Quotes about disaster
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“World War II, at least in Europe, may have had some moral justification, though there can be some legitimate debate as to whether the US and its freedoms were ever really threatened, and certainly many of the Americans who died in that war saw their struggle as worthy, so that we may at least in good conscience honor their deaths. But Khe Sanh? Mosul? And for god’s sake, Marjah? Let’s get real. Khe Sanh, one of the major battles in the Vietnam War, was just one little piece of a huge malignant disaster in a war that was criminal from its inception, and that had no purpose beyond perpetuating the neocolonialist control by the US of a long-subjugated people who were fighting to be free, just as our own ancestors had done. The over 58,000 Americans who died in that war, who contributed to the killing of over 2 million Vietnamese, many or most of them civilians, may have engaged in personal acts of bravery, but they were not, as a group, heroes. Nor were they over there fighting for American freedom. Some, like Lt. William Calley, who did not die, were no doubt murderers. Most, though, were simply victims–victims of their own government’s years of lying and deceit. If we memorialize them, it should be by vowing never again to allow our government to commit such crimes, and to send Americans to fight and die for such criminal policies. Sadly, we’ve already allowed that to happen, though, over and over again–in the Panama, in Grenada, in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan and perhaps, before long, Iran and/or Pakistan.”

Dave Lindorff (1949) Award winning American journalist

The Glorification of War, 2010

God, Freedom, War, Personality

“Transhumanism develops new survival technologies and promotes sound policies to save the Earth and its inhabitants from being destroyed by human activities and natural disasters.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Nature

“Man-made environmental disasters force nature’s hand to unleash its fury on humankind.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Nature

“The Chernobyl disaster, more than anything else, opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue. It made absolutely clear how important it was to continue the policy of glasnost, and I must say that I started to think about time in terms of pre-Chernobyl and post-Chernobyl.”

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

"Turning point at Chernobyl" https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2006/04/21/commentary/world-commentary/turning-point-at-chernobyl/#.XPoajKR7mUk, Japan Times (21 April 2006) 2000s

Thinking, Time, Freedom

“History is made up of people recovering from the last disaster.”

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

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 32 (p. 335)

People, History

“My administration has identified three major priorities for creating a safe, modern, and lawful immigration system: fully securing the border, ending chain migration, and canceling the visa lottery. Chain migration is a disaster, and very unfair to our country. The visa lottery is something that should have never been allowed in the first place. People enter a lottery to come into our country. What kind of a system is that? It is time for Congress to act and to protect Americans.”

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

10 February 2018 https://abcnews.go.com/US/times-trump-slammed-chain-migration-apparently-helped-wifes/story?id=57132429 2010s, 2018, February

Time, People, Law, Country

“The oppressive weight of disaster and tragedy in our lives does not arise from a high percentage of evil among the summed total of all acts, but from the extraordinary power of exceedingly rare incidents of depravity to inflict catastrophic damage, especially in our technological age when airplanes can become powerful bombs.”

Stephen Jay Gould book I Have Landed

An even more evil man, armed only with a longbow, could not have wreaked such havoc at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.
"The Good People of Halifax", p. 390 (originally appeared in The Globe and Mail, 2001-09-20)
I Have Landed (2002)

Evil, Age

“Money drives politics. We all know that now. But the other side of this is that it’s not just an economic system, it’s also an ideological system. As an ideological system, what it generally does is three things that are pernicious and which set the groundwork for a kind of right-wing populism and a fascist politics. First, it operates off the assumption that all social problems are individual problems. Therefore whatever problems people face, the blame for those problems rests with themselves — whether we’re talking about ecological disasters, about poverty, about homelessness, about ignorance and illiteracy, and so forth and so on. Secondly, in doing so it tends to depoliticize people, and by depoliticizing them it becomes very difficult for people — operating under that notion of self-interest, a brutal form of competition, and this heightened notion of rugged individualism — to translate private troubles into larger systemic issues. Hence they find it very hard to understand the conditions in which they find themselves. Thirdly, it creates an enormous culture of ignorance.”

Henry Giroux (1943) American academic

Interview with Media For Us, 2019

Money, Understanding, People, Problem

“Attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman are unacceptable and must be fully investigated… but this incident must not be used as a pretext for a war with Iran, a war which would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, Iran, the region, and the world… The time is now for the United States to exert international leadership,… and bring the countries in the region together to forge a diplomatic solution to the growing tensions…I would also remind President Trump that there is no congressional authorization for a war with Iran… A unilateral U. S. attack on Iran would be illegal and unconstitutional.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Trump Must Not Be Allowed to Use Gulf of Oman Incidents as 'Pretext for Illegal War With Iran': Bernie Sanders, Common Dreams, Andrea Germanos, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/06/14/trump-must-not-be-allowed-use-gulf-oman-incidents-pretext-illegal-war-iran-bernie (14 June 2019) 2010s, 2019, June 2019

World, War, Time, Country

“Motto of the Institute: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; a great deal of knowledge is disaster, which detractors of the Institute scornfully paraphrase to: Somebody else’s ignorance is bliss.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Star King (1964), Chapter 8 (p. 83)

Knowledge

“The price we pay for the anticipation of our future is anxiety about it. Foretelling disaster is probably not much fun; Pollyanna was much happier than Cassandra. But the Cassandric components of our nature are necessary for survival.”

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

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 3, “The Brain and the Chariot” (p. 74)

Future, Nature

“For a hundred and fifty years or so democracy, or something like it, could flourish safely. The issues were such as to be settled without disaster by votes of common men, befogged and ignorant as they were. But now, if the race is simply to stay alive, political decisions depend on real knowledge of such things as nuclear physics, planetary ecology, genetic theory, even system mechanics. They aren’t up to it, Joe. With goodness and more will than they possess less than one in a thousand could stay awake over one page of nuclear physics; they can’t learn what they must know.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Gulf

Gulf (p. 544)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Democracy, Dependency, Learning, Knowledge

“He knew that soon, perhaps even today, something important was going to happen. Whether good or bad he did not know, but he darkly suspected. And with reason: there are few good things that may unexpectedly happen to a man, things, that is, of lasting importance. Disaster can strike from innumerable directions, in amazingly diverse ways.”

Fredric Brown (1906–1972) American novelist, short story author

Come and Go Mad (p. 291)
Short fiction, From These Ashes (2000)

Way, Bad luck

“It really was a brutal place, Los Angeles, less a city than a collection of hostile villages united only in their mutual suspicion of each other and a susceptibility to disasters, natural and otherwise. Fires, floods, riots and earthquakes; it was looking more and more like Armageddon-by-the-Pacific.”

Michael Nava (1954) American writer

Source: Henry Rios series of novels, The Death of Friends (1996), p.81

Angels, Hostility, Nature

“Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Speech at the Katowice Climate Change Conference, "David Attenborough: collapse of civilisation is on the horizon" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/david-attenborough-collapse-civilisation-on-horizon-un-climate-summit, The Guardian, 3 December 2018. Climate Change Conference 2018

World, Change, Nature

“Crashing out of Europe with no deal risks being a national disaster.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn meets Michel Barnier for 'useful' talks https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45660640, BBC News, 27 September 2018 2010s, 2018

“We are in an absolutely critical moment in the Brexit discussions and what that means is that we need to get behind Theresa May to deliver the best possible Brexit. The more that we undermine Theresa May the more likely we are to end up with a fudge, which would be an absolute disaster for everyone.”

Jeremy Hunt (1966) British politician

Business Brexit 'threats' are 'inappropriate' says Hunt https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44593095 BBC News (24 June 2018) 2018

“I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — good people, yes, but any religion based on a single… well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system that has worked pretty well for twenty-five hundred years. So you see I am ecumenical in my dislike for the Book. But like it or not, the Book is there; and because of it people die; and the world is in danger.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Appendix
1980s, At Home (1988)

God, Religion, People, Books

“Frankie Boyle: Thanks to Phill, Goldie and Miles, Noel, Professor Green and Michelle. This has been a disaster. Good night!”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Never Mind The Buzzcocks Series 24 Episode 12

Night

“They had made history well enough, Bolitho thought grimly, but it had ended in bloody disaster.”

Douglas Reeman (1924–2017) British author

A Tradition of Victory, Cap 2 "No Looking Back"

History

“The immediate technical cause of the accident was the tearing of the fabric of the outer envelope; this fabric had apparently been embrittled by improper doping treatment. The real reason for the disaster was, however, pride and jealousy and political ambition.”

J.E. Gordon (1913–1998) Materials scientist

Source: Structures (or, Why Things Don't Fall Down) (1978), Chapter 15, A Chapter of accidents

Tear, Jealousy

“The entrapment of black voters in the Democratic party has been a disaster, and it’s one of the reasons that progress on racial equality has been infinitesimal or at best incremental since the Civil Rights movement.”

Crispin Sartwell (1958) American philosopher

White Liberals: We’re Not Racist (August 29, 2016)

“If you talk to quite a lot of people around the world, whether it’s in an Internally Displaced Person camp or in an emergency disaster they often say the UK is a UN Security Council member, a leading member of the European Union, a leading member of NATO, you can make a massive difference and they want us to act.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

‘I’ve been in some horrific situations’ - MP http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/i-ve-been-in-some-horrific-situations-mp-1-7642788, The Yorkshire Post (26 December 2015)

World, Personality, Making love, People

“Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

White Noise (1984)

Life, Feeling, Heart, Dependency

“Abstract cleverness of the mind only separates the thinker from the world of reality, and that world, the Forest of Real Life, is in a desperate condition now because of too many who think too much and care too little. In spite of what many minds have thought themselves into believing, that mistake cannot continue for much longer if everything is going to survive. The one chance we have to avoid certain disaster is to change our approach, and learn to value wisdom and contentment. These are things that are being searched for anyway, through Knowledge and Cleverness, but they do not come from Knowledge and Cleverness. They never have, and they never will. We can no longer afford to look so desperately hard for something in the wrong way and in the wrong place. If Knowledge and Cleverness are allowed to go on wrecking things, they will before much longer destroy all life on this earth as we know it, and what little may temporarily survive will not be worth looking at, even if it were possible for us to do so.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

The Now of Pooh.
The Tao of Pooh (1982)

Chance, Search, Learning, Knowledge

“Trust your hunches... Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. Warning! Do not confuse your hunches with wishful thinking. This is the road to disaster.”

Joyce Brothers (1927–2013) Joyce Brothers

As quoted in Words of Wisdom : More Good Advice (1990) edited by William Safire and Leonard Safir, p. 199
Variant: Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.
Trust your hunches. Hunches are usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level. But be warned, don't confuse hunches with wishful thinking.

Thinking

“Do you think that you can frighten me with death? Could a worse disaster happen to you than killing me? I do not know what to say to you. I can only address you as the brother of Al-Aws addressed his cousin when he met the latter as he was going to help the Apostle of God”

Husayn ibn Ali (626–680) The grandson of Muhammad and the son of Ali ibn Abi Talib

Prophet Muhammad
Replied to Al-Hurr ibn Yazid Al-Tamimi, History of the Prophets and Kings, Vol. 19, p. 97
Regarding the Advent of Karbalā

God, Thinking, Death, Help

“I view the collapse of the Soviet Union as a disaster that entailed and still brings about negative consequences around the world. We got nothing good from this break-up.”

Alexander Lukashenko (1954) President of Belarus since 20 July 1994

As quoted in "Lukashenko views Soviet Union collapse as disaster" https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-views-soviet-union-collapse-as-disaster-94985-2016/, BelTA, September 30, 2016.

World

“Many disasters can be traced to our linguistic shortcomings. Millions of money and multitudes of men have been sacrificed in order to save the prestige of a mistake in translation committed "by authority."”

Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner (1840–1899) British orientalist

Writings of Dr. Leitner, Chapter: Oriental Translations of English Texts, p. 151

Money, Men

“I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410

Making love, Men, Success

“Disaster response requires discipline and adherence to a clear chain of command, not the move-fast-and-break-things approach of start-up culture.”

Michelle Goldberg (1975) American journalist

Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness (April 2, 2020)

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

Truth, Home, Wealth, People

“At first sight, domesticated animals may seem much better off than their wild cousins and ancestors. Wild buffaloes spend their days searching for food, water and shelter, and are constantly threatened by lions, parasites, floods and droughts. Domesticated cattle, by contrast, enjoy care and protection from humans. People provide cows and calves with food, water and shelter, they treat their diseases, and protect them from predators and natural disasters. True, most cows and calves sooner or later find themselves in the slaughterhouse. Yet does that make their fate any worse than that of wild buffaloes? Is it better to be devoured by a lion than slaughtered by a man? Are crocodile teeth kinder than steel blades?”

Yuval Noah Harari (1976) Israeli historian

" Industrial farming is one of the worst crimes in history https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question", The Guardian, 25 Sept. 2011

Food, Fate, Search, People

“In my business, fear is a sane and very healthy emotion. That's because death and disaster aren't abstractions. They're as goddamn real as real can be.”

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

Source: Novels, Lucky You (1997), Chapter 5

Business, Fear, Death

“In facing this disaster, we admit we have not done enough, there is space for improvement. Here I represent the Macau government in expressing our apologies to the residents.”

Fernando Chui (1957) Chief Executive of Macau (2009-2019)

Fernando Chui (2017) cited in " Macau leader Fernando Chui apologises to residents over Typhoon Hato havoc https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/battered-macau-and-hong-kong-clean-up-after-typhoon-hato-pounds-region-leaving-trail" on The Straits Times, 24 August 2017

“Humans may be on top of the food chain, but we are still at the mercy of earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, volcano eruptions, and other natural disasters.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Nature, Food

“People respond to these disasters in terms of their own experience. Unless the disaster has struck them personally, their circumstances, their environment, it is dismissed as a superficial thing.”

Kamo no Chōmei (1155–1216) Japanese poet

"An Account of My Hut" (1212)

Personality, People

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

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

As quoted by * 2020-05-10

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

Richard Hall

Independent

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

Bad luck, People, Swine

“Humanity is entirely responsible for being at the root of the problems arising from global warming. We need to rethink the way we live on earth in order to preserve life. Global warming is out of control…. Time is not on our side, which is why I am calling on all young millennials to hasten this radical revolution. You are a part of nature and compassion decrees that you take care of it as much as you do yourselves. It is only through mutual support and co-operation that you will be able to contain disasters that are fuelled by economic and social injustice and are fuelled by greed, selfishness, and other negative states of mind…. You are responsible for the wellbeing of billions of humans and all manner of living species sharing the adventure of life on earth. It is up to you to protect natural resources and guard over air, water, oceans, forests, fauna and flora. To do so it is essential that you realize your potential for love and compassion in order to care for the earth. Learn to love it through sharing it rather than striving to possess it and thereby destroying it.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

A Call for Revolution (2017-2018)

Selfishness, Time, Support, Learning

“Disaster is rarely as pervasive as it seems from recorded accounts. The fact of being on the record makes it appear continuous and ubiquitous whereas it is more likely to have been sporadic both in time and place. Besides, persistence of the normal is usually greater than the effect of the disturbance, as we know from our own times. After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening—on a lucky day—without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena. This has led me to formulate Tuchman's Law, as follows: "The fact of being reported multiplies the apparent extent of any deplorable development by five- to tenfold"”

Barbara W. Tuchman book A Distant Mirror

or any figure the reader would care to supply
Source: A Distant Mirror (1978)

School, Home, Time, Law

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

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

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

Way, Bad luck

“One lesson of history is that every gain has its potential loss. The highest human achievements carry the danger of pride, and pride can lead blindly to disaster, just as failure can fortify the determination and so lead slowly towards triumph.”

Geoffrey Blainey (1930) Australian historian

The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

Loss, Failure, History

“The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.”

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

Tweets on November 6 and 7, 2012, some of which were later deleted. Trump falsely believed Barack Obama had lost the popular vote. Trump’s flip-flop on the electoral college: From ‘disaster’ to ‘genius’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/11/15/trumps-flip-flop-on-the-electoral-college-from-disaster-to-genius/ 2012

Democracy

“When you have a divergence of man's will from God's Will for long enough, disaster comes.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

God

“It is not for us that we exhort you to learn, but for yourself, because ignorance is an inability, a real disaster, because social positions and protection are no longer there as before, there is a ground for malice and even hatred.”

Leopold I of Belgium (1790–1865) German prince who became the first King of the Belgians

Leopold II, The Whole Story https://odysee.com/@BelgianCongo:3/Leopold-II-Het-Hele-Verhaal-Aflevering-1:1 King Leopold I to his son Prince Leopold II.

Learning

“When the will of man and the Will of God coincide, you have right living - the Plan goes forward... When you have a divergence of man's will from God's Will for long enough, disaster comes.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The Reappearance of the Christ and the Masters of Wisdom (1980)

God

“Rarely is anyone thanked for the work they did to prevent the disaster that didn't happen.”

Mikko Hyppönen (1969) Finnish computer security expert

Source: Via @mikko on https://twitter.com/mikko/status/1153964272793395200 Twitter, July 2019

“The human brain is evolution’s most magnificent disaster, a beautiful and glorious cesspool of brilliant analytical powers, infinite creativity, and pure madness.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Beauty, Madness

“As we pass on the memories of disasters and pandemics to our posterity, we can improve our preparedness for forthcoming catastrophes. In this way, we can help to build a society in which everyone, with no one left behind, will be able to enjoy daily lives filled with health and happiness.”

Naruhito (1960) Emperor of Japan since 2019

Source: "Emperor Naruhito delivers address at U.N. meeting on water and disasters" in The Japan Times https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/06/26/national/emperor-naruhito-delivers-address-at-u-n-meeting-on-water-and-disasters/ (26 June 2021)

Happiness, Health, Memory, Help

“Humanity is a moral disaster. There would have been much less destruction had we never evolved. The fewer humans there are in the future, the less destruction there will still be.”

David Benatar (1966) South African philosopher

Source: Chapter 1: The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism https://books.google.com/books?id=J6dBCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA44&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q&f=false, 2015, p. 55 Source: Permissible Progeny? The Morality of Procreation and Parenting (2015)

Future