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Catastrophe Quotes

Browse 566 quotes about Catastrophe.

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Catastrophe Quotes

“We are approaching a soft data catastrophe. Entire lives, from tastes in music and clothes to deepest personal convictions - all produced by networks of feedback between datamining and content recommendation algorithms. The 'catastrophe' is when these algorithms unconsciously (or maybe, consciously?) lead people down presupposed paths for modern and emerging markets. Algorithms could right now be helping make people convert to a religion, drug addicts, vegan, LGBTQ, ethnonarcissists, fat, cult members, suicidal, narcissists, atheist, poly, mass shooters...”

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Book:94,000 Wasps in a Trench Coat
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“Human perfection and technical perfection are incompatible. If we strive for one, we must sacrifice the other: there is, in any case, a parting of the ways. Whoever realises this will do cleaner work one way or the other. Technical perfection strives towards the calculable, human perfection towards the incalculable. Perfect mechanisms - around which, therefore, stands an uncanny but fascinating halo of brilliance - evoke both fear and Titanic pride which will be humbled not by insight but only by catastrophe. The fear and enthusiasm we experience at the sight of perfect mechanisms are in exact contrast to the happiness we feel at the sight of a perfect work of art. We sense an attack on our integrity, on our wholeness. That arms and legs are lost or harmed is not yet the greatest danger.”

ArtTechnologyCatastropheTechnical PerfectionHuman PerfectionTitanism
Book:The Glass Bees
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“[T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome.”

EnvironmentFateTelevisionFootballGuiltGlobal WarmingCatastropheEnvironmentalismRecyclingImpotenceReassuranceFatalismOrganic Food20102010 Fifa World Cup2010 Eruptions EyjafjallajokulPaper Recycling
Author:Slavoj Žižek
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“I'm being kidnapped. I understand this is a catastrophe. I understand what this means. I don't mind that they're beating me. I don't even feel it. Because in these moments, as I'm being led past the kibbutz fence, under the blazing sun, engulfed by the smell of smoldering ruins, a headband strapped over my eyes, dragged by terrorists gripping both my hands, totally aware that I am being abducted into Gaza but knowing at least that Lianne and the girls were left behind, I focus and concentrate on one mission: surviving to return home. There is no more regular Eli. From now on, I am Eli the survivor.”

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Book:חטוף
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“Tamper with Biology’s delicate balance, and you reap the whirlwind. For aeons Nature bore the heavy lifting, evolving a perfect, watch-spring equilibrium—until upstart humanity emerged from the primal soup, armed with ego and reason, to overrule every precedent. We know how the merest tipping of the ecological scales will unleash catastrophe, yet we persist blind—Earth’s self-anointed judge, jury, and executioner—refusing to humble ourselves before Nature’s Supreme Court verdict.”

PhilosophyNatureBalanceJudgmentBiologyEcologyCatastropheConsequencesEnvironmentalismHubris
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Later, I would come to think of those first days as a time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, the West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”

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Author:Karen Thompson Walker
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“Catastrophe alone sparks man’s salvation. I don’t mean in the religious sense, although I guess it is appropriate there, too, because believers agree that salvation comes only after death. It is part of the human near-tragedy that we learn more from loss than from gain. Gain binds us until we stumble and fall into that black pit then we find the spirit of understanding and truth. And if we fall far enough and still persist, we find our salvation.”

TruthSpiritLossLearningTragedySalvationPersistenceCatastropheGainStumble And FallBlack Pit
Book:Blythe
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“Sometimes, you can learn something completely mind-blowing in yoga and then totally forget about it the minute you need it the most. Or just kind of choose to forget it. 'I don't need no philosophy, I need fixing.' Which isn't to say nothing ever goes wrong, because it does; or that they're aren't parts of you that you just can't bring yourself to accept or maybe even detest at times (which I know is a strong word but it does apply), because I'm sure there are; or that there's no such thing as catastrophe, because there is. Oh my god, there is. And sometimes all you want to do is fix it.”

YogaIllnessSelf AcceptanceCatastropheSelf ConsciousnessYoga Philosophy
Book:Bent: How Yoga Saved My Ass
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“One way or another, I regard it as almost inevitable that either a nuclear confrontation or environmental catastrophe will cripple the Earth at some point in the next 1,000 years which, as geological time goes, is the mere blink of an eye. By then I hope and believe that our ingenious race will have found a way to slip the surly bonds of Earth and will therefore survive the disaster. The same of course may not be possible for the millions of other species that inhabit the Earth, and that will be on our conscience as a race. I think we are acting with reckless indifference to our future on planet Earth. At the moment, we have nowhere else to go, but in the long run the human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet. I just hope we can avoid dropping the basket before we learn how to escape from Earth. But we are, by nature, explorers. Motivated by curiosity. This is a uniquely human quality. It is this driven curiosity that sent explorers to prove the Earth is not flat and it is the same instinct that sends us to the stars at the speed of thought, urging us to go there in reality. And whenever we make a great new leap, such as the Moon landings, we elevate humanity, bring people and nations together, usher in new discoveries and new technologies. To leave Earth demands a concerted global approach—everyone should join in. We need to rekindle the excitement of the early days of space travel in the 1960s. The technology is almost within our grasp. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth. If we stay, we risk being annihilated.”

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Book:Brief Answers to the Big Questions
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“Should the research worker of the future discover some means of releasing this [atomic] energy in a form which could be employed, the human race will have at its command powers beyond the dream of scientific fiction, but the remotest possibility must always be considered that the energy once liberated will be completely uncontrollable and by its intense violence detonate all neighbouring substances. In this event, the whole of the hydrogen on earth might be transformed at once and the success of the experiment published at large to the universe as a new star.”

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Author:Francis William Aston
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“Despairing of an aim, salvation or an ideal, we invent for ourselves the easiest solution: happiness. Here again we begin with utopia - the ideal of happiness - and end in achieved happiness, the highest stage of happiness. The same abreaction to integral happiness as to integral reality or freedom: these are all unbearable. In the end, it is the opposite form of misfortune, the victim ideology, that triumphs. Being incapable of accepting thought (the idea that the world thinks us, the intelligence of evil), we invent the easiest solution, the technical solution: Artificial Intelligence. The highest stage of intelligence: integral knowledge. This time the rejection will arise perhaps from a resistance on the part of things themselves to their digital transparency or from a failure of the system in the form of a major accident. Against all the sovereign hypotheses are ranged the easiest solutions. And all the easiest solutions lead to catastrophe.”

HappinessCatastropheUtopiaIntelligence Of EvilEasiest Solutions
Book:The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact
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“Ignorance has one virtue: persistence. It will insist through dogged persistence on leading others to follow its vision no matter how misguided. Ignorance will drive the world to the brink of failure and catastrophe and beyond into the abyss with arrogance and anger because wisdom is often too polite to fight. Wisdom doesn’t like to impose its will, but that is all ignorance understands—force over free will and choice. Sooner or later the world comes to its senses, but oh the damage that has been done.”

WisdomForceFreedomVisionIgnoranceFailureAngerPersistenceDamageArroganceChoiceCatastropheAbyssPolitenessMisguidedImposeCome To Your Senses
Book:Blythe
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“Be proactive not reactive, for an apparently insignificant issue ignored today can spawn tomorrow's catastrophe.”

TodayTomorrowIgnoredCatastropheInsignificantProactiveSpawnKen PoirotKen Poirot QuoteKen Poirot QuotesAuthor Ken PoirotTomorrow QuotesToday QuotesIssueReactiveApparentlyToday QuoteBe ProactiveTomorrow QuoteProactive QuoteProactive Vs ReactiveIgnored QuoteApparently QuoteApparently QuotesIgnored QuotesInsignificant Issue QuotesProactive QuotesApparently InsignificantApparently Insignificant QuoteApparently Insignificant QuotesBe Proactive QuoteBe Proactive QuotesCan SpawnCan Spawn QuoteCan Spawn QuotesCatastrophe QuoteCatastrophe QuotesIgnored TodayIgnored Today QuoteIgnored Today QuotesInsignificant IssueInsignificant Issue QuoteInsignificant QuoteInsignificant QuotesIssue QuoteIssue QuotesProactive ActionReactive QuoteReactive QuotesSpawn QuoteSpawn QuotesTomorrow S CatastropheTomorrow S Catastrophe QuoteTomorrow S Catastrophe Quotes
Author:Ken Poirot
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“Why the two [gigantic obelisks left unfinished at the Aswan quarry] were never finished is unknown. It appears that the workers simply stopped and never came back. The same possibly was the case at the Serapeum at Saqqara, where most of the 100 ton boxes were never finished. If these are pre-dynastic works as expected, then the great cataclysm of 12,000 years ago could have been the culprit - massive earthquakes and possibly solar blasts devastating all life in these and other areas. There is a massive horizontal crack in the bottom of the right channel of the great obelisk that also may have been the reason [...]. On another note, the left and right channels of the great obelisk would have been too narrow for workers to be shaping them with dolerite stone pounders. A lot of force would be required to remove any material at all, and having a foot or two of clearance would result in very little if any stone removal.”

CatastropheUnfinishedIce AgeDeep Human HistoryCataclysmPrehistory
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“L’homme est ainsi fait que, quand il ne voit pas de nuage, il a besoin d’en trouver un pour se rassurer. S’il ne voit pas un malheur s’avancer, il se dit que la prochaine catastrophe, pour être aussi bien dissimulée, elle sera d’ampleur, aussi vaut-il mieux tout de suite œuvrer à mettre des nuages dans le ciel, des nuages qu’on connaît, ce n’est pas d’aujourd’hui qu’on meurt de faim ou noyé ou lépreux ou bombardé à travers le monde, mais le soleil, allez savoir ce que ça cache, d’ailleurs si on le regarde en face, ça rend aveugle, c’est bien la preuve.”

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Book:Dernier avis avant démolition
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“The Pleistocene period ended in death. This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all-inclusive... The large animals that had given the name to the period became extinct. Their death marked the end of the era. But how did they die? What caused the extinction of forty million animals?”

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Book:The Lost Americans, The Story of the Man They Said Never Was: Old Stone-Age American
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“The precision of many of the flat surfaces [at Puma Punku] is astonishing. In some cases, they are almost as flat as laser perfection, and the idea that a Bronze Age culture like the Tiwanaku were responsible for this work is clearly impossible. What is also curious is that much of the stone has been partially or fully excavated from the red clay mud of the area, which infers either extreme age, or that a cataclysmic event occurred here, partially burying the site [...]. Further, there are blocks which appear to have been snapped in half - not by the invading Aymara, colonial Spanish, or more recently, but at a time in the distant past. The logic behind this statement is that there are no apparent tool marks or other evidence of attempts to break the stone.”

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Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Oral tradition accounts that the author was able to glean from living local experts are that the Spanish, upon first seeing the great wall of Sacsayhuaman in 1533, and shocked at its scale, asked the local Inca if their ancestors had built it. The answer was a simple, 'No,' that the wall was there when the Inca arrived about 500 years prior. Sacsayhuaman is a huge and complex site, and it is clear that varying techniques were used in its construction [...]. There is no practical reason why such huge blocks were required at Sacsayhuaman, and they are in fact the largest ever employed in the Americas. The common belief that it was a fortress of some kind constructed by the Inca is an idea that the Spanish came up with. For the Inca, it was in fact one of the most sacred of holy places.”

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Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“The commonalities that we find at all of the above locations include: 1) works in stone beyond the scale and technical prowess of the historically presumed builders, such as the Inca; 2) signs of construction interruptions and/or cataclysmic damage; and 3) oral traditions speaking of much earlier civilizations with advanced technological capabilities.”

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Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Every time the cataclysmic concept has come to life, the 'beast' has been stoned, burned at the stake, beaten to a pulp, and buried with a vengeance; but the corpse simply won't stay dead. Each time, it raises the lid of its coffin and says in sepulchral tones: 'You will die before I.' The latest of the challengers is Prof. Frank C. Hibben, who in his book, 'The Lost Americans,' said: 'This was no ordinary extinction of a vague geological period which fizzled to an uncertain end. This death was catastrophic and all inclusive. [...] What caused the death of forty million animals. [...] The 'corpus delicti' in this mystery may be found almost anywhere. [...] Their bones lie bleaching in the sands of Florida and in the gravels of New Jersey. They weather out of the dry terraces of Texas and protrude from the sticky ooze of the tar pits off Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. [...] The bodies of the victims are everywhere. [...] We find literally thousands together [...] young and old, foal with dam, calf with cow. [...] The muck pits of Alaska are filled with evidence of universal death [...] a picture of quick extinction. [...] Any argument as to the cause [...] must apply to North America, Siberia, and Europe as well.' '[...] Mamooth and bison were torn and twisted as though by a cosmic hand in a godly rage.' '[...] In many places the Alaskan muck blanket is packed with animal bones and debris in trainload lots [...] mammoth, mastodon [...] bison, horses, wolves, bears, and lions. [...] A faunal population [...] in the middle of some cataclysmic catastrophe [...] was suddenly frozen [...] in a grim charade.' Fantastic winds; volcanic burning; inundation and burial in muck; preservation by deep-freeze. 'Any good solution to a consuming mystery must answer all of the facts,' challenges Hibben.”

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Book:The Adam & Eve Story: The History of Cataclysms
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“The catastrophic event of 12,000 years ago, having melted much of the planet's ice and causing a global sea rise of some 350 feet, could have been so intense as to have raised global temperatures by six degrees Celsius [...]. The ending of the last ice age was not a gradual event, as most people would assume, but fast and intense.”

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Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Isolation of catastrophic experiences. Dissociation may function to seal off overwhelming trauma into a compartmentalized area of conscious until the person is better able to integrate it into mainstream consciousness. The function of dissociation is particularly common in survivors of combat, political torture, or natural or transportation disasters.”

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Author:Marlene Steinberg
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“Tankersley says while the cosmic strike had an immediate and deadly effect, the long term side effects were far more devastating, similar to Krakatoa's aftermath but many times worse, thus making it unique in modern human history. In the cataclysm's wake, toxic gas poisoned the air and clouded the sky, causing temperatures to plummet. The roiling climate challenged the existence of plant and animal populations, and it produced what Tankersley has classified as 'winners' and 'losers' of the Younger Dryas. He says inhabitants of this time period had three choices: relocate to another environment where they could make a similar living; downsize or adjust their way of living to fit the current surroundings; or swiftly go extinct. 'Winners' chose one of the first two options, while 'losers,' such as the woolly mammoth, took the last.”

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Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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“Many of the other megalithic works at Machu Pic'chu show large gaps as in the two previous photos. The width of these gaps is very similar, and again suggest that a massive earthquake cataclysm, moving in a east-west direction, affected the site in the very distant past [...]. A geologist who inspected this with the author stated quite emphatically that such a drop would not have been the result of poor foundation work when the structure was made, but far more likely, again, the result of a catastrophic earthquake. She also stated that such an earthquake would have caused the rough stone and clay mortar buildings to be completely demolished. This, then, clearly indicates that the megalithic core of Machu Pic'chu, which comprises about 5-10 percent, is older than the Inca, and may in fact have been made prior to the cataclysmic event of about 12,000 years ago.”

CatastropheGeologyCataclysmMegalithic MonumentsMegalithic Structures
Book:Aftershock: The Ancient Cataclysm That Erased Human History
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