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Levees Quotes

Browse 19 quotes about Levees.

Levees Quotes

“There are so many angles to follow up: government incompetence, sophisticated charity scams, how insurance companies treat victims, construction of the levees, who will start ripping off the billions of dollars available in new contracts. Every single one of these stories is going to be a big one.”

“Many of the cemeteries are beautiful, and are kept in perfect order. When one goes from the levee or the business streets [of New Orleans] to it, to a cemetery, he observes to himself that if those people down there would live as neatly while they are alive as they do after they are dead, they would find many advantages in it; and besides, their quarter would be the wonder and admiration of the business world.”

“After Hurricane Katrina, many people said that the levees were not as effective as the natural vegetation that had been removed at the coast. So that means as we develop these seaside land masses, we need to have enough knowledge to not regret in the future. We know that the US government is literally buying these lands back to allow them to be rehabilitated.”

“Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed levees and exploded the conventional wisdom about a shared American prosperity, exposing a group of people so poor they didn't have $50 for a bus ticket out of town. If we want to learn something from this disaster, the lesson ought to be: America's poor deserve better than this.”

“It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.”

“Al Gore has a hit movie called 'An Inconvenient Truth.' I have an inconvenient truth for him: you're still not the president. ... This past weekend, Al Gore's movie, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' earned more per screen than any film in the country. ... I dare say Gore's movie is the highest grossing PowerPoint presentation in history. ... Global warming: Can we live with it? ... It is time we did something, namely resign ourselves to doing nothing [on screen: Follow Congress' Lead]. ... For instance, when sea levels rise, we'll just build levees [on screen: Worked for New Orleans]”

“I don't know. Maybe we're all chaos theorists. Lovers of pattern and predictability, we're scared shitless of explosive change. But we're fascinated by it, too. Drawn to it. Travelers tap their brakes to ogle the mutilation and mangled metal on the side of the interstate, and the traffic backs up for miles. Hijacked planes crash into skyscrapers, breached levees drown a city, and CNN and the networks rush to the scene so that we can all sit in front of our TVs and feast on the footage. Stare, stunned, at the pandemonium--the devils let loose from their cages.”

“I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.”