quoted in Harvard Magazine http://harvardmagazine.com/breaking-news/james-watson-edward-o-wilson-intellectual-entente from a public discussion between Wilson and James Watson moderated by NPR correspondent Robert Krulwich, September 9, 2009.

God , Understanding , Question , Nature

“I was angry, that in a crisis, those three women, and many others to whom Liz Broderick had spoken, had not been able to rely on their mates. In other words the very thing that we claim as our defining ethos had been used to exclude and humiliate others. I am resolved to make improvements to our culture one of the fundamental elements of the legacy that I hope to leave the Australian Army.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Women , Hope

“The major cause [of the software crisis] is that the machines have become several orders of magnitude more powerful! To put it quite bluntly: as long as there were no machines, programming was no problem at all; when we had a few weak computers, programming became a mild problem, and now we have gigantic computers, programming has become an equally gigantic problem. In this sense the electronic industry has not solved a single problem, it has only created them, it has created the problem of using its products.”

Edsger W. Dijkstra (1930–2002) Dutch computer scientist

1970s, The Humble Programmer (1972)

Problem , Sense

“It now only remains for us to set our teeth and to enter upon this struggle, which we ourselves earnestly endeavoured to avoid, with determination to see it through to the end. We shall enter it with a clear conscience, with the support of the Dominions and the British Empire, and the moral approval of the greater part of the world. We have no quarrel with the German people, except that they allow themselves to be governed by a Nazi Government. As long as that Government exists and pursues the methods it has so persistently followed during the last two years, there will be no peace in Europe. We shall merely pass from one crisis to another, and see one country after another attacked by methods which have now become familiar to us in their sickening technique. We are resolved that these methods must come to an end. If out of the struggle we again re-establish in the world the rules of good faith and the renunciation of force, why, then even the sacrifices that will be entailed upon us will find their fullest justification.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/sep/01/british-note-to-germany in the House of Commons (1 September 1939) on the British ultimatum to Germany
Prime Minister

People , World , Peace , Faith

“It is generally assumed that men are damaged in their capacity for closeness and intimacy. If intimacy is defined as a loving closeness with another person, then it is usually true that the early conditioning of men to be performers and competitors in the impersonal competitive world limits their intimacy capacity. Women are assumed to have a greater capacity for intimacy than men because they express caring emotions and allow themselves to be dependent and close in relationships more easily. Yet, a closer look will provide a different perspective.

True intimacy is love and closeness based on knowledge of the inner reality and inner experience of the other. However, in romantic relationships, closeness ends or is put into crisis when men describe honestly their inner experiences to women. Women assail the relationship behavior of men and men acknowledge what they are told. Rarely is the opposite true. Men accept the reality of women more than women accept the reality of men.

The fact that a woman's priority is placed on personal needs bears no relationship to a genuine capacity for intimacy. To be loved and known, and to be fully comfortable expressing one's personal self, are two major components of intimacy. There are few men who have received that from a woman. The opposite holds true. A woman's love for a man is contingent on his participating in her romantic fantasy of what he and the relationship should be. Few men risk challenging or undermining that fantasy. Instead, they play by the rules of romance even when it feels uncomfortable, knowing that being loved by her is fragile and easily broken once he reveals his resistances and unromantic feelings.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

Why Women Are Also Incapable of Intimacy, pp. 120–121
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love , Women , Men , World

“(During the Italian crisis, about the proposal of replacing Silvio Berlusconi with Angelino Alfano, as the new Prime Minister of Italy) Replacing Berlusconi with one of his servile lackeys is unacceptable. Italy needs a credible government run by a respected & competent leader (2011-11-08”

Nouriel Roubini (1958) American economist

Quoted in: Italy crisis - Live http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/world-europe-15637486, BBC.co.uk).

“One seeking to understand the recurrent ebb and flow of economic activity characteristic of the present day finds these numerous explanations both suggestive and perplexing. All are plausible, but which is valid? None necessarily excludes all the others, but which is the most important? Each may account for certain phenomena; does any one account for all the phenomena? Or can these rival explanations be combined in such a fashion as to make a consistent theory which is wholly adequate?
There is slight hope of getting answers to these questions by a logical process of proving and criticizing the theories. For whatever merits of ingenuity and consistency they may possess, these theories have slight value except as they give keener insight into the phenomena of business cycles. It is by study of the facts which they purport to interpret that the theories must be tested. But the perspective of the investigation would be distorted if we set out to test each theory in turn by collecting evidence to confirm or to refute it. For the point of interest is not the validity of any writer's views, but clear comprehension of the facts. To observe, analyze, and systematize the phenomena of prosperity, crisis, and depression is the chief task. And there is better prospect of rendering service if we attack this task directly, than if we take the round about way of considering the phenomena with reference to the theories.
This plan of attacking the facts directly by no means precludes free use of the results achieved by others. On the contrary, their conclusions suggest certain facts to be looked for, certain analyses to be made, certain arrangements to be tried. Indeed, the whole investigation would be crude and superficial if we did not seek help from all quarters. But the help wanted is help in making a fresh examination into the facts.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: Business Cycles, 1913, p. 19-20; as cited in: Mary S. Morgan. The History of Econometric Ideas. p. 46

Hope , Way , Fashion , Understanding

“The dilemma posed by a choice between rules and men largely begs the question. There are, to be sure, times when rules, constraints, commitments, contract or treaty provisions stand in the way and should be transcended because of force majeure, acts of God, some deus ex machina that makes clear that all bets are off. …
If one relies on men of responsibility to make the right choice in crisis among conflicting rules, or to follow an altogether different course for which no precedent exists, there is a danger of creating new precedents and new rules, which may be applied mistakenly under different circumstances. …
The alternative to rules—men, which of course includes women—begs another question. Men have different responsibilities, principles, understandings, interests.”

Charles P. Kindleberger (1910–2003) American economic historian

"Rules vs Men: Lessons from a Century of Monetary Policy", Originally published in Christoph Buchheim, Michael Hutter, and Harold James, eds., Zerrissene Zwischenkriegszeit Beiträge (1994), republished in Comparative Political Economy: A Retrospective (2003)

Women , Men , God , Way

“We have been discussing here that Turkey would take responsibility and the other European countries would make our own contributions to the cause. This way we can extend help near to the crisis, which would make it easier for the migrants to return to their homes once the situation has calmed down.”

Timo Soini (1962) Finnish politician

Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä says one way to resolve the Syrian refugee crisis would be through the use of EU quotas. Foreign Minister Timo Soini rejects the idea, saying Turkey should take the main responsibility for stopping the migrants with the EU countries' financial help, quoted on Yle.Fi, "PM willing to raise refugee quota, FM says Turkey should take the lead" http://yle.fi/uutiset/pm_willing_to_raise_refugee_quota_fm_says_turkey_should_take_the_lead/8655373, January 7, 2016.

Way , Home , Help , Country

“Beyond all doubt, the urgent need is to unite representatives of all political parties and groups and of people without any party affiliation and establish a provisional democratic coalition government for the purpose of instituting democratic reforms, surmounting the present crisis, mobilizing and unifying all the anti-Japanese forces in the country to fight in effective co-ordination with the allied countries for the defeat of the Japanese aggressors, and thus enabling the Chinese people to liberate themselves from the latter's clutches. After that it will be necessary to convene a national assembly on a broad democratic basis and set up a formally constituted democratic government, which will also be in the nature of a coalition and will have a still wider representation of people from all parties and groups or without any party affiliation, and which will lead the liberated people of the whole country in building an independent, free, democratic, united, prosperous and powerful new China. In short, we must take the line of unity and democracy, defeat the aggressors and build a new China.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

People , Democracy , Nature , Fight

“Existing regulators had all the powers they needed, and more, and they failed miserably to foresee and prevent this crisis. Chris Dodd is now asking us to put all our eggs in one basket and trust a "super regulatory agency." He should know better than to centralize power in the hands of Washington bureaucrats - it's precisely the arrangement that caused our current problems. I think most Connecticut voters know that we need fewer czars in Washington, not more. As long as Fannie and Freddie and Congress are meddling with the economy, changing the structure of the regulators is basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

2010 Senate Campaign, Remarks regarding Christopher Dodd

Problem , Thinking , Change

“The conclusion drawn by … most of our élites … is that the population constitutes a deep and dangerous well of ignorance and irrationality; if our civilization is in crisis the fault must lie with the populace which is not rising to the inescapable challenges. And yet civilizations do not collapse because the citizenry are corrupt or lazy or anti-intellectual. These people do not have the power and influence to either lead or destroy. Civilizations collapse when those who have power fail to do their jobs.”

John Ralston Saul The Doubter's Companion

"Anti-Intellectualism"
The Doubter's Companion (1994)

People , Lie

“The great crisis facing the country was the rebellion and anybody in the North who wanted to preserve the Union now found the principal enemy to be those Southern slave owners who had broken up the country. The institution which sustained them and the institution they went to war to defend was slavery. And more and more northerners became convinced of that. As a consequence, a lot of them went the whole way over, from being conservative, pro-Southern, pro-slavery Democrats to becoming radical Republicans. Benjamin Butler is a good example, and Edwin M. Stanton is another one.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

War , Way , Country

“These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

The New York Times (11 September 2003) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

People , Problem , Housing

“There's a crisis of truth in the pulputs today in our land. That in the name of tolerance, even in the name of love, we are redefining love that is not on God's terms! Jesus is God, there is no other god besides Jesus: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! All the world religions, they can say what they say, there is no other god but Jesus, there is no other standard of truth. Jesus alone is the standard of truth! He defines morality! He defines marriage! He defines life! He defines righteousness! And in our allegiance to Him, we say what He says. It's time to come out in the open. It's time to go public. Regardless what it costs us. We love you, Jesus! The only god!”

Mike Bickle (1955) American writer and priest

"The Response" prayer rally, 2011-08-06, quoted in * Kyle
Mantyla
The Response: Bickle Rails Against "Redefining Love" And False Religions
Right Wing Watch
2011-08-06
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/response-bickle-rails-against-redefining-love-and-false-religions
2011-08-06

Love , Life , God , Marriage

“The present-ness demanded by a crisis is possible w/out crisis. Understand the keys to appropriate engagement. GTD.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

13 August 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/235132922565369857
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

Understanding

“With uncertainty in oil markets, a buildup of speculative pressures and the large U. S. current account deficit, there is a real possibility that Paulson's crisis-management skills will be tested.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

David Ignatius (May 31, 2006) "Watching the Yellow Flags", The Washington Post, p. A19.
2000s

“I cannot imagine the Labour Party coming into power without a first-rate financial crisis. That is why we ask for full emergency measures.”

Stafford Cripps (1889–1952) British politician

The Manchester Guardian (5 November 1934), quoted in Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years. Memoirs 1931-1945 (London: Frederick Muller Ltd, 1957), p. 150.

Imagination

“Hillary causes the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Now she wants a 25% gun tax to make sure you can't defend yourself from the onslaught. Did I catch your attention yet?”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-09-09
Radio, 46:45
2015

War , World

“The majority of people perform well in a crisis and when the spotlight is on them; it's on the Sunday afternoons of this life, when nobody is looking, that the spirit falters.”

Alan Bennett (1934) English actor, author

Diary entry for October 13, 1984, pp. 137-138.
Writing Home (1994)

Life , People

“There are as many Scottish roads to Socialism as there are predictions of Britain's economic doom - but most of them demand three things: a coherent plan for an extension of democracy and control in society and industry which sees every reform as a means to creating a socialist society; a harnessing of the forces for industrial and community self-management within a political movement; and a massive programme of education by the Labour Movement as a whole.

Gramsci's relevance to Scotland today is in his emphasis that in a society which is both mature and complex, where the total social and economic processes are geared to maintaining the production of goods and services (and the reproduction of the conditions of production), then the transition to socialism must be made by the majority of the people themselves and a socialist society must be created within the womb of existing society and prefigured in the movements for democracy at the grass roots. Socialists must neither place their faith in an Armageddon or of capitalist collapse nor in nationalisation alone. For the Jacobin notion of a vanguard making revolution on behalf of working people relates to a backward society (and prefigures an authoritarian and bureaucratic state), then the complexity of modern society requires a far reaching movement of people and existing conditions and as a co-ordinator for the assertion of social priorities by people at a community level and control by producers at an industrial level. In such a way political power will become a synthesis of – not a substitute for – community and industrial life.

This requires from the Labour Movement in Scotland today a postive commitment to creating a socialist society, a coherant strategy with rhythm and modality to each reform to cancel the logic of capitalism and a programme of immediate aims which leads out of one social order into another. Such a social reorganisation - a phased extension of public control under workers' sustained and enlarged, would in EP Thompson's words lead to "a crisis not of despair and disintegration but a crisis in which the necessity for a peaceful revolutionary transition to an alternative socialist logic became daily more evident."”

Gordon Brown (1951) British Labour Party politician

Introduction to "The Red Paper On Scotland", 1975.

Life , People , Education , Peace

“Look, the New Democrat approach, from my point of view, didn't work. That governing approach didn't stop the progression that led us to a thoroughly Republican House and now Senate, and a national debate that doesn't even address the real issues. The economic crisis of today — the only parallel is the Great Depression. That's just a fact. The difference is, there's no light at the end of the tunnel now.”

Bill de Blasio (1961) American politician and mayor of New York City

quoted by Mark Binelli of Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/mayor-bill-de-blasios-crusade-20150506.

Light , Housing

“Homo-Marxian puzzles all those who try to work with him because he seems irrational and therefore unpredictable. In reality, however, the Marxist Man has reduced his thinking to the lowest common denominator of values taken from nature in the raw. He lives exclusively by the jungle law of selfish survival. In terms of these values he is rational almost to the point of mathematical precision. Through calm or crisis his responses are consistently elemental and therefore highly predictable. Because Homo-Marxian considers himself to be made entirely of the dust of the earth, he pretends to no other role. He denies himself the possibility of a soul and repudiates his capacity for immortality. He believes he had no creator and has no purpose or reason for existing except as an incidental accumulation of accidental forces in nature. Being without morals, he approaches all problems in a direct, uncomplicated manner. Self-preservation is given as the sole justification for his own behavior, and "selfish motives" or "stupidity" are his only explanations for the behavior of others. With Homo-Marxian the signing of fifty-three treaties and subsequent violation of fifty-one of them is not hypocrisy but strategy. The subordination of other men's minds to the obscuring of truth is not deceit but a necessary governmental tool. Marxist Man has convinced himself that nothing is evil which answers the call of expediency. He has released himself from all the confining restraints of honor and ethics which mankind has previously tried to use as a basis for harmonious human relations.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

Men , Truth , Stupidity , Law

“We believe that the developing crisis in the capitalist system, by which we mean both economic stagnation, and the social and political conflicts to which it gives rise, makes it possible to think in terms of developing a sizeable and serious revolutionary socialist party in a way that was not possible 20 or even 10 years ago.”

Anthony Crosland (1918–1977) British politician

The Times (8 September 1977).

Way , Thinking

“We now have a global business system that is virtually unregulated, with trade unions crippled and politicians largely bought by the super-rich to serve their interests. And what is the result? Inequality has returned to 1920s levels, and movement between the classes has collapsed. We have bank runs unseen in a century. And now even senior Wall Street figures mutter — with only a hint of hyperbole — about a looming Depression and "the worst crisis since 1929." All we need now is rising unemployment and Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald boozily waltzing through Wall Street, and we are back where this story began.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

"Has Market Fundamentalism Had Its Day?," The Independent (2008-03-20).

Business

“I still think Keynesian economics is extremely important, and if anybody didn’t think so, this crisis should have made them rethink.”

Stanley Fischer (1943) American economist

Stanley Fischer, quoted in Dylan Matthews, "Stan Fischer saved Israel’s economy. Can he save America’s?" http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/15/stan-fischer-saved-israels-economy-can-he-save-americas/, washingtonpost.com, 2013/02/15

Thinking

“This crisis is a challenge to our conscience. It puts our committment to a hard test.”

Henri of Luxembourg (1955) Grand Duke (head of state) of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg

Address to the United Nations (26 September 2012)
Crisis in Syria

“With your help, and the help of other free men, this crisis can be surmounted. Freedom can prevail and peace can endure.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Berlin Crisis speech
Context: The steps I have indicated tonight are aimed at avoiding that war. To sum it all up: we seek peace — but we shall not surrender. That is the central meaning of this crisis, and the meaning of your government's policy. With your help, and the help of other free men, this crisis can be surmounted. Freedom can prevail and peace can endure.

Men , Peace , Freedom , Help

“I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view.”

Albert Hofmann (1906–2008) Swiss chemist

Foreword
LSD : My Problem Child (1980)
Context: I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation.

World , Change

“If corn circles came from enlightened aliens,
Rather than Wiltshire pranksters on cider.
If channellers could speak in hieroglyphics,
Instead of pop-psychological twaddle.
If sharing, caring, non-sexist men,
Could do anything useful in a crisis.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: PsyberMagick (1995), p. 65
Context: New Age-ism
I could Love it: —
If dolphins had as much intelligence as cats,
And stopped trying to rescue sinking pieces of wood.
If crystals actually did something useful,
Other than grease the wheels of commerce.
If the Goddess had made animals taste less good,
So I didn't want to eat them.
If astrology could tell me anything,
Other than the trite and obvious.
If whales could do something more impressive,
Than merely occupy a lot of space.
If corn circles came from enlightened aliens,
Rather than Wiltshire pranksters on cider.
If channellers could speak in hieroglyphics,
Instead of pop-psychological twaddle.
If sharing, caring, non-sexist men,
Could do anything useful in a crisis.

Men

“People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different.”

James Branch Cabell book The Cream of the Jest

Source: The Cream of the Jest (1917), Ch. 27 : Evolution of a Vestryman
Context: The purblind majority quite honestly believed that literature was meant to mimic human life, and that it did so. And in consequence, their love-affairs, their maxims, their so-called natural ties and instincts, and above all, their wickedness, became just so many bungling plagiarisms from something they had read, in a novel or a Bible or a poem or a newspaper. People progressed from the kindergarten to the cemetery assuming that their emotion at every crisis was what books taught them was the appropriate emotion, and without noticing that it was in reality something quite different. Human life was a distorting tarnished mirror held up to literature: this much at least of Wilde's old paradox — that life mimicked art — was indisputable. Human life, very clumsily, tried to reproduce the printed word.

People , Books , Reality

“His everyday conscious self is only a small part of the mind, like the final crescent of the moon. In moments of crisis, the full moon suddenly appears.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Poetry and Mysticism (1969), p. 156
Context: These are the visionary, mystical moments, when a man 'completes his partial mind'. His everyday conscious self is only a small part of the mind, like the final crescent of the moon. In moments of crisis, the full moon suddenly appears.

Appearance , Parting

“In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Civil Rights Address
Context: This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every State of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety. Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis men of good will and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics. This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level, but law alone cannot make men see right. We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution.

Men , Time

“One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"No Religion is an Island", p. 264
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: One of the results of the rapid depersonalization of our age is a crisis of speech, profanation of language. We have trifled with the name of God, we have taken the name and the word of the Holy in vain. Language has been reduced to labels, talk has become double-talk. We are in the process of losing faith in the reality of words.
Yet prayer can happen only when words reverberate with power and inner life, when uttered as an earnest, as a promise. On the other hand, there is a high degree of obsolescence in the traditional language of the theology of prayer. Renewal of prayer calls for a renewal of language, of cleansing the words, of revival of meanings.
The strength of faith is in silence, and in words that hibernate and wait. Uttered faith must come out as a surplus of silence, as the fruit of lived faith, of enduring intimacy.
Theological education must deepen privacy, strive for daily renewal of innerness, cultivate ingredients of religious existence, reverence and responsibility.

Age

“While we read history we make history … Every great crisis of human history is a pass of Thermopylae, and there is always a Leonidas and his three hundred to die in it, if they can not conquer.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

The Call of Freedom.

History , Reading

“I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

King quoted here John F. Kennedy who at the signing of a charter establishing the German Peace Corps in Bonn, West Germany (24 June 1963) remarked: Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
According to Bartleby.com, Kennedy's remark may have been inspired by the passage from Dante Alighieri’s La Comedia Divina “Inferno,” canto 3, lines 35–42 (1972) passage as translated by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth: "by those disbodied wretches who were loth when living, to be either blamed or praised. [...] Fear to lose beauty caused the heavens to expel these caitiffs; nor, lest to the damned they theng ave cause to boast, receives them the deep hell." A more modern-sounding translation from the foregoing Dante’s Inferno passage was translataed 1971 by Mark Musa thus: “They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels … undecided in neutrality. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them for fear the wicked there might glory over them.”
This is also often quoted slightly differently as: "The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict"
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.

Hell

“We cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis. The era of fossil fuels is over. We must invest in renewable energy.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Speaking & Features, Standing Up To Goliath
Context: Now is the time for change. We cannot drill our way out of the energy crisis. The era of fossil fuels is over. We must invest in renewable energy. And we must not delay.

Way

“Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 113
Context: An ancient Chinese curse runs, "May you live in interesting times." Since the fall of the Roman Empire, there has rarely been more interesting times than these. Whenever history becomes unstable and destinies hang in the balance, then magicians and messiahs appear everywhere. Our own civilization has moved into an epoch of permanent crisis and upheaval, and we are beset with a plague of wizards. They serve an historic purpose, for whenever a society undergoes radical change, alternative spiritualities proliferate, and from among these a culture will select a new world view.

“In a communications crisis, the true prophets are the translators.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Dylan" in Representative Men : Cult Heroes of Our Time (1970) edited by Theodore L. Gross
Context: Dylan is free now to work on his own terms. It would be foolish to predict what he will do next. But hopefully he will remain a mediator, using the language of pop to transcend it. If the gap between past and present continues to widen, such mediation may be crucial. In a communications crisis, the true prophets are the translators.

Communication

“The nation is gripped in her worst crisis, standing in the middle of the road between survival and disintegration. Since the birth of Pakistan, crisis has followed crisis in rapid escalation. Millions of lives were sacrificed to create this country.”

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1928–1979) Fourth President and ninth Prime Minister of Pakistan

Source: Letter to his daughter (1978), p. 37.
Context: This is not a letter on Pakistan. If it were, I could have written a small book entitled "Glimpses of Pakistan's history". Time does not permit it. The nation is gripped in her worst crisis, standing in the middle of the road between survival and disintegration. Since the birth of Pakistan, crisis has followed crisis in rapid escalation. Millions of lives were sacrificed to create this country. Pakistan is said to be the dream of Mohammad Iqbal and the creation of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Quaid-e-Azam. Was anything wrong with the dream or with the one who made the dream come true? Opinions have differed and continue to differ. The next few years will most probably decide the issue, perhaps once and for all, and not without bloodshed. This process is not inevitable but the present policies of the ruling junta are driving this country towards a sad inevitability

Birth , Country

“This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

“Humanity is moving ever deeper into a crisis which has no precedent.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: Humanity is moving ever deeper into a crisis which has no precedent. It is a crisis brought about by evolution being intent on completely integrating differently colored, differently cultured, and intercommunicating humanity, and by evolution being intent on making integrated humanity able to live sustainedly at a higher standard of living for all than has ever been experienced by any. Probably ninety-nine percent of humanity does not know that we have the option to make it; we do. It can only be accomplished, however, through a Design Science Revolution.
Those in supreme power, politically and economically, aren’t yet convinced that our Planet Earth has anywhere nearly enough life support for all humanity.
They assume it has to be either you or me, that there is not enough for both. Those with financial advantage reason that selfishness is necessary and fortify themselves even further.

“Today our world faces a crisis: a crisis which, if its consequences are as grave as now seems, may not fully be resolved for another century.”

Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic

Introduction
The Culture of Cities (1938)
Context: Today our world faces a crisis: a crisis which, if its consequences are as grave as now seems, may not fully be resolved for another century. If the destructive forces in civilization gain ascendancy, our new urban culture will be stricken in every part. Our cities, blasted and deserted, will be cemeteries for the dead: cold lairs given over to less destructive beasts than man. But we may avert that fate: perhaps only in facing such a desperate challenge can the necessary creative forces be effectually welded together. Instead of clinging to the sardonic funeral towers of metropolitan finance, ours to march out to newly plowed fields, to create fresh patterns of political action, to alter for human purposes the perverse mechanisms or our economic regime, to conceive and to germinate fresh forms of human culture.
Instead of accepting the stale cult of death that the Fascists have erected, as the proper crown for the servility and brutality that are the pillars of their states, we must erect a cult of life: life in action, as the farmer or mechanic knows it: life in expression, as the artist knows it: life as the lover feels it and the parent practices it: life as it is known to men of good will who meditate in the cloister, experiment in the laboratory, or plan intelligently in the factory or the government office.

World

“This point is accentuated in a world crisis where biopathic men hold in their hands power over ruined, destitute multitudes.”

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) Austrian-American psychoanalyst

Response to FDA complaint (1954)
Context: The present critical state of international human affairs requires security and safety from nuisance interferences with efforts toward full, honest, determined clarification of man's relationship to nature within and without himself; in other words, his relationship to the Law of Nature. It is not permissible, either morally, legally, or factually, to force a natural scientist to expose his scientific results and methods of basic research in court. This point is accentuated in a world crisis where biopathic men hold in their hands power over ruined, destitute multitudes.

Men , World

“As a tree that is not pliable breaks in the storm, so a man who has specialized breaks down in moments of crisis.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

"Seventh Talk in Poona, 10 October 1948" http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=295&chid=4625&w=%22To+understand+oneself%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 481010; Vol. V, p. 128
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: To understand oneself, one needs enormous pliability, and that pliability is denied when we specialize in devotion, in action, in knowledge. There are no paths such as devotion, as action, as knowledge, and he who follows any of these paths separately as a specialist brings about his own destruction. That is, a man who is committed to a particular path, to a particular approach, is incapable of pliability, and that which is not pliable is broken. As a tree that is not pliable breaks in the storm, so a man who has specialized breaks down in moments of crisis.

Tree

“Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going.”

Abraham Pais (1918–2000) American Physicist

Address given in Copenhagen "Physics in Denmark: The First Four Hundred Years" (6 March 1996) http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/pais/index.html?print=1
Context: Today we live in the midst of upheaval and crisis. We do not know where we are going, nor even where we ought to be going. Awareness is spreading that our future cannot be a straight extension of the past or the present … The century now approaching its end has been one of indiscriminate violence, it has been perhaps the most murderous one in Western history of which we have record. Yet I would think that what will strike people most when, hundreds of years from now, they will look back on our days is that this was the age when the exploration of space began, the microchip was invented, revolutions in transport and communication virtually annihilated time and distance, transforming the world into a "global village," and relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and the structure of the atom were discovered, in brief that this has been the century of science and technology.

“At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: At every moment of crisis an array of men risk their lives in the front ranks as standard-bearers of God to fight and take upon themselves the whole responsibility of the battle.
Once long ago it was the priests, the kings, the noblemen, or the burghers who created civilizations and set divinity free.
Today God is the common worker made savage by toil and rage and hunger

Men , God , Fight

“It was imperative to strike before we were struck by this overwhelming force in a hand-to-hand fight, which we could not probably have withstood or survived. At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough.”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

His official report on the Battle of Little Round Top, as published in the U.S. Congressional Record
Context: The enemy seemed to have gathered all their energies for their final assault. We had gotten our thin line into as good a shape as possible, when a strong force emerged from the scrub wood in the valley, as well as I could judge, in two lines in echelon by the right, and, opening a heavy fire, the first line came on as if they meant to sweep everything before them. We opened on them as well as we could with our scanty ammunition snatched from the field.
It did not seem possible to withstand another shock like this now coming on. Our loss had been severe. One-half of my left wing had fallen, and a third of my regiment lay just behind us, dead or badly wounded. At this moment my anxietv was increased by a great roar of musketry in my rear, on the farther or northerly slope of Little Round Top, apparently on the flank of the regular brigade, which was in support of Hazlett's battery on the crest behind us. The bullets from this attack struck into my left rear, and I feared that the enemy might have nearly surrounded the Little Round Top, and only a desperate chance was left for us. My ammunition was soon exhausted. My men were firing their last shot and getting ready to "club" their muskets.
It was imperative to strike before we were struck by this overwhelming force in a hand-to-hand fight, which we could not probably have withstood or survived. At that crisis, I ordered the bayonet. The word was enough. It ran like fire along the line, from man to man; and rose into a shout, with which they sprang forward upon the enemy, now not 30 yards away. The effect was surprising; many of the enemy's first line threw down their arms and surrendered. An officer fired his pistol at my head with one hand, while he handed me his sword with the other. Holding fast by our right, and swinging forward our left, we made an extended " right wheel," before which the enemy's second line broke and fell back, fighting from tree to tree, many being captured, until we had swept the valley and cleared the front of nearly our entire brigade.

Fight

“I would say that these days of crisis and tragedy are to remind us all to be present in the ordinariness of our lives”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Interview on Entertainment Tonight, as quoted in "Oprah Winfrey Offers Words of Wisdom in Wake of Deadly Las Vegas Shooting", KTVB (2 October 2017) http://www.ktvb.com/article/entertainment/entertainment-tonight/oprah-winfrey-offers-words-of-wisdom-in-wake-of-deadly-las-vegas-shooting-exclusive/480587423
Context: I feel like my soul is aching for the country. … There's not a day that goes by where I'm not putting on my shoes, or brushing my teeth, where I just think about the ordinariness of, people who just went to a concert, or the ordinariness of the day from people from 9/11, who were just doing an ordinary thing, and then you never get home. … So, I would say that these days of crisis and tragedy are to remind us all to be present in the ordinariness of our lives, that actually turns out to be extraordinary, when the person you love doesn't come home at night.
I pay attention to things, you know? … This is to make us all more awakened about our own life, and the fact that it shows up this way is a horror. But, as I heard someone say, seeing people coming together, helping each other — whether it's this crisis we're in or what we saw weeks ago in, in Houston, in Florida, and now in Puerto Rico — it shows the humanity of us all. So, it's an opportunity to show the best of ourselves, when the worst shows up.

“You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

The Devil's Advocate (1952)
1950s
Context: You see, when a nation threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that, and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. The leaders stigmatize the enemy with every vice they can think of, every evil and human depravity. They stimulate their people’s natural fear of all other men by channeling it into a defined fear of just certain men, or nations. Attacking another nation, then, acts as a sort of catharsis, temporarily, on men’s fear of their immediate neighbors. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres, and all attempts at genocide.

Hostility , War , People , Forgetting

“I'm involved in a different kind of campaign myself — to make sure that the climate crisis is the number one issue on the agenda of candidates in both parties.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

"Al Gore: 'The Assault on Reason' in America" on Things Considered at NPR (25 May 2007) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10440121.
Context: I'm involved in a different kind of campaign myself — to make sure that the climate crisis is the number one issue on the agenda of candidates in both parties. And I know that sounds like an unrealistic goal right now, but I will wager that by the time the elections of November 2008 come around, it will be the number one issue in both parties.

“In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.
Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Introduction
The Life of Poetry (1949)
Context: In time of crisis, we summon up our strength.
Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used.
In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness.

Memory , Time , Dependency

“BB: Are there any men in?
(no response)
BB: Any women?
Female voices: Yes!
BB: Ah, you see, there's this crisis in masculine identity at the moment. Women, totally at home with their sexuality. 'I am woman, wo-man, I, wo-MAN.' Men 'Er.. (awkward expression) Someone else'll shout out, I'll be alright'. Alright, is there any blokes in?
Masculine voices: Yeah!
BB: You see, there's a term that men feel more comfortable with. Bloke, blokey bloke bloke. It's a kind of friendly term. 'Oh, he's a bloke, lovely bloke, nice bloke, blokey bloke. I'm a bloke, you're a bloke, wahey!' It doesn't impose any unnecessary demands on us as men. 'Bloke', that's just basically 'carry stuff, don't get in the way'. 'Man', that's all kinds of other things, isn't it? That's nobility, gallantry, wisdom… that conjures up some image of a bloke in a cardigan with a pipe saying 'Cover up those table legs, mother, they're inflaming my sexual ardour'.
Ch. 24, 53:21”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

Love , Wisdom , Women , Men

“It is strange, when something rises before us as a possibility which we have hitherto believed to be very dreadful, we fancy it is a great crisis; that when we pass it we shall be different beings; some mighty change will have swept over our nature, and we shall lose entirely all our old selves, and become others.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Arthur's commentary
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)
Context: It is strange, when something rises before us as a possibility which we have hitherto believed to be very dreadful, we fancy it is a great crisis; that when we pass it we shall be different beings; some mighty change will have swept over our nature, and we shall lose entirely all our old selves, and become others. … Yet, when the thing, whether good or evil, is done, we find we were mistaken; we are seemingly much the same — neither much better nor worse; and then we cannot make it out; on either side there is a weakening of faith; we fancy we have been taken in; the mountain has heen in lahour, and we are perplexed to find the good less powerful than we expected, and the evil less evil.

Nature , Change

“It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

"Epilogue", p. 512.
2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008)
Context: Much of the securitization took the form of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) with senior credit tranches certified by rating agencies as AAA. It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that characterized the crisis.

Failure

“I have a vague expectation of some crisis, — I know not what.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Letter (Spring 1850).
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1852)
Context: I have a vague expectation of some crisis, — I know not what. But it has long seemed, that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn.

“Unfortunately, the Manchurian crisis arose at a time when those nations who might have been expected to have perceived most clearly the necessity of preventing aggression were themselves in a condition of great internal difficulties owing to the financial crisis of those days. … And perhaps it was inevitable in such circumstances that our people should take little interest in any foreign questions.”

Robert Cecil, 1st Viscount Cecil of Chelwood (1864–1958) lawyer, politician and diplomat in the United Kingdom

The Future of Civilization (1938)
Context: Unfortunately, the Manchurian crisis arose at a time when those nations who might have been expected to have perceived most clearly the necessity of preventing aggression were themselves in a condition of great internal difficulties owing to the financial crisis of those days. … And perhaps it was inevitable in such circumstances that our people should take little interest in any foreign questions.
It was partly for these reasons, no doubt, that the conquest of Manchuria and the other northern provinces of China came to be consummated, and all the ambitious statesmen of the world were given an object lesson of how, in spite of the League and in spite of the Covenant, the old military policies could be successfully carried out.
And may I venture to emphasize at this point a lesson which must never be forgotten: how much one problem in international affairs affects the whole conduct of those affairs. It was no doubt the failure of the League to check aggression in the Far East which first struck a blow at the whole system which we were trying to establish and which facilitated even greater attacks on international security.

People , Question , Time

“Upon his inauguration as president of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the republic. A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him. The Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the republic, armed with the munitions of war which the republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)
Context: A spade, a rake, a hoe. A pick-axe, or a bill. A hook to reap, a scythe to mow. A flail, or what you will'. All day long he could split heavy rails in the woods, and half the night long he could study his English grammar by the uncertain flare and glare of the light made by a pine-knot. He was at home in the land with his axe, with his maul, with gluts, and his wedges, and he was equally at home on water, with his oars, with his poles, with his planks, and with his boat-hooks. And whether in his flat-boat on the Mississippi River, or at the fireside of his frontier cabin, he was a man of work. A son of toil himself, he was linked in brotherly sympathy with the sons of toil in every loyal part of the republic. This very fact gave him tremendous power with the American people, and materially contributed not only to selecting him to the presidency, but in sustaining his administration of the government. Upon his inauguration as president of the United States, an office, even when assumed under the most favorable condition, fitted to tax and strain the largest abilities, Abraham Lincoln was met by a tremendous crisis. He was called upon not merely to administer the government, but to decide, in the face of terrible odds, the fate of the republic. A formidable rebellion rose in his path before him. The Union was already practically dissolved; his country was torn and rent asunder at the center. Hostile armies were already organized against the republic, armed with the munitions of war which the republic had provided for its own defense. The tremendous question for him to decide was whether his country should survive the crisis and flourish, or be dismembered and perish. His predecessor in office had already decided the question in favor of national dismemberment, by denying to it the right of self-defense and self-preservation, a right which belongs to the meanest insect.

Hostility , Fate , War , Question

“Before the great civil revolution there will be a deepening of the crisis of this obsolete order.”

Jorge Majfud (1969) Uruguayan-American writer

La globalización mestiza después de la crisis mundial http://www.letralia.com/108/articulo04.htm/ La República newspaper http://www.bitacora.com.uy/articulos/2003/febrero/110/principal.htm (February 2003)
Context: Before the great civil revolution there will be a deepening of the crisis of this obsolete order. This crisis will happen in almost all areas, from the political order to the economic, passing through the military. The Superpower is nowadays very fragile due to its military resources, with which it has mined the most strategic weapon of ancient diplomacy […] it won’t be able to resist an increasingly hostile context because its economy, base of its military power, will weaken in inverse proportion. Today it’s able to win any war, with or without allies, but the successive triumphs won’t be able to save it from a progressive erosion. The immediate result will be great global insecurity, although it will be overcome with the civil revolution. In this moment breaking point, the West will debate between greater military control or civil disobedience, which will be silent and anonymous, without leaders or warlords.

“The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lecture X, "Conversion, concluded"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: The believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.

Love , God , Birth , Heart

“It was explained that the North Korean matter was a diplomatic inconvenience, while Iraq's non-disarmament remained a "crisis". The reason was strategic: even without WMDs, North Korea could inflict a million casualties on its southern neighbour and raze Seoul. Iraq couldn't manage anything on this scale, so you could attack it.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

"The Palace of the End" (2003)
Context: It was explained that the North Korean matter was a diplomatic inconvenience, while Iraq's non-disarmament remained a "crisis". The reason was strategic: even without WMDs, North Korea could inflict a million casualties on its southern neighbour and raze Seoul. Iraq couldn't manage anything on this scale, so you could attack it. North Korea could, so you couldn't. The imponderables of the proliferation age were becoming ponderable. Once a nation has done the risky and nauseous work of acquisition, it becomes unattackable. A single untested nuclear weapon may be a liability. But five or six constitute a deterrent. From this it crucially follows that we are going to war with Iraq because it doesn't have weapons of mass destruction. Or not many. The surest way by far of finding out what Iraq has is to attack it. Then at last we will have Saddam's full cooperation in our weapons inspection, because everything we know about him suggests that he will use them all. The Pentagon must be more or less convinced that Saddam's WMDs are under a certain critical number. Otherwise it couldn't attack him.

“A crisis should have thunder in it.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Archipelago (1979), Chapter Four, Pt. 6
Context: A crisis should have thunder in it. If Finnegan and Dotty had been able to generate a crisis with thunder and lightning, things might have been different. But what if the last anchor-cable parts when no one knows it, and the drift has already begun? This is the crisis come and gone.

“The time is out of joint. The world is going badly. It is worn but its wear no longer counts. Old age or youth-one no longer counts in that way. The world has more than one age. We lack the measure of the measure. We no longer realize the wear, we no longer take account of it as of a single age in the progress of history. Neither maturation, nor crisis, nor even agony. Something else. What is happening is happening to age itself, it strikes a blow at the teleological order of history. What is coming, in which the untimely appears, is happening to time but it does not happen in time. Contretemps. The time is out of joint.”

Jacques Derrida book Specters of Marx

Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)
Specters of Marx (1993)
Context: The time is out of joint. The world is going badly. It is worn but its wear no longer counts. Old age or youth-one no longer counts in that way. The world has more than one age. We lack the measure of the measure. We no longer realize the wear, we no longer take account of it as of a single age in the progress of history. Neither maturation, nor crisis, nor even agony. Something else. What is happening is happening to age itself, it strikes a blow at the teleological order of history. What is coming, in which the untimely appears, is happening to time but it does not happen in time. Contretemps. The time is out of joint. Theatrical speech, Hamlet's speech before the theater of the world, of history, and of politics. The age is off its hinges. Everything, beginning with time, seems out of kilter, unjust, dis-adjusted. The world is going very badly, it wears as it grows, as the Painter also says at the beginning of Timon of Athens (which is Marx's play, is it not). For, this time, it is a painter's speech, as if he were speaking of a spectacle or before a tableau: "How goes the world?-It wears, sir, as it grows.

Youth , Age , World , Way

“In love with whole numbers, the Pythagoreans believed that all things could be derived from them. Certainly all other numbers.
So a crisis in doctrine occurred when they discovered that the square root of two was irrational.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

37 min 45 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Backbone of Night [Episode 7]
Context: There can be an infinite number of polygons, but only five regular solids. Four of the solids were associated with earth, fire, air and water. The cube for example represented earth. These four elements, they thought, make up terrestrial matter. So the fifth solid they mystically associated with the Cosmos. Perhaps it was the substance of the heavens. This fifth solid was called the dodecahedron. Its faces are pentagons, twelve of them. Knowledge of the dodecahedron was considered too dangerous for the public. Ordinary people were to be kept ignorant of the dodecahedron. In love with whole numbers, the Pythagoreans believed that all things could be derived from them. Certainly all other numbers.
So a crisis in doctrine occurred when they discovered that the square root of two was irrational. That is: the square root of two could not be represented as the ratio of two whole numbers, no matter how big they were. "Irrational" originally meant only that. That you can't express a number as a ratio. But for the Pythagoreans it came to mean something else, something threatening, a hint that their world view might not make sense, the other meaning of "irrational".

Love

“Over the past few decades, we've gotten into the bad habit of looking to the government to solve every personal and social crisis that comes along. People have really come to misunderstand government's scope. There's only so much it can do.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

I Ain't Got Time To Bleed (1999)
Context: Over the past few decades, we've gotten into the bad habit of looking to the government to solve every personal and social crisis that comes along. People have really come to misunderstand government's scope. There's only so much it can do. For one thing, it's a terrible social regulator. And morals and values aren't things that legislation can even touch. You can't legislate morality. It doesn't work.

People , Past , Personality

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

Milton Friedman book Capitalism and Freedom

Preface (1982 edition), p. ix
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.

Lying , Idea , Change , Dependency

“Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Statement of 1876, in The Diary of James A. Garfield: 1875-1877 (1983), edited by Harry James Brown and Frederick D. Williams. p. 396
1870s
Context: Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis. Conservatives have their place in the piping times of peace; but in emergencies only rugged issue men amount to much.

“There are no emergency meetings, no headlines, no breaking news. No one is acting as if we were in a crisis. Even most climate scientists or green politicians keep on flying around the world, eating meat and dairy. … Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground. So we can't save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. Everything needs to change. And it has to start today.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

"School strike for climate - save the world by changing the rules" https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/greta-speeches#greta_speech_tedx, TEDxStockholm (24 November 2018)
2018

World , Change , Flying

“I have Asperger's syndrome and that means I'm sometimes a bit different from the norm. And - given the right circumstances - being different is a superpower. It makes you think differently. And especially in such a big crisis like this one we need to think outside the box. We need to think outside our current system, that we need people that think outside the box and who aren't like everyone else.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Greta Thunberg Explains Why Her Asperger's Is A 'Superpower' That Helps Her Activism https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/greta-thunberg-arpergers-activism_n_5d77e5cee4b064513575d260, HuffPost (10 September 2019)
2019

Thinking , Box , People , Making love

“For way too long, the politicians and the people in power have gotten away with not doing anything to fight the climate crisis, but we will make sure that they will not get away with it any longer. We are striking because we have done our homework and they have not.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

Teen climate activist Greta Thunberg speaks at four school strikes in a week, video 1:57, Source: Reuters, https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2019/mar/01/teen-climate-activist-greta-thunberg-speaks-at-four-school-strikes-in-a-week-video The Guardian (1 Mar 2019)
2019

Way , Fight , Making love , People

“We are facing an existential crisis… it will have a massive impact on our lives in the future, but also now, especially in vulnerable communities. And I think that we should wake up, and we should also try to wake the adults up, because they are the ones who — their generation is the ones who are mostly responsible for this crisis, and we need to hold them accountable.”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

We Are Striking to Disrupt the System... https://www.democracynow.org/2019/9/11/greta_thunberg_swedish_activist_climate_crisis, DemocracyNow (11 September 2019)
2019

Future , Thinking , Communication

“Nazi ideology offered redemption from a national ontological crisis, to which it was attracted like a predatory shark to blood.”

Michael Burleigh (1955) American historian and writer

Source: The Third Reich: A New History (2000), p. 12

“Increasingly, I believe that the issue of migration will be seen by future historians as the fatal solvent of the EU. In their accounts Brexit will appear as merely an early symptom of the crisis. Their argument will be that a massive Völkerwanderung overwhelmed the project for European integration, exposing the weakness of the EU as an institution and driving voters back to national politics for solutions.”

Niall Ferguson (1964) British historian

"The EU melting pot is melting down" https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/06/18/the-melting-pot-melting-down/2tShNLlY7JLn4v3PQEtoLK/story.html Boston Globe, June 18, 2018.

Future , Appearance

“Is Spinoza baroque? No, but if we find, through this line of thinking, a spurious and worn-out figure that rejects the crisis, that repeats the utopia in its ingenuous Renaissance form, what we have found is merely Spinozism. When classical idealism takes up Spinoza, in effect it only takes up (or invents?) Spinozism, a Renaissance philosophy of the bourgeois revolution of the capitalist market!”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Selected works, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics (1991)

Thinking

“Kierkegaard cautioned that the crisis for biblical faith concerning conformity to the world, in one form or another, occurs wherever the anomaly of an established church appears. In the United States, the Constantinian Accommodation has been marvelously proliferated. Practically all churches and sects are, in effect, established and, in turn, conformed to the dominant social philosophy or secular ideology or civic religion. Biblical faith, here, in consequence, is strenuously distorted and persistently ridiculed—in the name of God, of course.”

William Stringfellow (1928–1985) American theologian

Source: An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land (1973), p. 46

God , Faith , Religion , Appearance

Quotes about crisis page 6

Quotes about crisis
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