Quotes about depressive
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Barbara Kingsolver photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Harry Truman photo

“It's a recession when your neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose yours.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Quoted in The Observer 13 April 1958

Jeffrey Eugenides photo
Brené Brown photo
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Sylvia Plath photo

“The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.”

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 6
Context: Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

Barbara Kingsolver photo
Matt Haig photo
Sally Brampton photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“THERE is widespread agreement among economists that abuse of credit constitutes one of the chief unwholesome elements in business booms and is mainly responsible for the ensuing crash and depression.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Part III, Chapter XIII, The Reservoir Plan and Credit Control, p. 153
Storage and Stability (1937)

Joseph Addison photo

“Education…is a companion which no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despotism enslave: at home a friend, abroad an introduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament: it chastens vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government to genius. Without it, what is man? A splendid slave, a reasoning savage.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Though sometimes attributed to Addison, this actually comes from a speech delivered by the Irish lawyer Charles Phillips in 1817, in the case of O'Mullan v. M'Korkill, published in Irish Eloquence: The Speeches of the Celebrated Irish Orators (1834) pp. 91-92.
Misattributed

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Dylan Moran photo
Murasaki Shikibu photo
Olaudah Equiano photo

“Such a tendency has the slave-trade to debauch men's minds, and harden them to every feeling of humanity! For I will not suppose that the dealers in slaves are born worse than other men—No; it is the fatality of this mistaken avarice, that it corrupts the milk of human kindness and turns it into gall. And, had the pursuits of those men been different, they might have been as generous, as tender-hearted and just, as they are unfeeling, rapacious and cruel. Surely this traffic cannot be good, which spreads like a pestilence, and taints what it touches! which violates that first natural right of mankind, equality and independency, and gives one man a dominion over his fellows which God could never intend! For it raises the owner to a state as far above man as it depresses the slave below it; and, with all the presumption of human pride, sets a distinction between them, immeasurable in extent, and endless in duration! Yet how mistaken is the avarice even of the planters? Are slaves more useful by being thus humbled to the condition of brutes, than they would be if suffered to enjoy the privileges of men? The freedom which diffuses health and prosperity throughout Britain answers you—No. When you make men slaves you deprive them of half their virtue, you set them in your own conduct an example of fraud, rapine, and cruelty, and compel them to live with you in a state of war; and yet you complain that they are not honest or faithful! You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodigal of her bounties in a degree unknown to yourselves, has left man alone scant and unfinished, and incapable of enjoying the treasures she has poured out for him!—An assertion at once impious and absurd. Why do you use those instruments of torture? Are they fit to be applied by one rational being to another? And are ye not struck with shame and mortification, to see the partakers of your nature reduced so low? But, above all, are there no dangers attending this mode of treatment? Are you not hourly in dread of an insurrection? […] But by changing your conduct, and treating your slaves as men, every cause of fear would be banished. They would be faithful, honest, intelligent and vigorous; and peace, prosperity, and happiness, would attend you.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. V
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

Richard Rodríguez photo
Friedrich Engels photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Rob Pike photo

“Economists can take a good deal of credit for the stabilization policies which have been followed in most Western countries since 1945 with considerable success. It is easy to generate a euphoric and self-congratulatory mood when one compares the twenty years after the first World War, 1919-39, with the twenty years after the second, 1945-65. The first twenty years were a total failure; the second twenty years, at least as far as economic policy is concerned, have been a modest success. We have not had any great depression; we have not had any serious financial collapse; and on the whole we have had much higher rates of development in most parts of the world than we had in the 1920’s and 1930’s, even though there are some conspicuous failures. Whether the unprecedented rates of economic growth of the last twenty years, for instance in Japan and Western Europe, can be attributed to economics, or whether they represent a combination of good luck in political decision making with the expanding impact of the natural and biological sciences on the economy, is something we might argue. I am inclined to attribute a good deal to good luck and non-economic forces, but not all of it, and even if economics only contributed 10 percent, this would amount to a very handsome rate of return indeed, considering the very small amount of resources we have really put into economics.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1960s, The economics of knowledge and the knowledge of economics, 1966, p. 9

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George Holmes Howison photo

“And the most depressing sign about [ Josiah Royce's ] thinking is that he seems perfectly aware how this makes no provision either for immortality or for real freedom, and yet he appears to have no uneasiness under it, but to contemplate this ghastly destiny of ours with a complacency even savoring of self-satisfaction.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Letter to W.T. Harris; Quoted in: James McLachlan, "George Holmes Howison: The Conception of God Debate and the Beginnings of Personal Idealism." The Personalist Forum. Vol. 15, Nr. 1 (1995). p. 6; Cited in Dwayne Tunstall, Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight, Fordham Univ Press, 2009. p. 12
Journals

Ron Paul photo
Ben Carson photo

“There is no fulfillment in things whatsoever. And I think one of the reasons that depression reigns supreme amongst the rich and famous is some of them thought that maybe those things would bring them happiness. But what, in fact, does is having a cause, having a passion. And that's really what gives life's true meaning.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

"Famed Surgeon Ben Carson on Overcoming Adversity" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4633158, National Public Radio (May 6, 2005)

Wesley Clair Mitchell photo
Paul Krugman photo

“When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around. As a result, all the usual rules of economics are stood on their head; we enter a looking-glass world in which virtue is vice and prudence is folly. Thrift hurts our future prospects; sound money makes us poorer. Moreover, that's the kind of world we have been living in for the past several years, which means that it is a kind of world that students should understand. […] Depression economics is marked by paradoxes, in which seemingly virtuous actions have perverse, harmful effects. Two paradoxes in particular stand out: the paradox of thrift, in which the attempt to save more actually leads to the nation as a whole saving less, and the less-well-known paradox of flexibility, in which the willingness of workers to protect their jobs by accepting lower wages actually reduces total employment. […] In times of depression, the rules are different. Conventionally sound policy – balanced budgets, a firm commitment to price stability – helps to keep the economy depressed. Once again, this is not normal. Most of the time we are not in a depression. But sometimes we are – and 2013, when this chapter was written, was one of those times.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

“Depressions are Different”, in Robert M. Solow, ed. Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates. 2014.

Robert Skidelsky photo

“What started Keynes on the road to the Keynesian Revolution was the incomplete British recovery from the depression of 1920 to 1922.”

Robert Skidelsky (1939) Economist and author

John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003), Ch. 21. Monetary Reform

Ben Bernanke photo
Irving Kirsch photo
Marlon Brando photo

“On the day Kazan showed me the completed picture I was so depressed by my performance that I got up and left the screening room.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Speaking of his performance in On the Waterfront (1954). Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994)
"If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don't know what it is."- Eli Kazan on Brando's performance in On the Waterfront, published in Marlon Brando, Portraits and Film Stills 1946-1995 (1996)

Friedrich Hayek photo
Alan Rusbridger photo
Douglas Hofstadter photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
James Freeman Clarke photo
Eric Frein photo
Abbie Hoffman photo

“Nostalgia is a form of depression both for a society and an individual.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Bye-Bye Sixties, Hollywood-Style, Square Dancing in the Ice Age (1982).

Rebecca West photo
Paul Krugman photo
Parker Palmer photo

“In depression, the built-in bunk detector that we all possess is not only turned on but is set on high.”

Parker Palmer (1939) American theologian

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (1999), pp. 59-60

Rachel Maddow photo

“Spending freeze is what made the Depression 'Great.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The View, ABC (5 March 2009)

Stanley Baldwin photo
Rollo May photo
Michael Hudson (economist) photo

“To the deficit commission, a depression is the solution to the problem, not a problem.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

" Why Government is More Afraid of Debt than Depression http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6002" Video Interview, The Real News Network (TRNN) (December 16, 2010)

Grover Norquist photo
Dylan Moran photo
Adam Ferguson photo
Andrei Sakharov photo
Benjamin Graham photo
Nathan Leone photo

“The Pink Panther is supposed to use humor to uplift. Instead, I departed this movie feeling depressed. Lifeless comedies can suck the energy out of a viewer, especially when they sully the image of an cinematic icon.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=810 of The Pink Panther (2006).
One-star reviews

Stephen Crane photo
Luciano Pavarotti photo

“Nothing that has happened has made me feel gloomy or remain depressed. I love my life.”

Luciano Pavarotti (1935–2007) Italian operatic tenor

Pavarotti : My World (1995)

Herbert Hoover photo

“I’m the only person of distinction who’s ever had a depression named for him.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Quoted in An Uncommon Man (1984) by Richard Norton Smith

Christopher Titus photo

“Stimulation of brain pleasure centers can eliminate feelings of rage, fear, and depression.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Before Ethics and Morality" (1972)

James A. Garfield photo

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce…. And when you realize the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate.”

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

The first sentence, attributed to Garfield since the 1890s http://books.google.com/books?id=-RoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA156&dq=%22Whoever+controls+the+volume+of+money%22, is almost certainly a paraphrase of Garfield's "absolute dictator" quote, above. The second part is a late 20th-century commentary misattributed to Garfield.
Misattributed

Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Raghuram G. Rajan photo

“If you are an outsider looking at India, learn to filter out both the irrational exuberance and the excessive pessimism. We're subject to both. You will become manic-depressive if you follow our moods.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

As quoted in " Economy will pick up by year-end, says RBI chief http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/10/16/india-rbi-rates-raguram-rajan-idINDEE99E0FF20131016", Reuters (16 October 2013)

Oscar Levant photo

“I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.”

Oscar Levant (1906–1972) American comedian, composer, pianist and actor

As quoted in Memorable Quotations: Jewish Writers of the Past (2005) edited by Carol A. Dingle.

Warren Farrell photo
Quentin Crisp photo
Jimmy Hoffa photo

“You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 2, How It All Started, p. 27

Herbert Hoover photo

“Economic depression can not be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964 (1971)

Chris Cornell photo
Alfred P. Sloan photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (13 September 1929); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Lovis Corinth photo

“Diseases, a paralysis of the left side, a monstrous right hand tremor strengthened by the efforts by the needle [for engraving] and caused by previous excesses with alcohol, prevent me from doing any calligraphic craftsmanship. A constant effort to achieve my goal - I've never reached the degree hoped - has exacerbated my life, and every job has ended with the depression of having to go on with this life.”

Lovis Corinth (1858–1925) German painter

Quote, 1923; in Lovis Corinth, Selbstbiographie, L. Corinth; Hirzel, Leipzig, 1926, p. 194; as quoted in: German Artists' Writings in the XX Century - Lovis Corinth, Autobiographic Writings. Part two http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2014/10/german-artists-writings-in-xx-century.html

Michael Elmore-Meegan photo
Gavin Free photo

“Let's just hope I don't find any more turtles, 'cause it is really getting me depressed.”

Gavin Free (1988) English filmmaker

"Let's Play - World Of Warcraft Ep2" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOy47lHUuhg. youtube.com. March 11, 2013. Retrieved January 3, 2016.

William Paley photo

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

The Naked Communist (1958)

Lois McMaster Bujold photo
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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“Architecture is treated as crystallisation; sculpture, as the organic modelling of the material in its sensuous and spatial totality; painting, as the coloured surface and line; while in music, space, as such, passes into the point of time possessed of content within itself, until finally the external medium is in poetry depressed into complete insignificance.”

Die Architektur ist dann die Kristallisation, die Skulptur die organische Figuration der Materie in ihrer sinnlich-räumlichen Totalität; die Malerei die gefärbte Fläche und Linie; während in der Musik der Raum überhaupt zu dem in sich erfüllten Punkt der Zeit übergeht; bis das äußere Material endlich in der Poesie ganz zur Wertlosigkeit herabgesetzt ist.
Part III https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/ae/ch03.htm
Lectures on Aesthetics (1835)

Daniel Abraham photo

“That man could take a visitation from God with thirty underdressed angels announcing that sex was okay after all and make it seem vaguely depressing.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Epilogue (p. 560)
Leviathan Wakes (2011)

Calvin Coolidge photo

“No more important development has taken place in the last year than the beginning of a restoration of agriculture to a prosperous condition. We must permit no division of classes in this country, with one occupation striving to secure advantage over another. Each must proceed under open opportunities and with a fair prospect of economic equality. The Government can not successfully insure prosperity or fix prices by legislative fiat. Every business has its risk and its times of depression. It is well known that in the long run there will be a more even prosperity and a more satisfactory range of prices under the natural working out of economic laws than when the Government undertakes the artificial support of markets and industries. Still we can so order our affairs, so protect our own people from foreign competition, so arrange our national finances, so administer our monetary system, so provide for the extension of credits, so improve methods of distribution, as to provide a better working machinery for the transaction of the business of the Nation with the least possible friction and loss. The Government has been constantly increasing its efforts in these directions for the relief and permanent establishment of agriculture on a sound and equal basis with other business.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

John Hagee photo

“God says in Jeremiah 16 — "Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers" — that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - "Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them" — that will be the Jews — "from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust — you can't see that. So think about this — I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Herzl was? How many of you don't have a clue who he was? Woo, sweet God! Theodore Herzl is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said, "this land is our land, God wants us to live there". So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, "I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel". So few went, Herzl went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says — Jeremiah righty? — "they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks", meaning: there's no place to hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, "my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel". Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come spiritually alive and say, "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God"?”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

late 2005 sermon at Cornerstone Church, quoted in

Jared Diamond photo
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Abbie Hoffman photo
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Michał Kalecki photo

“We have found that the degree of monopoly is likely to increase somewhat during depressions.”

Michał Kalecki (1899–1970) Polish economist

Source: Theory of Economic Dynamics (1965), Chapter 2, Distribution of National Income, p. 31

Chris Cornell photo
James Braid photo

“…have the power of directing or concentrating nervous energy, raising or depressing it in a remarkable degree, at will, locally or generally. That in this state, we have the power of exciting or depressing the force and frequency of the heart's action, and the state of circulation, or generally, in a surprising degree.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

When he hypnotized a patient, in Neurypnology; or, The rationale of nervous sleep, considered in relation ... http://books.google.co.in/books?id=DMgDAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover.p.151.