Quotes about damage
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Augusten Burroughs photo
Mitch Albom photo

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

Poetry and Craft (1965)
Source: On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose

Yehuda Amichai photo
David Levithan photo
Pat Conroy photo

“Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.”

Source: The Prince of Tides, character Henry Wingo, chapter 2, page 53 (e-book edition)

Colum McCann photo
Augusten Burroughs photo

“The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Steve Martin photo
William Goldman photo
Lionel Shriver photo
Haruki Murakami photo
David Levithan photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Housework, if it is done properly, can cause brain damage.”

Erma Bombeck (1927–1996) When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent le…
George Carlin photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of Minix.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Post to comp.os.minix newsgroup, 1992-01-29, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992Jan29.231426.20469%40klaava.Helsinki.FI, To Andrew Tanenbaum (author of Minix) during the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate.
1990s, 1991-94

William H. McNeill photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our states equal to the laws of the 31 states which do not have tonight right-to-work measures. And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading state and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest. The third path is the path of liberation. It is to use our success for the fulfillment of our lives. A great nation is one which breeds a great people. A great people flower not from wealth and power, but from a society which spurs them to the fullness of their genius. That alone is a Great Society. Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome. We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Nina Paley photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
Vangelis photo
Kurt Schwitters photo
John Eardley Wilmot photo
Aron Ra photo
Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet photo

“Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least impurity without damage. It is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by a single flaw.”

Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) French bishop and theologian

Quoted in "The Forbes Book of Business Quotations" (1997) by Edward C. Goodman, Ted Goodman , p. 411

Hans Frank photo

“Let me tell you quite frankly: in one way or another we will have to finish with the Jews. The führer once expressed it as follows: should Jewry once again succeed in inciting a world war, the bloodletting could not be limited to the peoples they drove to war but the Jews themselves would be done for in Europe. If the Jewish tribe survives the war in Europe while we sacrifice our blood for the preservation of Europe, this war will be but a partial success. Basically, I must presume, therefore, that the Jews will disappear. To that end I have started negotiations to expel them to the east. In any case, there will be a great Jewish migration. But what is to become of the Jews? Do you think that they will be settled in villages in the conquered eastern territories? In Berlin we have been told not to complicate matters: since neither these territories, nor our own, have any use for them, we should liquidate them ourselves! Gentlemen, I must ask you to remain unmoved by pleas for pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we encounter them and wherever possible, in order to maintain the overall mastery of the Reich here… For us the Jews are also exceptionally damaging because they are being such gluttons. There are an estimated 2.5 million Jews in the General Government, perhaps. 3.5 million. These 3.5 million Jews, we cannot shoot them, nor can we poison them. Even so, we can take steps which in some way or other will pave the way for their destruction, notably in connection with the grand measures to be discussed in the Reich. The General Government must become just as judenfrei (free of Jews) as the Reich!”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To senior members of his administration, December 16, 1941, quoted in "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: the final solution in history" - Page 302 - by Arno J. Mayer - History - 1988

Holden Karnofsky photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo
Peter F. Drucker photo

“A success that has outlived its usefulness may, in the end, be more damaging than failure.”

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

Source: 1960s - 1980s, MANAGEMENT: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (1973), Part 1, p. 159

David Attenborough photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5414. Want of Care does us more Damage than want of Knowledge.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Jimmy Carter photo

“We've become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Statement in an interview on SuperSoul Sunday http://www.supersoul.tv/supersoul-sunday/jimmy-carter-on-whether-he-could-be-president-today-absolutely-not/ with Oprah Winfrey, as quoted in "Jimmy Carter Tells Oprah America Is No Longer a Democracy, Now an Oligarchy" by Jon Levine, in .Mic (24 September 2015) https://mic.com/articles/125813/jimmy-carter-tells-oprah-america-is-no-longer-a-democracy-now-an-oligarchy
Post-Presidency

Jeremy Corbyn photo

“I believe honestly and deeply that the treatment of whales is an example of the evil intelligence of humankind in relation to the rest of the natural world. We have seen greed of the most impossible kind descending on the Arctic and the Antarctic to destroy the most intelligent and beautiful creatures that the planet can produce…We are in the process of destroying much of the planet through destruction of the ozone layer, leading to the greenhouse effect, and the destruction of life. The whale is an example of how such destruction happens. As the ozone layer is destroyed the plankton in the Southern ocean will die and the whales will lose much of their food. Last year we opposed the Antarctic Minerals Bill because we feared that it would lead to pollution of the Southern ocean and damage the whales' food supply. The Government must oppose any extension of whaling of any type, scientific or otherwise, and I hope and trust that they will do so. But we must go further. Countries which engage in the barbarity of so-called scientific whaling, which in reality is crude commercialism of the nastiest kind, deserve retribution from us all and we must bring every possible sanction to bear against them. If we do not take care of our planet and our environment, and of animals such as the whale, mankind will suffer and our planet will die because we have not cared for the natural environment that we all share.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1990/mar/02/whaling in the House of Commons (2 March 1990).
1990s

Maryanne Amacher photo
John Gilmore photo

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

John Gilmore (1955) Internet activist, software programmer and contributor to the GNU project

As quoted in TIME magazine (6 December 1993) http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html
Unsourced variant:
The Net treats censorship as a defect and routes around it.

Fred Astaire photo
Steve Kilbey photo
Paul R. Ehrlich photo
W. Edwards Deming photo
Évariste Galois photo

“… an author never does more damage to his readers than when he hides a difficulty.”

Évariste Galois (1811–1832) French mathematician, founder of group theory

... un auteur ne nuit jamais tant à ses lecteurs que quand il dissimule une difficulté.
in the preface of Deux mémoires d'Analyse pure, October 8, 1831, edited by [Jules Tannery, Manuscrits de Évariste Galois, Gauthier-Villars, 1908, 27]

Christopher Hitchens photo
Robert Graves photo
Tony Abbott photo
Antoni Tàpies photo

“In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it’s a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

In an interview on the BBC arts program 'Omnibus', (1990); as quoted in 'Antoni Tàpies a Painter With Textures, Dies at 88', by William Grimes, in 'The New York Times', 8 Febr, 2012, p. B17
1981 - 1990

Sri Chinmoy photo
Ron Paul photo
Andy Muschietti photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“I will recall once more Russia's most recent history.
Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.
Individual savings were depreciated, and old ideals destroyed. Many institutions were disbanded or reformed carelessly. Terrorist intervention and the Khasavyurt capitulation that followed damaged the country's integrity. Oligarchic groups — possessing absolute control over information channels — served exclusively their own corporate interests. Mass poverty began to be seen as the norm. And all this was happening against the backdrop of a dramatic economic downturn, unstable finances, and the paralysis of the social sphere.
Many thought or seemed to think at the time that our young democracy was not a continuation of Russian statehood, but its ultimate collapse, the prolonged agony of the Soviet system.
But they were mistaken.
That was precisely the period when the significant developments took place in Russia. Our society was generating not only the energy of self-preservation, but also the will for a new and free life.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Kremlin RU, http://kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2005/04/25/2031_type70029type82912_87086.shtml (25 April 2005)
2000 - 2005

Maneka Gandhi photo

“Can we afford to let Laloo, whose knowledge of anything except caste structures is non-existent, damage the rural economy further? The long-suffering railway ministry, which has by now lost its ability to resist any absurd decision by any of their ministers, has agreed to budget Rs 250 crore a year to buy kulhars. While all that money comes from your pocket, where will it actually go?”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

Criticising Railway Minister Lalu Prasad's plan to introduce disposable clay-cups or kulhars to serve tea in trains, as quoted in "Clay-Pot Dictator!" http://www.outlookindia.com/article/claypot-dictator/224296, Outlook India (28 June 2004)
2001-2010

Holden Karnofsky photo
Pentti Linkola photo
John Gray photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo

“Better than big business is clean business.
To an honest man the most satisfactory reflection after he has amassed his dollars is not that they are many but that they are all clean.
What constitutes clean business? The answer is obvious enough, but the obvious needs restating every once in a while.
"A clean profit is one that has also made a profit for the other fellow."
This is fundamental moral axiom in business. Any gain that arises from another's loss is dirty.
Any business whose prosperity depends upon damage to any other business is a menace to the general welfare.
That is why gambling, direct or indirect, is criminal, why lotteries are prohibited by law, and why even gambling slot-machine devices are not tolerated in civilized countries. When a farmer sells a housekeeper a barrel of apples, when a milkman sells her a quart of milk, or the butcher a pound of steak, or the dry-goods man a yard of muslin, the housekeeper is benefited quite as much as those who get her money.
That is the type of honest, clean business, the kind that helps everybody and hurts nobody. Of course as business becomes more complicated it grows more difficult to tell so clearly whether both sides are equally prospered. No principle is automatic. It requires sense, judgment, and conscience to keep clean; but it can be done, nevertheless, if one is determined to maintain his self-respect. A man that makes a habit, every deal he goes into, of asking himself, "What is there in it for the other fellow?" and who refuses to enter into any transaction where his own gain will mean disaster to some one else, cannot go for wrong.
And no matter how many memorial churches he builds, nor how much he gives to charity, or how many monuments he erects in his native town, any man who has made his money by ruining other people is not entitled to be called decent. A factory where many workmen are given employment, paid living wages, and where health and life are conserved, is doing more real good in the world than ten eleemosynary institutions.
The only really charitable dollar is the clean dollar. And the nasty dollar, wrung from wronged workmen or gotten by unfair methods from competitors, is never nastier than when it pretends to serve the Lord by being given to the poor, to education, or to religion. In the long run all such dollars tend to corrupt and disrupt society.
Of all vile money, that which is the most unspeakably vile is the money spent for war; for war is conceived by the blundering ignorance and selfishness of rulers, is fanned to flame by the very lowest passions of humanity, and prostitutes the highest ideal of men; zeal for the common good; to the business of killing human beings and destroying the results of their collective work.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), Clean Business

Zell Miller photo

“I say bomb the hell out of them. If there's collateral damage, so be it. They certainly found our civilians to be expendable.”

Zell Miller (1932–2018) Politician and United States Marine Corps officer

Speech on Senate floor shorty after attacks against U.S. on September 11, 2001. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B04E4DC1038F930A2575AC0A9679C8B63; (at end of video http://youtube.com/watch?v=WZvt1tmRImU).

Pauline Kael photo
Antonin Scalia photo

“The outcome of today's case will doubtless be heralded as a triumph of judicial statesmanship. It is not that, unless it is statesmanlike needlessly to prolong this Court's self-awarded sovereignty over a field where it has little proper business, since the answers to most of the cruel questions posed are political, and not juridical -- a sovereignty which therefore quite properly, but to the great damage of the Court, makes it the object of the sort of organized public pressure that political institutions in a democracy ought to receive. […] Ordinarily, speaking no more broadly than is absolutely required avoids throwing settled law into confusion; doing so today preserves a chaos that is evident to anyone who can read and count. Alone sufficient to justify a broad holding is the fact that our retaining control, through Roe, of what I believe to be, and many of our citizens recognize to be, a political issue, continuously distorts the public perception of the role of this Court. We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us -- their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will -- to follow the popular will. Indeed, I expect we can look forward to even more of that than before, given our indecisive decision today. […] It was an arguable question today whether [Section] 188.029 of the Missouri law contravened this Court’s understanding of Roe v. Wade, and I would have examined Roe rather than examining the contravention. […] Of the four courses we might have chosen today -- to reaffirm Roe, to overrule it explicitly, to overrule it sub silentio, or to avoid the question -- the last is the least responsible. On the question of the constitutionality of [Section] 188.029, I concur in the judgment of the Court and strongly dissent from the manner in which it has been reached.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989, concurring in part and concurring in the judgment), 492 U.S. 490 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/492/490#writing-USSC_CR_0492_0490_ZC1, No. 88-605 ; decided July 3, 1989
1980s

“There is something about a swarm that is damaging to the pride of its individual members.”

Mervyn Peake (1911–1968) English writer, artist, poet and illustrator

Source: Gormenghast (1950), Chapter 32 (p. 555)

Zhang Zhijun photo

“Precedent has shown that sticking to such a political foundation (1992 Consensus) will allow continued healthy development of cross-strait ties. Damaging the foundation will damage the fruit of peaceful development in cross-strait ties, leading to endless problems across the strait.”

Zhang Zhijun (1953) Chinese politician

Zhang Zhijun (2016) cited in " Chinese official reiterates '1992 consensus' mantra http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201612230006.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 23 December 2016.

Noam Chomsky photo
Bill Sali photo
Roger Ebert photo
Bobby Jindal photo

“This is a serious storm that has caused serious damage in our state … We're pleased we haven't seen breaches in the levees. We're pleased we haven't seen major flooding in New Orleans or the places that flooded before. But there are serious challenges.”

Bobby Jindal (1971) American politician; two-term Governor of Louisiana

In response to the effects of Hurricane Gustav
"Jindal Presents a Face of Calm During the Storm" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/02/AR2008090203049.html, The Washington Post, September 2, 2008

“Do not allow yourself to be damaged by yourself.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 94

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Roy Jenkins photo

“There has been a lot of talk about the formation of a new centre party. Some have even been kind enough to suggest that I might lead it. I find this idea profoundly unattractive. I do so for at least four reasons. First, I do not believe that such a grouping would have any coherent philosophical base…A party based on such a rag-bag could stand for nothing positive. It would exploit grievances and fall apart when it sought to remedy them. I believe in exactly the reverse sort of politics…Second, I believe that the most likely effect of such an ill-considered grouping would be to destroy the prospect of an effective alternative government to the Conservatives…Some genuinely want a new, powerful anti-Conservative force. They would be wise to reflect that it is much easier to will this than to bring it about. The most likely result would be chaos on the left and several decades of Conservative hegemony almost as dismal and damaging as in the twenties and thirties. Third, I do not share the desire, at the root of much such thinking, to push what may roughly be called the leftward half of the Labour Party…out of the mainstream of British politics…Fourth, and more personally, I cannot be indifferent to the political traditions in which I was brought up and in which I have lived my political life. Politics are not to me a religion, but the Labour Party is and always had been an instinctive part of my life.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech to the Oxford University Labour Club (9 March 1973), quoted in The Times (10 March 1973), p. 4
1970s

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Barbara W. Tuchman photo
Mahinda Rajapaksa photo
David Duke photo
Larry Wall photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“I'm damaged in many ways. And yet a lot of what my fight is about is pushing through that to live a meaningful, sane existence and make a difference and play to my strengths.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

WSJ "Gillian Anderson: Reviving Blanche DuBois in Brooklyn" http://www.wsj.com/articles/gillian-anderson-reviving-blanche-dubois-in-brooklyn-1461975005 (April 29, 2016)
2010s

Michael Chabon photo
Naim Qassem photo
Umberto Veronesi photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Colin Powell photo
Roy Hattersley photo

“In politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.”

Roy Hattersley (1932) British Labour Party politician, published author and journalist

Evening Standard, 9 May 1989

“While everyone is influenced and persuaded daily in various ways, vulnerability to influence fluctuates. The ability to fend off persuaders is reduced when one is exhausted, rushed, stressed, uncertain, lonely, indifferent, uninformed, aged, very young, unsophisticated, ill, brain- damaged, drugged, drunk, distracted, fatigued, frightened, or very dependent.”

Margaret Singer (1921–2003) clinical psychology

Undue Influence and Written Documents: Psychological Aspects http://home.roadrunner.com/~tvfields/SingerCSJArticle/Frameset021.htm, Margaret Thaler Singer, Ph.D., University of California at Berkeley, Journal of Questioned Document Examination, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1992, the official publication of the Independent Association of Questioned Document Examiners, Inc.
1990s

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden photo

“The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property. That right is preserved sacred and incommunicable in all instances, where it has not been taken away or abridged by some public law for the good of the whole. The cases where this right of property is set aside by private law, are various. Distresses, executions, forfeitures, taxes etc are all of this description; wherein every man by common consent gives up that right, for the sake of justice and the general good. By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass. No man can set his foot upon my ground without my license, but he is liable to an action, though the damage be nothing; which is proved by every declaration in trespass, where the defendant is called upon to answer for bruising the grass and even treading upon the soil. If he admits the fact, he is bound to show by way of justification, that some positive law has empowered or excused him. The justification is submitted to the judges, who are to look into the books; and if such a justification can be maintained by the text of the statute law, or by the principles of common law. If no excuse can be found or produced, the silence of the books is an authority against the defendant, and the plaintiff must have judgment.”

Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden (1714–1794) English lawyer, judge and Whig politician

Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029 (1765), Constitution Society, United States, 2008-11-13 http://www.constitution.org/trials/entick/entick_v_carrington.htm,

Cato the Elder photo
Elliott Smith photo

“Crooked spin can't come to rest,I'm damaged bad at best.”

Elliott Smith (1969–2003) American singer-songwriter

Say Yes.
Lyrics, Either/Or (1997)

Fred Thompson photo
Kate Chopin photo