Quotes about disruption

A collection of quotes on the topic of disruption, people, use, world.

Quotes about disruption

Omraam Mikhaël Aïvanhov photo
Jürgen Habermas photo
Leon Trotsky photo
Barack Obama photo
F. W. de Klerk photo

“I apologize in my capacity as leader of the NP to the millions who suffered wrenching disruption of forced removals; who suffered the shame of being arrested for pass law offences; who over the decades suffered the indignities and humiliation of racial discrimination.”

F. W. de Klerk (1936) South African politician

Testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at a special hearing in Cape Town https://web.archive.org/web/20050119042614/http://www.doj.gov.za:80/trc/media/1997/9705/s970514a.htm (May 1997)
1990s, 1997

Barack Obama photo
Ronald Reagan photo
Jeff Bezos photo

“You gotta earn your keep in this world. When you invent something new, if customers come to the party, it’s disruptive to the old way.”

Jeff Bezos (1964) American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Inc.

Amazon's Jeff Bezos looks to the future - CBS News http://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazons-jeff-bezos-looks-to-the-future/.

Robert E. Lee photo

“If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to his son http://radgeek.com/gt/2005/01/03/robert-e-Lee-owned-slaves-and-defended-slavery/, G. W. Custis Lee (23 January 1861).
1860s
Context: I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual Union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession: anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and all the other patriots of the Revolution. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. I shall mourn for my country and for the welfare and progress of mankind. If the Union is dissolved and the Government disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and, save in defense will draw my sword on none.

Barack Obama photo

“There's been a trend around the country of trying to get college to disinvite speakers with a different point of view or disrupt a politician's rally. Don't do that, no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths… If the other side has a point, learn from them! If they're wrong, rebut them, teach them, beat them on the battlefield of ideas!”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Commencement speech at Howard University, as quoted in "Obama: Students Need to Stop Shutting Down Speech of People They Disagree With" http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-students-need-to-stop-shutting-down-speech-of-people-they-disagree-with/ by Josh Feldman, Mediaite (7 May 2016)
2016

Madalyn Murray O'Hair photo
Nikola Tesla photo

“Much has been said about Yugoslavia and its people, but many Americans may be under a wrong impression for political enemies and agitators have spread the idea that its inhabitants belong to different nations animated by mutual hate and held together against their will, by a tyrannical power. The fact is that all Yugoslavs — Serbians, Slavonians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Dalmations, Montenagrins, Croatians and Slovenes — are of the same race, speak the same language and have common national ideals and traditions.
At the termination of the World War, Alexander brought about a political union creating a powerful and resourceful State. This was hailed with joy by all the Slavs of the Balkans, but it took time before the people found themselves in the new conditions.
I was born in Croatia. The Croatians and Slovenes were never in a position to fight for their independence. It was the Serbians who fought the battles for freedom and the price of liberty was paid in Serbian blood. All true Croatians and Slovenes remember that gratefully. They also know that the Serbians have an unequaled aptitude and experience in warfare and are best qualified to direct the forces of the country in a crisis.
Ever since united Yugoslavia came into being through Alexander's efforts, political enemies have done all they could to disrupt it by sowing seeds of discord and disseminating malicious reports. … The death of the King has shaken the country to its very foundations, but the enemies who say that it means the disruption of Yugoslavia will hope in vain, for the noble blood of the great man has only served to cement its parts more firmly and strengthen the national structure. Alexander will live long in the memory of his people, a heroic figure of imposing stature, both the Washington and Lincoln of the Yugoslavs; like Washington an able and intrepid general who freed his country from oppression; like Lincoln a wise and patriotic leader who suffered martyrdom.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Tribute to King Alexander, to the editor of The New York Times (19 October 1934), also at Heroes of Serbia http://www.heroesofserbia.com/2012/10/tribute-to-king-alexander-by-nikola.html

Antonin Scalia photo
O. Henry photo

“Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion.”

"Blind Man's Holiday"
Whirligigs (1910)
Context: Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.

Barack Obama photo

“No nation is immune to dangerous and disruptive weather patterns, so every nation is going to have to do its part.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)
Context: No nation is immune to dangerous and disruptive weather patterns, so every nation is going to have to do its part. And the United States is ready to do ours. Last year, I introduced America’s first-ever Climate Action Plan to use more clean energy and less dirty energy, and cut the dangerous carbon pollution that contributes to climate change. So we want to cooperate with countries in Southeast Asia to do the same, to combat the destruction of our forests. We can’t condemn future generations to a planet that is beyond fixing. We can only do that together.

Benjamin Creme photo
Janet Evanovich photo
Pablo Neruda photo
Nick Hornby photo
Jodi Picoult photo
Milan Kundera photo

“The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. And this is one of the big problems of life, that so many people never quite get to the point of rising above self. And so they end up the tragic victims of self-centeredness. They end up the victims of distorted and disrupted personality.”

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

Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)

Jay Samit photo

“Disruption causes vast sums of money to flow from existing businesses and business models to new entrants.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 17

Kent Hovind photo
Rodion Malinovsky photo

“The Soviet Army, Air Force and Navy are strong enough to thwart any attempts of imperalist reaction to disrupt the peaceful labor of our people or the unity and solidarity of the socialist camp.”

Rodion Malinovsky (1898–1967) Soviet military commander and politician

Quoted in "Diplomacy of Power: Soviet Armed Forces as a Political Instrument" - Page 93 - by Stephen S. Kaplan - Political Science - 1981

Gwyneth Paltrow photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Rickard Falkvinge photo
Jean Dubuffet photo

“The role of the artist.... and the poet is precisely to blur normal categories, to disrupt them, and by doing so restore to the eyes and the mind ingenuity and freshness.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Dubuffet once explained to Jacques Berne; as cited in 'Dubuffet, Lévi-Strauss, and the Idea of Art Brut', Kent Minturn, from RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), pp. 247-258 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Minturn/Dubuffet-Levi-Strauss.pdf, p. 256
undated

Walter Benjamin photo
Charles Stross photo

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

Joe Biden photo
Camille Paglia photo
Norman Lamont photo

“Several implications follow from Hayek's insights into the nature of capitalism.(a) The claim "I deserve my pretax income" is not generally true. Nor should the basic organization of property rules be based on considerations of moral desert. Hence, claims about desert have no standing in deciding whether taxation for the purpose of funding social insurance is just.
(b) The claim that people rocked by the viccisitudes of the market, or poor people generally, are getting what they deserve is also not generally true. To moralize people's misfortunes in this way is both ignorant and mean. Capitalism continuously and randomly pulls the rug out from under even the most prudent and diligent people. It is in principle impossible for even the most prudent to forsee all the market turns that could undo them. (If it were possible, then efficient socialist planning would be possible, too. But it isn't.)
(c) Capitalist markets are highly dynamic and volatile. This means that at any one time, lots of people are going under. Often, the consequences of this would be catastrophic, absent concerted intervention to avert the outcomes generated by markets. For example, the economist Amartya Sen has documented that sudden shifts in people's incomes (which are often due to market volatility), and not absolute food shortages, are a principal cause of famine.
(d) The volatility of capitalist markets creates a profound and urgent need for insurance, over and above the insurance needs people would have under more stable (but stagnant) economic systems. This need is increased also by the fact that capitalism inspires a love of personal independence, and hence brings about the smaller ("nuclear") family forms that alone are compatible with it. We no longer belong to vast tribes and clans. This sharply reduces the ability of individuals under capitalism to pool risks within families, and limits the claims they can effectively make on nonhousehold (extended) family members for assistance. To avoid or at least ameliorate disaster and disruption, people need to pool the risks of capitalism.”

Elizabeth S. Anderson (1959) professor of philosophy and womens' studies

How Not to Complain About Taxes (III): "I deserve my pretax income" http://left2right.typepad.com/main/2005/01/how_not_to_comp_1.html (January 26, 2005)

Margaret Thatcher 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

Kevin Kelly photo

“To achieve sustainable innovation you need to seek persistent disequilibrium. To seek persistent disequilibrium means that one must chase after disruption without succumbing to it, or retreating from it.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

Jay Samit photo

“All disruption starts with introspection.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 5

J. Edgar Hoover photo
John Ehrlichman photo
Eric S. Raymond photo

“Apple is balancing on a knife edge. I think we're looking at the end stage of a successful technology disruption on the classic pattern. The question is no longer whether Android can be stopped, but when Apple's market share will fall off a cliff. I think that could easily happen as soon as the next 90 days.”

Eric S. Raymond (1957) American computer programmer, author, and advocate for the open source movement

The Smartphone Wars: multicarrier breakout fail http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3152 in Armed and Dangerous (21 April 2011)

Edward Heath photo
Abdullah Ensour photo

“Early this Wednesday morning, at around 3 am, a security operation carried out by special forces that included security and military personnel, ended and was successful in achieving its goals. Seven members of the outlaw group were killed, this group are misguided and misleading, they are a terrorist group connected to terrorist organizations, and had planned to disrupt the security of the country and its people.”

Abdullah Ensour (1939) prime minister of Jordan

Jordanian Intelligence forces uncovered and stopped a Daesh plot to target civilians and military in Amman on March 1, 2016, Ensour addressed the parliament on March 2, 2016 on the successful attack on Daesh militants, quoted on Albawaba, "Jordanian authorities confirm Daesh activity in Irbid, suicide belts found" http://www.albawaba.com/news/jordanian-authorities-confirm-daesh-activity-irbid-suicide-belts-found-812292, March 2, 2016.

Jay Samit photo

“Self-disruption is akin to undergoing major surgery, but you are the one holding the scalpel.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 30

George W. Bush photo
Daniel Berrigan photo

“I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm… in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans—that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.” And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs—at all costs—our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost—because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war—at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.”

Daniel Berrigan (1921–2016) American Catholic priest, peace activist, and poet

No Bars to Manhood (1971), p. 49.

“When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt, we're lending to its credibility.”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 26

Reggie Fils-Aimé photo
Subramanian Swamy photo

“It has a very small life span. It is a party led by people committed to naxal ideology. They are not improving the society, but rather disrupting it.”

Subramanian Swamy (1939) Indian politician

On Aam Aadmi Party, as quoted in "AAP is led by people committed to naxal ideology, alleges Subramanian Swamy" http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/aap-is-led-by-people-committed-to-naxal-ideology-alleges-subramanian-swamy/1/331149.html, India Today (13 December 2013)
2011-2014

Newton Lee photo
Sung-Yoon Lee photo

“The presence of U. S. troops in South Korea has been and remains the greatest deterrent to North Korean adventurism and a disruption of the current and longstanding peace on the Korean peninsula. And to repeat an important point: the absence of a formal peace treaty no more threatens this peace than the absence of a post-World War Two peace treaty between Moscow and Tokyo threatens the peace between Russia and Japan.”

Sung-Yoon Lee Korea and East Asia scholar, professor

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=12
Keeping the Peace: America in Korea, 1950–2010
December 2010
Imprimis
March 1, 2013
https://www.webcitation.org/6EyqabQdp?url=http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010
March 9, 2013
yes

Donald J. Trump photo

“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow…… [Continued in another tweet 9 minutes later] …. Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U. S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming….. [after another 4 minutes] …. victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you”

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

Series https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890193981585444864 of https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890196164313833472 tweets https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890197095151546369 by @realDonaldTrump. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, subsequently wrote to senior commanders https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/transgender-military-trump-ban.html that "We will continue to treat all of our personnel with respect" until the White House sends the Defense Department new rules and the secretary of defense issues new guidelines. (26 July 2017)
2010s, 2017, July

Jay Samit photo

“Whether driven by ambition or circumstance, every career gets disrupted.”

Jay Samit (1961) American businessman

Source: Disrupt You! (2015), p. 75

“Among the common changes in forests over the past two centuries are loss of old forests, simplification of forest structure, decreasing size of forest patches, increasing isolation of patches, disruption of natural fire regimes, and increased road building, all of which have had negative effects on native biodiversity.”

Reed Noss (1952)

[Assessing and monitoring forest biodiversity: a suggested framework and indicators, Forest Ecology and Management, 115, 2–3, 22 March 1999, 135–146, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112798003946] (quote from p. 135)

Rajiv Malhotra photo
Timothy Levitch photo
Clayton M. Christensen photo

“The misleading character of the accident theory is evident from the fact that even now the “error” involved from the standpoint of U. S. policy-makers and American leaders generally is neither one of purpose nor method – it is strictly a case of unexpectedly large expense. For the U. S. leadership, in other words, Vietnam is simply another, painfully large “cost over-run.” In terms of basic U. S. objectives and methods employed, in the Third World – essentially establishment of reliable client states, increasingly managed by military elites, with generous financial and military support (arms, advisors, Green Berets, and more extensive military intervention when junta control is threatened, as in Santo Domingo) – Vietnam is a facet of a completely rational policy. The policy may be vicious and catastrophic, from the perspective of the Vietnamese; and it may be a sordid and disruptive waste of human and material resources from the standpoint of the real interests of the ordinary American; but to the Rostows, Westmorelands and Nixons, the Vietnam War is a noble endeavor (“one of our finest moments”) that we cannot afford to abandon without achieving our original ends. The evidence is compelling that this leadership is entirely capable of destroying every village in Vietnam (and in the process, every Vietnamese) if this is required to attain the original political objectives.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Source: Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths and Realities, 1970, pp. 87-88.

George W. Bush photo
George W. Bush photo
Steve Blank photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Karl Denninger photo

“What makes anyone think [Apple Watch is] going to "disrupt" anything, other than the careers of the people who planned and executed that abortion?”

Karl Denninger American businessman

The iSnicker http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=229422 in The Market Ticker (19 September 2014)

Bill O'Reilly photo
Robert Stawell Ball photo
Naomi Wolf photo

“The First Amendment was designed to allow for disruption of business as usual. It is not a quiet and subdued amendment or right.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

The First Amendment and the Obligation to Peacefully Disrupt in a Free Society (22 October 2011), Blog Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/occupy-wall-street-bloomberg-free-speech-right-to-disruption-_b_1026535.html at huffingtonpost.com

Margaret Thatcher photo
Mukesh Ambani photo
River Phoenix photo

“I don’t see any point or any good in drugs that are as disruptive as cocaine. I never tried heroin. I tried alcohol and most of the others when I was 15, and got it out of the way—finished with the stuff.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

Quoted on page 159 of Young Hollywood http://books.google.com/books?id=yYQjAQAAIAAJ&q=%22disruptive+as+cocaine.%22&dq=%22disruptive+as+cocaine.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FANbUcuJFcG1iwKH2IFQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg by James Cameron-Wilson.

Denis Diderot photo

“The most dangerous madmen are those created by religion, and … people whose aim is to disrupt society always know how to make good use of them on occasion.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Conversations with a Christian Lady (1774)

George W. Bush photo

“Americans are sacrificing. I mean, we are. You know, we pay a lot of taxes. Americans sacrificed when they, you know, when the economy went into the tank. Americans sacrificed when, you know, air travel was disrupted. American taxpayers have paid a lot to help this nation recover. I think Americans have sacrificed.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

In response to reporter Brian Williams' question as to whether, after 9/11, the president should have asked all Americans to sacrifice for their country, NBC News interview, August 29, 2006 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNIOmbm3KYg&feature=related
2000s, 2006

Hillary Clinton photo

“We've got to defeat ISIS, and we've got to do everything we can to disrupt their propaganda efforts online.”

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

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

Clayton M. Christensen photo

“Disruptive technologies typically enable new markets to emerge. There is strong evidence showing that companies entering these emerging markets early have significant first-mover advantages over later entrants.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Source: 1990s, The Innovator's Dilemma (1997), p. 3; cited in: Parminder Bhachu (2004), Dangerous Designs: Asian Women Fashion, the Diaspora Economies. p. 172

Clayton M. Christensen photo

“Low-end disruption occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which customers can adopt the new performance.”

Clayton M. Christensen (1952–2020) Mormon academic

Christensen cited in: Philip Kotler, John A. Caslione (2009) Chaotics: The Business of Managing and Marketing in the Age of Turbulence. p. 23
2000s

Boutros Boutros-Ghali photo
Ilana Mercer photo
David Boaz photo
Shane Claiborne photo
Newton Lee photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“Now the consequences, the disruptive effects of such self-centeredness, such egocentric desires, are tragic. And we see these every day. At first, it leads to frustration and disillusionment and unhappiness at many points. For usually when people are self-centered, they are self-centered because they are seeking attention, they want to be admired and this is the way they set out to do it. But in the process, because of their self-centeredness, they are not admired; they are mawkish and people don’t want to be bothered with them. And so the very thing they seek, they never get. And they end up frustrated and unhappy and disillusioned.”

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

1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
Context: The individual who is self-centered, the individual who is egocentric ends up being very sensitive, a very touchy person. And that is one of the tragic effects of a self-centered attitude, that it leads to a very sensitive and touchy response toward the universe. These are the people you have to handle with kid gloves because they are touchy, they are sensitive. And they are sensitive because they are self-centered. They are too absorbed in self and anything gets them off, anything makes them angry. Anything makes them feel that people are looking over them because of a tragic self-centeredness. That even leads to the point that the individual is not capable of facing trouble and the hard moments of life. One can become so self-centered, so egocentric that when the hard and difficult moments of life come, he cannot face them because he’s too centered in himself.
Context: The individual who is self-centered, the individual who is egocentric ends up being very sensitive, a very touchy person. And that is one of the tragic effects of a self-centered attitude, that it leads to a very sensitive and touchy response toward the universe. These are the people you have to handle with kid gloves because they are touchy, they are sensitive. And they are sensitive because they are self-centered. They are too absorbed in self and anything gets them off, anything makes them angry. Anything makes them feel that people are looking over them because of a tragic self-centeredness. That even leads to the point that the individual is not capable of facing trouble and the hard moments of life. One can become so self-centered, so egocentric that when the hard and difficult moments of life come, he cannot face them because he’s too centered in himself. These are the people who cannot face disappointments. These are the people who cannot face being defeated. These are the people who cannot face being criticized. These are the people who cannot face these many experiences of life which inevitably come because they are too centered in themselves. In time, somebody criticizes them, time somebody says something about them that they don’t like too well, time they are disappointed, time they are defeated, even in a little game, they end up broken-hearted. They can’t stand up under it because they are centered in self.

Enoch Powell photo

“The nation has been, and is still being, eroded and hollowed out from within by the implantation of large unassimilated and unassimiliable populations—what Lord Radcliffe once in a memorable phrase called "alien wedges"—in the heartland of the state…The disruption of the homogeneous "we", which forms the essential basis of parliamentary democracy and therefore of our liberties, is now approaching the point at which the political mechanics of a "divided community"…take charge and begin to operate autonomously. Let me illustrate this pathology of a society that is being eaten alive…The two active ingredients are grievance and violence. Where a community is divided, grievance is for practical purposes inexhaustible. When violence is injected—and quite a little will suffice for a start—there begins an escalating competition to discover grievance and to remove it. The materials lie ready to hand in a multiplicity of agencies with a vested interest, more or less benevolent, in the process of discovering grievances and demanding their removal. The spiral is easily maintained in upward movement by the repetitions and escalation of violence. At each stage alienation between the various elements of society is increased, and the constant disappointment that the imagined remedies yield a reverse result leads to growing bitterness and despair. Hand in hand with the exploitation of grievance goes the equally counterproductive process which will no doubt, as usual, be called the "search for a political solution"…Indeed, attention has already been drawn publicly to the potentially critical factor of the so-called immigrant vote in an increasing number of worthwhile constituencies. The result is that the political parties of the indigenous population vie with one another for votes by promising remedy of the grievances which are being uncovered and exploited in the context of actual or threatened violence. Thus the legislature finds itself in effect manipulated by minorities instead of responding to majorities, and is watched by the public at large with a bewildering and frustration, not to say cynicism, of which the experience of legislation hitherto in the field of immigration and race relations afford some pale idea…I need not follow the analysis further in order to demonstrate how parliamentary democracy disintegrates when the national homogeneity of the electorate is broken by a large and sharp alteration in the composition of the population. While the institutions and liberties on which British liberty depends are being progressively surrendered to the European superstate, the forces which will sap and destroy them from within are allowed to accumulate unchecked. And all the time we are invited to direct towards Angola or Siberia the anxious attention that the real danger within our power and our borders imperatively demand.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech the Hampshire Monday Club in Southampton (9 April 1976), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 165-166
1970s