Best 369 quotes in «disaster quotes» category

I noticed that volcanoes, earthquakes and floods, though are not good events, they are better than the silence of good people when bad people take the podium. The latter are to an extent uncontrollable, but the former can be stopped.

I rise from my worst disasters, I turn, I change.

It does not matter what I believe. The past is done. Hope is irrelevant. We measure success and failure in history with a cost of lives. Penicillin saved people, and the world wars exterminated them. Success and failure. Feelings, regrets, the point where they knew they made mistakes...it is interesting but unfortunately, irrelevant. Did they go to their death and grieve for what they did? Did the makers of the atomic bomb grieve for the destruction they dedicated their lives towards creating? Who cares? They did it. Whether they knew what they were creating, or whether they talked themselves into believing it was for the best, the glory of history is being able to view it in black-and-white. However honorable one's initial intention, a villain will always be a villain.

I pulled the sheet off their faces. Their faces were black with coal dust and didn't look like anything was wrong with them except they were dirty. The both of them had smiles on their faces. I thought maybe one of them had told a joke just before they died and, pain and all, they both laughed and ended up with a smile. Probably not true but but it made me feel good to think about it like that, and when the Sister came in I asked her if I could clean their faces and she said, "no, certainly not!" but I said, "ah, c'mon, it's me brother n' father, I want to," and she looked at me and looked at me, and at last she said, "of course, of course, I'll get some soap and water." When the nun came back she helped me. Not doing it, but more like showing me how, and taking to me, saying things like "this is a very handsome man" and "you must have been proud of your brother" when I told her how Charlie Dave would fight for me, and "you're lucky you have another brother"; of course I was, but he was younger and might change, but she talked to me and made it all seem normal, the two of us standing over a dead face and cleaning the grit away. The only other thing I remember a nun ever saying to me was, "Mairead, you get to your seat, this minute!

It's a sight I plan to remember, this spontaneous unity when faced with disaster.

It's certainly true that Chernobyl, while an accident in the sense that no one intentionally set it off, was also the deliberate product of a culture of cronyism, laziness, and a deep-seated indifference toward the general population. The literature on the subject is pretty unanimous in its opinion that the Soviet system had taken a poorly designed reactor and then staffed it with a group of incompetents. It then proceeded, as the interviews in this book attest, to lie about the disaster in the most criminal way. In the crucial first ten days, when the reactor core was burning and releasing a steady stream of highly radioactive material into the surrounding areas, the authorities repeatedly claimed that the situation was under control. . . In the week after the accident, while refusing to admit to the world that anything really serious had gone wrong, the Soviets poured thousands of men into the breach. . . The machines they brought broke down because of the radiation. The humans wouldn't break down until weeks or months later, at which point they'd die horribly.

It was a great fucking time, the short era of disaster euphoria, for nothing enhances pleasures and blocks guilt like a looming cataclysm.

I’ve seen a lot of stuff… maybe I’ve seen too much. I see most humans in a bad light because I’ve seen what they can do, how evil they can be… I’ve seen the Holocaust and I’ve seen Jonestown, I’ve seen the Vietnam War and I’ve seen Hiroshima… I’ve seen the Chernobyl disaster… I’ve seen the World Trade Center attack… I’ve been alive too long, over a hundred years is a long time to be alive,” Alecto sighed, staring at the cigarette he was holding.

In the midst of a full-blown disaster – with the house apparently self-destructing around them – Lila was calmly filing her nails.

I thank God for my sanguine temperament, which refuses to allow me to believe in disaster until it is finally manifest

It’s a diamond isle of paradise beneath a black sky! Welcome to a crisp Italian January! We’re so much more than lavish travelers now… We’ll go down in history, Down like this vessel that sank so swiftly, Down to the depths below… These angels are splashing through neon casinos, Lifeboats are launching, and first up’s Schettino . Don’t blame him, he claims he fell in! That’s why he’s safe and we’re sorry. Vada a bordo, cazzo! Our beautiful floating carnival is DYING! Velvet carpets soaked with seawater, elevators sealed shut! The sour taste of death flows through in waves, Pulling people down to icy graves, Down to the depths below… Who am I? I’m his purser, and I might survive, If the coastguard realizes I’m still alive. For now I’m down here, as you might overhear, At the trial where he’ll share his story. Vada a bordo, cazzo!

It's called the Infinity Effect.

I will feel no guilt on shutting my door to those who didn't listen.

Maybe when we face a tragedy, someone, somewhere is preventing a bigger tragedy from happening.

Man is bound to follow the exploits of his scientific and inventive mind and to admire himself for his splendid achievements. At the same time, he cannot help admitting that his genius shows an uncanny tendency to invent things that become more and more dangerous, because they represent better and better means for wholesale suicide. In view of the rapidly increasing avalanche of world population, we have already begun to seek ways and means of keeping the rising flood at bay. But nature may anticipate all our attempts by turning against man his own creative mind, and, by releasing the H-bomb or some equally catastrophic device, put an effective stop to overpopulation. In spite of our proud domination of nature we are still her victims as much as ever and have not even learnt to control our own nature, which slowly and inevitably courts disaster.

Most creatures run when they sense danger. People grab a six-pack and a folding chair.

Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster.

Modern society is a biological disaster masquerading as progress.

No matter what happens, disaster piled on calamity, no matter what, everything will be okay in the long run.

Natural disasters happen from time to time but poverty happens all the time and therefore poverty is the greatest tragedy, it is the greatest disaster of mankind!

Not having ice cream,” she proclaimed, “is the culmination of all disasters!

On the palm of my hand there's a disaster. I must have been born with it. I carry it with me wherever I go.

Not IF...But WHEN

People always say that digital cameras are much more stable than film cameras, but the truth is that digital cameras, or any kind of digital technology, is one of the most unstable things in the world. A film camera can last decades if you know how to look after it, but digital things can break down instantly. A violent storm, a nuclear bomb, even something as minor as a cracked screen or the releasing of newer models, can make a digital product just a block of useless metal.

People don't look like people anymore after they've fallen from over a hundred floors above the ground.

People keep asking me, "Where do you get the ideas for your books?" From the worst moments in my life. I call that "literature through disaster." I got the whole Tales from Earth's End Saga that way, as well as Numenon. Don't be afraid of the hard times.

Politics is a global disaster whereas religion is merely ridiculous.

Some of my operations are great triumphs and tremendous. But they're only triumphs because there are also disasters

Most of the parents who came to the school were full-time mothers and housewives; most of the villagers offering their opinions were retired, elderly and male. It was another enactment of the ancient dialogue, its lines written centuries ago, between the entreating voices of women, and the oblivious, overbearing dismissiveness of old men.

On February 9th, 1942, the SS Normandie, a proud ocean liner and the pride of the French Merchant Marine, was being converted into a troop transport. A welder’s torch cut through a bulkhead and set afire a bundle of flammable rags and a stack of life jackets. The fire soon roared throughout the ship and since the internal fire protection system had been disabled, the only assistance available was from the New York City Fire Department. Fireboats pumped water onto the blaze until it caused this magnificent vessel to become unstable. I guess it never occurred to anyone that the water going into the ship, should have been pumped out! On February 10th, the ship rolled over onto its port side, sinking into the mud alongside Pier 88 in Manhattan. Investigations ensued with the thought being that this tragedy was caused by enemy sabotage. However, later findings indicated that the fire had been completely accidental. There are still some allegations contradicting this, and claims that the fire was indeed arson and involved “Lucky” Luciano, the Mafia boss who controlled the waterfront. From the time the fire started until the Normandie was righted in 1943, I watched what was happening to the now renamed USS Lafayette from a perfect vantage point at the top of the Palisades near North Street Park. It was the talk of the town and everyone continued to speculate as to who was at fault. “It must have been the Nazis,” was the conventional wisdom. The soldiers to whom I frequently talked, stationed at the searchlights and gun emplacements, were the ones who surely would know. Eventually, stripped of her superstructure, the ship was righted at great expense. There was talk of converting her into an aircraft carrier, or of cutting her down to become a smaller vessel. However, in the end she was sold for $161,680 to Lipsett, Inc., an American shipyard, where the once magnificent ship was reduced to scrap metal.

Or if there were a sympathy in choice, War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it, Making it momentany as a sound, Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night, That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, And, ere a man hath power to say ‘Behold!’ The jaws of darkness do devour it up. So quick bright things come to confusion

People from the past, have a tendency to walk back into the present, and run over the future.

President Trump's health care plan is a human rights disaster.

Rather blessings, after counting my misfortunes, I realized how the more blessed I am.

[S]he had difficulty crediting it could really happen in her own lifetime. She knew this was exactly how people would feel just before the real apocalypse, that nearly everyone who’d faced some intrusive threat to their everyday existence – war, revolution, genocide, purges, disaster – had faced it with the firm conviction that things like this just didn’t happen or didn’t happen here or didn’t happen to people like them.

Sleep! May be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things never changed, the apocalypse never happened, and everything's fine, normal, at home. Or may be you will wake up tomorrow and find that things have changed, for the better, the apocalypse is over and there's light, hope and a new home. Sleep, you crazy soul, just sleep.

So I flirt with disaster once or twice. Who doesn’t?” He snorted. “You don’t just flirt with disaster, you have intercourse with it.

The Fukushima nuclear complex went on to become the worst man-made engineering disaster in all of human history, outside of war.

The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding of the rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporate government policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrous policies that must stop.

The great pagan sadness of modern man is largely due to his premonition of ultimate disaster.

The hospital was a microcosm of these larger failures, with comprised physical infrastructure, compromised operating systems, and compromised individuals. And also instances of heroism. The scenario was familiar to students of mass disasters around the world. Systems always failed. The official response was always unconscionably slow. Coordination and communication were particularly bad. These were truths Americans had come to accept about other people's disasters. It was shocking to see the scenario play out at home.

The lamp tipped over, nailing Kane in the head. Sabin shook his head. The man was a walking disaster Literally. Whenever Kane stepped into a room, things went to hell pretty quickly. Sabin expected the ceiling to cave in any moment. And yea, it had happened before.

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.

There had to be something new, some fresh angle. As the rain pattered down around him, Kapenda thought. What was the weirdest thing he'd seen since this all started? He'd been in the tiny town of Chew Stoke a few weeks earlier, filming the remains of a vehicle that had been washed into a culvert and whose driver had died. In Grovehill, no one had died yet but there were abandoned cars strewn along the streets and surrounding tracks, hulking shapes that the water broke around and flowed over in fractured, churning flurries. That was old. Every television station had those shots. He'd been there the year before when the police had excavated a mud-filled railway tunnel and uncovered the remains of two people who had been crushed in a landslide. What they needed was something like that here, something that showed how weak man's civilized veneer was when set against nature's uncaring ferocity. He needed something that contrasted human frailty and natural strength, something that Dali might have painted - a boat on a roof, or a shark swimming up the main street. He needed that bloody house to collapse. ("Into The Water")

There is a point in the future where even the worst disaster starts to settle into an anecdote.

There she stood, hiding; the mother without child, the voiceless woman full of anger. Her smoked nails hammered her evaporated heart snivelling in the grotty kitchen of disaster. Her face, depleted, cauterised. Her eyes wheezed shame at what she knew would happen to her daughter, again and all over again.

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea has been an absolute disaster to the public image of astronomy.

The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County. Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years. So ended The Day.

Those crazy physicists that spend all day cooking themselves under an atomic reactor and all night writing stories for Weird World have done it. Spoiled my day completely. One of those idiots has hung the world up like a celluloid ball in an airstream.

Tragedy is a disaster; but desperation after that tragedy is a much greater disaster!