Catastrophic Quotes

Folklore and mythology, as well as man's catastrophic disregard for nature, are the meat of Joseph D'Lacey's horror. But the prime cuts are always compassion and surprise. ~ Adam Nevill

And so there must be in life something like a catastrophic turning point, when the world as we know ceases to exist. A moment that transform us into a different person from one heartbeat to the next. ~ Jan-Philipp Sendker

The fall of the present bureaucratic dictatorship [in the Soviet Union], if it were not replaced by a new socialist power, would thus mean a return to capitalist relations with a catastrophic decline of industry and culture. ~ Leon Trotsky

As parents, we may as well accept that we will "lose it" at times. Perfect equanimity is beyond us. Temporary breaks in the relationship with the child are inevitable and are not in themselves harmful, unless they are frequent and catastrophic. The real harm is inflicted when the parent makes the child work at reestablishing contact, as in forcing a child to apologize before granting "forgiveness." There ~ Gabor Mate

If only [love] could be turned off. It's not a faucet. Love's a bloody river with level-five rapids. Only a catastrophic act of nature or a dam has any chance of stopping it- and then only succeeds in diverting it. Both measures are extreme and change the terrain so much you end up wondering why you bothered. No landmarks to gauge your position when it's done. Only way to survive is to devise new ways to map out life. ~ Karen Marie Moning

But per what usually happens in catastrophic situations, people panic and open the door for the loudest voices to seize control. And once they get power in a world where everything's been destabilized, they can then rebuild that world in their own image. ~ Richelle Mead

But even though catastrophic oppression brought about a process of objectification and dehumanization, the absolute negation of humanity was not possible because a damaged human spirit seeks to resurrect and reconstruct itself; it also seeks self-consciousness. ~ Clovis E. Semmes

Explosion is a beautiful word an a very big one. Later I learned others, the kind you can whisper only when you're alone. Inexorable. Ornamentation. Profile. Catastrophic. Electrical. District Nurse.
They get bigger and bigger if you say them over and over again. You whisper and whisper and let the word grow untilnothing exists except the word. ~ Tove Jansson

Writing can be a splendid headache. Fun when words spill forth like a raging river and a catastrophic, hair-pulling experience when they won't. ~ Adam Santo

It's true. Goodfellow is monogamous. he's become a freak. A pervert. Depravity on the cloven hoof."
"Or his balls fell off," suggested another puck who came to the bar. "Or his dick. Anyone who would hang out with Bacchus is bound to get a catastrophic genital rotting illness at some point. ~ Rob Thurman

Her huge blue eyes and toothy red-lipsticked grin suggested a woman who might be only minutes away from a catastrophic mental breakdown. ~ Stephen King

There is not a name for what I'm feeling. There is no description for it.
To call it yearning would be like calling the ocean water.
Whatever this thing is, it shoves you inside itself and you can't measure its boundaries because they go too far and you don't have enough time. Or you move toward the boundaries and they move away.
There has been an earthquake in my life.
Catastrophic, civilization-ending. ~ R.A. Nelson

Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science - steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains - none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century's attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission. ~ James Buchan

Decrying the mismanagement that led to the summer's catastrophic wildfires: The Clinton administration didn't cause these fires, but their policies have left the Forest Service under-funded and under-prepared for this crisis. I don't think it's a conspiracy, but it's a philosophy they have that leads to explosive fires that destroy everything. ~ Marc Racicot

And maybe that's why the only thing that keeps me going is my belief that we are capable of being better than we are ... capable of taking action to avoid a catastrophic future. ~ Dan Brown

But then sometimes you make a catastrophic mistake, you think I am going to kill myself because the sculpture is ruined, but in the end it come out more incredible than had you not made the mistake. This is why I love the rocks. When I sculpt with clay, it feel like cheating. It is too easy. It has no will of its own. The rocks are formidable. They stand up to you. It is a fair fight. Sometimes you win. Sometimes they win. Sometimes when they win, you win. ~ Jandy Nelson

If poets often commit suicide, it is not because their poems are bad but because they are good. Whoever heard of a bad poet committing suicide? The reader is only a little better off. The exhilaration of a good poem lasts twenty minutes, an hour at most.
Unlike the scientist, the artist has reentry problems that are frequent and catastrophic. ~ Walker Percy

If you do the things that Britain needs to do - namely, withdraw from NATO, get rid of the bomb, and stop being aligned with one side of the Cold War - then presumably the run on the pound, the result in the stock exchanges of the world, will be fairly catastrophic for the economy. But some sort of political realignment is plainly what this country needs. ~ David Hare

It seems all "protection" has to be monitored, considered, weighed and justified - I am suggesting we do that (but it's something Mary Shelley (and Gertrude Stein) also suggest). "Torch Song," the book's final section, looks at an arson committed by someone hired to protect the wilderness from fires, a catastrophic failure of protection! ~ Laura Mullen

If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities. ~ Paul Johnson

Writers are fortunate in that they are able to treat their neurosis every day by writing and as soon as the writer is blocked - this is catastrophic because the writer will start to go to pieces. ~ Edmund Bergler

American society in recent years has been imitating behavior patterns that have produced negative - and sometimes catastrophic - consequences in many other countries around the world. ~ Thomas Sowell

People working on climate change should prepare for catastrophic success. ~ David Titley

This all sounds like a great idea with no chance of catastrophic failure. ~ Andy Weir

Catch Either/Or Thinking

Anxious perfectionists will typically think "I need to perform flawlessly at all times," with their underlying assumption being "or else it will result in disaster." This is a common type of thinking trap termed either/or thinking. In this case, the either/or is this: Either there is flawless performance or complete and utter failure, and nothing in between.
Not only can this style of thinking make you feel crushed when you don't meet your own ideal standards, but it also often leads to perfectionism paralysis. Take, for example, an artist who sees his future career prospects as becoming either the next Picasso or a penniless flop; this person doesn't see other possible outcomes in between. You can see how this would give the artist a creative block.
For other folks, their hidden assumption may be slightly different: "Either I need to perform flawlessly at all times, or other people will reject me." When I look back at my clinical psychology training, I realize I had this belief at that time. At a semiconscious level, I thought that the only way to prevent getting booted out of the program was to score at the top of the class for every test or assignment.
Ultra-high standards often arise because a person is trying to hide imagined catastrophic flaws. In this scenario, people often think that if their flaws get revealed they'll be shunned, and so the only way to conceal their defects is by always excelling. When people who hav ~ Alice Boyes

I don't like being called a denier because deniers don't believe in facts. There are no facts linking the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide with imminent catastrophic global warming there are only predictions based on complex computer models. ~ David Bellamy

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. ~ David Ignatius

Ninety-nine percent of everyday things are things we don't need - that goes for regular visits to the hairdresser just as it does for clothing. What would it mean if we all consumed 20 percent less? It would be catastrophic. It would mean 20 percent less jobs, 20 percent less taxes, 20 percent less money for schools, doctors, roads. The global economy would collapse. ~ Karl-Johan Persson

People who have life-challenging experiences who choose to remain invested in a consistent catastrophic interpretation are not the ones I meet. I have met many more people who have recognized how vital it is to their healing and to the quality of their life to interpret their experiences differently. That is why some of the people I've met who have life-challenging illnesses are much happier than some people I've known who are physically quite healthy and yet who live lives of greater desperation and depression. ~ Marianne Williamson

Many historians emphasize the catastrophic breaks, ruptures, turning points, as the true stuff of history, but the field would be incomplete without a look into the continuities. ~ Ilan Stavans

I was playing Rasputin and what was motivating him was crumpet really, and I was extremely keen on crumpet so I was really rather good as Rasputin. And my next catastrophic failure was Macbeth, who I played in the style of a crumpet-lover, and then when Doctor Who came along, I embraced this lunacy, this cloud-cuckoo-land where people had to be convinced by absolute nonsense. I came from a very religious background, so it was easy for me to believe in something I knew nothing about. ~ Tom Baker

But it must be seen that the term 'catastrophe' has this 'catastrophic' meaning of the end and annihilation only in a linear vision of accumulation and productive finality that the system imposes on us. Etymologically, the term only signifies the curvature, the winding down to the bottom of a cycle leading to what can be called the 'horizon of the event,' to the horizon of meaning, beyond which we cannot go. Beyond it, nothing takes place that has meaning for us - but it suffices to exceed this ultimatum of meaning in order that catastrophe itself no longer appear as the last, nihilistic day of reckoning, such as it functions in our current collective fantasy. ~ Jean Baudrillard

There is never a circumstance, no matter how catastrophic, that also does not hold within it an opportunity to better things, to better yourself. Every moment brings with it an opportunity to love, to forgive, to grow beyond your shortcomings. ~ Lee L Jampolsky

There is the love that I love but don't want to love and try to bleed out so the love that I want but don't want, can die a tragic death. And as it lays dying, I'm touched with remorse, feel regret, and try to keep it beating. If it does, I panic, and go through the cycle all over again. What do you call that except pure madness? I'm a catastrophic tsunami on any man who tries to love me. And if I really care about a man, you would think I would be sweet and supportive, but instead I set fires and dare them to walk through them. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

There are a few things I've learned over the years. One is that time doesn't stop for anyone; hurdling forward and onward, unstoppable and catastrophic. ~ Shawn Michael Severud

We have to believe that our prayers, if pure and powerful can transform any catastrophic situation, regardless of its magnitude. ~ Pooja Ruprell

Being banned from UK will be minor irritant for [Donald] Trump, but catastrophic for local community around Turnberry. ~ Corri Wilson

In the last book of the Iliad (24.602ff.), Achilles urges Priam to eat: even Niobe, he says, after all her children had been slaughtered by the gods, took food eventually. Both Priam and Achilles have been bereaved of their dearest, and yet they gather themselves, and eat, and sleep, and go on living. (...) ...there are two early Lucanian vases with mourners by a grave stele with the same inscription "spoken" by the tomb: "On my back I grow mallow and thick-rooted asphodel: / in my bosom I hold Oedipus, son of Laios." Even Oedipus, the great king of Thebes, archetype of tragedy, experienced a catastrophic fall and descended into the deepest pit of horrors; yet ordinary plants grow on his tomb. We are not so different. ~ Oliver Taplin

It would be catastrophic if one day these fundamentalists Christians gain enough political power to enforce their literal understanding of Mosaic Law. ~ Mel White

None of us mentioned An Evening of Long Goodbyes, whose race had been so catastrophic that, by the end, neither Frank nor I could summon the will to gloat. He had begun badly, getting his head stuck in the gate and having to be extricated by the stewards, and continued with a series of humiliating and distinctly uncanine trips and stumbles, disgracing himself beyond redemption in the third lap, when his muzzle came off and, to the boos of the crowd, he abandoned the race to leap over the hoardings and snatch a hot dog from the hand of a small boy. ~ Paul Murray

Setbacks and losses are both inevitable and essential if you're going to improve and become a good, even great, competitor. The art is in avoiding catastrophic losses in the key battles. ~ Garry Kasparov

Try to remember that artists in these catastrophic times, along with the serious scientists, are the only salvation for us, if there is to be any. ~ William H. Gass

Life is beautiful
only if the eyes of the heart are beautiful
It looks almost catastrophic via the mind
Measuring, quibbling and boasting
Let the heart control the mind
and we are off to the next Galaxy
both inward and outward. ~ Gabriel Iqbal

Removing substantial fuel loads from our forests helps prevent catastrophic fire and better protects species, watersheds and neighboring communities that call them home. ~ Greg Walden

Religion is the worst thing that ever happened to mankind - the ironic part is that it's presented as a good thing, and its effect is absolutely catastrophic to individuals and to societies. ~ George Carlin

human gene editing would almost assuredly never have the same catastrophic consequences as the detonation of a nuclear weapon ~ Jennifer A. Doudna

From The Ghost Wars- on the concept of the Torah as ancient science fiction. "Take the story of the fall of the tower of Babel. Let's say this represents not an act of God, nor a metaphor for this planet's diverse linguistic heritage; but a catastrophic act of terrorism by the Divisionists to sever mankind from the neural net. The internet in this situation becomes mankind's attempt to build a physical replacement for a natural ability long lost. Think of it as a wooden leg or a pacemaker. ~ Cole J. Davis

Fifty years ago, historians advised politicians and policy-makers. They helped chart the future of nations by helping leaders learn from past mistakes in history. But then something changed, and we began making decisions based on economic principles rather than historical ones. The results were catastrophic. ~ Annalee Newitz

Insofar as climate denial hinders technical progress, it might hasten real disasters, which in their turn can make catastrophic thinking still more credible. ~ Timothy Snyder

Reassurance can actually exacerbate anxiety: when you reassure your friend that the worst-case scenario he fears probably won't occur, you inadvertently reinforce his belief that it would be catastrophic if it did. You are tightening the coil of his anxiety, not loosening it. All to often, the Stoics point out, things will not turn out for the best. ~ Oliver Burkeman

I know "professional" historians like to talk about how Yonkers represented a "catastrophic failure of the modern military apparatus," how it proved the old adage that armies perfect the art of fighting the last war just in time for the next one. Personally, I think that's a big 'ole sack of it. Sure, we were unprepared, our tools, our training, everything I just talked about, all one class-A, gold-standard clusterfuck, but the weapon that really failed wasn't something that rolled off an assembly line. It's as old as…I don't know, I guess as old as war. It's fear, dude, just fear and you don't have to be Sun freakin Tzu to know that real fighting isn't about killing or even hurting the other guy, it's about scaring him enough to call it a day. Break their spirit, that's what every successful army goes for, from tribal face paint to the "blitzkrieg" to…what did we call the first round of Gulf War Two, "Shock and Awe"? Perfect name, "Shock and Awe"! But what if the enemy can't be shocked and awed? Not just won't, but biologically can't! That's what happened that day outside New York City, that's the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn't shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They're not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid! ~ Max Brooks

Because the state uses violence to achieve its ends, and there is no rational end to the use of violence, states grow until they destroy civilized interactions through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family and self-reliance.

No state in history has ever been contained.

It's only taken a little more than a century for the US – founded on the idea of limited government, to break the bonds of the constitution, institute the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system and begin its catastrophic expansion. ~ Stefan Molyneux

and in that moment, Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later. For the first time he realized that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best as he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps, love, adopted a role called being a father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. And now that boy, that good actor, had grown old and fragile and tired, wearier than ever at the thought of trying to hoist the Protector's armor back onto his shoulders again, now, so far down the line. ~ Tom Wolfe

If what the science tells us about climate change is correct, then unabated it will result in catastrophic consequences for our world ~ Tony Blair

..:One can lose his job, his car, his house, his savings, his/her wife/husband and so for. And one can still manage to be able to start all over again. To overcome. But its dangerous and catastrophic when one loses his/her faith, hope and mind. When one enters into deep depression. For it could really destroy a person completely or it may take him/her twice as much work to get back up. This is why we are to constantly be renewing our minds. To keep putting oil to our fading lamps. Watering our drying lands. Repositioning ourselves now and then. And specially, helping each other out. It's not good for men to be alone. Two are better than one. For if one falls, the other will help him out. Before bad times come, prepare yourself. Equip yourself. Renew yourself so you could use the circumstances as wind beneath your wings and so you could see circumstances as what they are. Not what they may seem. Someone once said, "Circumstances and trials are just events." They are not people nor your final destination:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

It's the basic obstacle of artificial ecosystems. In a normal evolutionary environment, there's enough diversity to cushion the system when something catastrophic happens. That's nature. Catastrophic things happen all the time. But nothing we can build has the depth. One thing goes wrong, and there's only a few compensatory pathways that can step in. They get overstressed. Fall out of balance. When the next one fails, there are even fewer paths, and then they're more stressed. It's a simple complex system. That's the technical name for it. Because it's simple, it's prone to cascades, and because it's complex, you can't predict what's going to fail. Or how. It's computationally impossible." Holden ~ James S.A. Corey

Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West. ~ Walter Lippmann

Human life as a whole is not inundated by technique. It has room for activities that are not rationally or systematically ordered. But the collision between spontaneous activities and technique is catastrophic for the spontaneous activities. ~ Jacques Ellul

The whole world is shaking at its joints. We have the frightening impression that we stand before a great and catastrophic judgment. If this catastrophe does not take place, it is only because it has been averted by God's direct intervention. And the church is called to move God – yes, God himself – to act. This does not mean that God will not or cannot act unless we ask him, but rather that he waits for people to believe in him and expect his intervention. For God acts among us only to the extent that we ask for his action and accept it with our hearts and lives. This is the secret of God's intervention in history. ~ Eberhard Arnold

NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation. ~ Burt Rutan

I see a lot of people complaining about the things they can fix, and a lot of people being accepting of the things they cannot change.
Maybe tragedy really is the catastrophic event, for the way people view their lives.
I would rather be wise, than nieve. ~ Nikki Rowe

With her self-esteem perilously balanced on her excellence, she could only interpret failure as catastrophic. Lilly shamed herself when she made a mistake, becoming upset not only about her performance but about who she was as a human being ... She reached her heights at a steep internal price. Her Good Girl thinking forced her to walk an unforgiving line; one misstep would plummet her to the snapping jaws of failure ... Her unreasonable expectations kept her shackled to failure, preventing her from shaking off a mistake and moving forward quickly. ~ Rachel Simmons

'Gathering Blue' was a separate book. I wanted to explore what a society might become after a catastrophic world event. Only at the end did I realize I could make it connect to 'The Giver.' ~ Lois Lowry

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that if the United States continued to kill life at its beginnings with abortion, at its mid-day with the handicapped, and at twilight with euthanasia, it would lead to the catastrophic midnight of nuclear war. ~ Kelly Bowring

As the Habsburg military used to say, the situation is catastrophic, but not serious. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

'Ten Years Later' is about the journey six extraordinary people take with time. Each has experienced a game-changing event - perhaps a life-threatening illness or a catastrophic personal loss. ~ Hoda Kotb

If catastrophic geology had at times pushed Nature to almost indecent extremes of haste, uniformitarian geology, on the other hand, had erred in the opposite direction, and pictured Nature when she was 'young and wantoned [sic] in her prime', as moving with the lame sedateness of advanced middle age. It became necessary, therefore, as Dr. [Samuel] Haughton expresses it, 'to hurry up the phenomena'. ~ William Johnson Sollas

States like these [Iran, Iraq, North Korae], and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic. ~ George W. Bush

The wrecking ball is characteristic of our way with materials. We 'cannot afford' to log a forest selectively, to mine without destroying topography, or to farm without catastrophic soil erosion. A production-oriented economy can indeed live in this way, but only so long as production lasts. ~ Wendell Berry

No, you sort of have to put that out of your mind. There's always a possibility that you can have a catastrophic failure, of course. This can happen on any flight. It can happen on the last one as well as the first one. You just plan as best you can to take care of all these eventualities, and you get a well-trained crew, and you go fly. ~ Gus Grissom

How catastrophic is it when the church herself becomes secularized and expressive individualism sits in the driver's seat in the church's life and mission. When the church has lost connection with Christ her living head, she loses her soul. ~ Harold L. Senkbeil

At every historical conjuncture, the present is not only present, it also encompasses a perspective on the past immanent to it - after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, say, the October Revolution is no longer the same historical event: it is (from the triumphant liberal-capitalist view) no longer the beginning of a new progressive epoch in the history of humanity, but the beginning of a catastrophic swerving off-course of history which reached its end in 1991. ~ Anonymous

Conservative Denyers and Delayers are the main reason America lacks the consensus and the political will to take up the fight against catastrophic climate change. ~ Joseph J. Romm

What does it really mean to be a leftist in the early part of the 21st century? What are we really talking about? And I can just be very candid with you. It means to have a certain kind of temperament, to make certain kinds of political and ethical choices, and to exercise certain analytical focuses in targeting on the catastrophic and the monstrous, the scandalous, the traumatic, that are often hidden and concealed in the deodorized and manicured discourses of the mainstream. That's what it means to be a leftist. So let's just be clear about it. ~ Cornel West

It was incongruous at Coombargana. In a great city such things happen now and then, where people are too strained and hurried to pay much attention to the griefs of others, but in a small rural community like ours, led by wise and tolerant people such as my father and mother, staffed by good types culled and weeded out over the years, such secret, catastrophic griefs do not occur. Troubles at Coombargana had always been small troubles in my lifetime. ~ Nevil Shute

The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into the future are you willing to protect Homo sapiens on Earth? Before you answer that question, take a detour to Arizona's Meteor Crater during your next vacation. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan. ~ Nick Cave

The thing that keeps me awake at night is a nexus between terrorism and massive destruction ... the possibility that a terrorist organization could either acquire a ready-made weapon or fabricate something improvised that would have a catastrophic effect for us. ~ Michele Flournoy

According to the brain-centered model of exercise performance, a runner achieves his race goal when his brain calculates that achieving the race goal is possible without catastrophic self-harm. ~ Matt Fitzgerald

Indonesia is hardly immune to catastrophic breakdowns, as the anti-Communist pogrom showed. But, like India, it has been relatively fortunate in evolving a mode of politics that can include many discontinuities - of class, region, ethnicity, and religion. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Postmodern science - by concerning itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control, conflicts characterized by incomplete information, "fracta", catastrophes, and pragmatic paradoxes - is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous, catastrophic, nonrectifiable, and paradoxical. ~ Jean Francois Lyotard

Sex is a metaphor for everything else and everything is a metaphor for sex as well. Because sex is a coming together of two weather patterns, two separate countries, two entities in a conscious state of potentially blissful crisis. Or chaos, or harmony. You're not quite sure what's going to happen, but it is the most catastrophic, exciting, and weakening thing that can happen to us. If we are personally involved in it, every fiber of our being is made self-conscious, or is encourages to unify on some level with others. We are delicate. We bring our damage to sexuality, we bring our hopes, we bring our self-image, we bring our world-image, we bring what we believe we are/what we believe we aren't, our blind spots, our prejudices, our sadness. Everything comes out. A lot of people are left wanting, and confusing, and having the idea that their body is like an unloved apartment building; it's up for grabs and it's of absolutely no worth. If we feel that way about ourselves and if we feel that way about others, then of course, sex is nothing more than a lot of rubbing and some kind of release. But the more we are, the more we can feel, the more we can empathize, the more human we are. ~ Melinda Gebbie

Subsidies for the oil, gas and coal industries are projected to cost taxpayers more than $135 billion in the coming decade. At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies' already enormous profits. ~ Bernie Sanders

The karmic philosophy appeals to me on a metaphorical level because even in ones lifetime it's obvious how often we must repeat our same mistakes, banging our heads against the same ole addictions and compulsions, generating the same old miserable and often catastrophic consequences, until we can finally stop and fix it. This is the supreme lesson of karma ( and also of western psychology, by the way)- take care of the problem now, or else you'll just have to suffer again later when you screw everything up the next time. And that repetition of suffering-that's hell. Moving out of that endless repetition to a new level of understanding-there's where you'll find heaven. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It's not that there are no differences between human and non-human animals, any more than there are no differences between black people and white people, freeborn citizens and slaves, men and women, Jews and gentiles, gays or heterosexuals. The question is rather: are they morally relevant differences? This matters because morally catastrophic consequences can ensue when we latch on to a real but morally irrelevant difference between sentient beings. ~ David Pearce

Soon after a disaster passes, we tend to turn our eyes away and focus our resources on the day-to-day, rather than on preparing for the rare, but foreseeable and potentially catastrophic disaster. It's another form of triage, how much we invest in preparing for that, a very important question for public policy. We are a short-sighted species. ~ Sheri Fink

If terrorists succeeded in using a weapon of mass destruction against the U.S. or one of our allies, it would likely have catastrophic consequences for our cherished republican form of government. ~ Tommy Franks

Lawsuits are rare and catastrophic experiences for the vast majority of men, and even when the catastrophe ensues, the controversy relates most often not to the law, but to the facts. In countless litigations, the law Is so clear that judges have no discretion. ~ Benjamin N. Cardozo

Imagine what will happen to this nation if large numbers of American women start using the Wonderbra. It will be catastrophic. The male half of the population will be nothing but mindless drooling Zombies of Lust. Granted, this is also true now, but it will be even worse. ~ Dave Barry

One person's actions can alter the course of history, and a political or military mischance can touch off a catastrophic reaction that has repercussions over centuries. ~ Timothy Venning

Our situation, with global warming and air quality and all of that, has gotten to be catastrophic. ~ Morgan Freeman

When corporations are given the ring of Gyges, we can expect catastrophic results (for the ecosystem, the banking system, public health, etc.). ~ Jonathan Haidt

Tell me what happens if I throw this with all my power. (Savitar)
(Acheron frowned until he saw an image in his head. It was the stone traveling through the air…it sped until it hit a man in his shoulder, wounding him. No, not any man. A soldier. His arm now lame, the stone's wound forced him to become a beggar…Eight score people would then die because the soldier could no longer protect them in battles that wouldn't even be fought for years to come. But one of those people who died…)
It goes on and on and on. One tiny decision: Do I throw the rock or do I drop it? And a thousand lives are changed by one innocuous decision. (Savitar)
(He let the rock fall to the ground. Now it was harmless again and history wrote itself forward the way it was supposed to.)
You and I are cursed to understand how the tiniest decision made by every being can go onward to affect the rest of the universe. And if I stop something as simple as a rock throw, it could cause catastrophic consequences. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

These hard-core conservative and their very own 'days of rage' should not have been that surprising. For a year now, the likes of Glenn Beck had been telling them that the backlash had the power to prevail over the dark forces of socialism (or worse), that 'we surround them' - but that the consequences of failure could be catastrophic, possibly signaling the death of the Republic itself. The reality that - as Obama himself mocked - no such thing was happening was not a source of reassurance but a trigger for even greater anger. A movement that was built atop a pyramid of so much misinformation was not well equipped to deal with the contradictions of its core beliefs, even - or especially - when they became apparent to the rest of the world. ~ Will Bunch

Yet, it was precisely our failure to differentiate between work and politics, between reality and illusion; it was precisely our mistake of conceiving of politics as a rational human activity comparable to the sowing of seeds or the construction of buildings that was responsible for the fact that a painter who failed to make the grade was able to plunge the whole world into misery. And I have stressed again and again that the main purpose of this book - which, after all, was not written merely for the fun of it - was to demonstrate these catastrophic errors in human thinking and to eliminate irrationalism from politics. It is an essential part of our social tragedy that the farmer, the industrial worker, the physician, etc., do not influence social existence solely through their social activities, but also and even predominantly through their political ideologies. For political activity hinders objective and professional activity; it splits every profession into inimical ideologic groups; creates a dichotomy in the body of industrial workers; limits the activity of the medical profession and harms the patients. In short, it is precisely political activity that prevents the realization of that which it pretends to fight for: peace, work, security, international cooperation, free objective speech, freedom of religion, etc. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Government welfarism, with its ever-increasing army of pensioners and other beneficiaries, is fatally easy to launch and fatally easy to extend, but almost impossible to bring to a halt - and quite impossible politically to reverse, no matter how obvious and catastrophic its consequences become. ~ Henry Hazlitt

When you finally make it out of whatever took you to your bottom, don't forget to put your recovery first. I've seen a lot of people over the years, slowly work their way back to their bottom, because they stop doing everything that got them sober. Sure life gets busy, but if you become irresponsible with your recovery, the outcome is almost always catastrophic.

I just want to encourage those who have drifted away from their recovery program, to get plugged back in. It's very important for you, your family and your friends to maintain your sobriety with like-minded people. ~ Arik Hoover

Intelligent design theorists have learned a few lessons from the failures of their predecessors and have devised a more sophisticated strategy to compete head on with evolution. One of the main things they [intelligent design creationists] have learned is what not to say.
A major element of their strategy is to advance a form of creation that not only omits any explicit mention of Genesis but is also usually vague, if not mute, about any of the specific claims about the nature of Creation, the separate ancestry of humans and apes, the explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophic global flood, or the age of the earth - items that readily identified young-earth creationism as a thinly disguised biblical literalism. ~ Robert T. Pennock

Sometimes it's not catastrophic. Sometimes you only come to the bottom of your coffee cup. Sometimes you have a good day. No one wants to know. No one wants to tell you about theirs either. You might somehow take it. Turn it against them. See the flaw. You always tell them the whole thing sucks. It keeps you alive. They figure if you're out there having a rotten time, everything's fine and you're doing your part. No one will ever try to take your bad times away from you but they'll come swarming for your happiness. ~ Henry Rollins

At first he found it amusing. He coined a law intended to have the humor of a Parkinson's law that "The number of rational hypotheses
that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite." It pleased him never to run out of hypotheses. Even when his experimental work
seemed dead-end in every conceivable way, he knew that if he just sat down and muddled about it long enough, sure enough, another
hypothesis would come along. And it always did. It was only months after he had coined the law that he began to have some doubts
about the humor or benefits of it.
If true, that law is not a minor flaw in scientific reasoning. The law is completely nihilistic. It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the
general validity of all scientific method!
If the purpose of scientific method is to select from among a multitude of hypotheses, and if the number of hypotheses grows faster
than experimental method can handle, then it is clear that all hypotheses can never be tested. If all hypotheses cannot be tested, then the
results of any experiment are inconclusive and the entire scientific method falls short of its goal of establishing proven knowledge ~ Robert M. Pirsig