197 Crisis Quotes

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

Thus one of Europe's most serious crises will be ended, and all of us, not only in Germany but those far beyond our frontiers, will then in this year for the first time really rejoice at the Christmas festival. It should for us all be a true Festival of Peace.

When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen.

There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

In time of peril, like the needle to the loadstone, obedience, irrespective of rank, generally flies to him who is best fitted to command.

There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.

The world was arrogant and self-satisfied, but behind all this confidence there was an uneasy sense of impending disaster. The old creeds, both religious and political, were largely in the process of dissolution, but we did not realise the fact, and therefore did not look for new foundations.

In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.

Men have been swindled by other men on many occasions. The autumn of 1929 was, perhaps, the first occasion when men succeeded on a large scale in swindling themselves.

The world is facing a historic turning point because the system of materialistic liberalism has come to a deadlock.

The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.

The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear ultimately. And I don't think we want to speculate on the number of casualties. The effort now has to be to save as many people as possible.

We are living even now among punishments and ruins.

It isn't right to be obedient only when things go well; it is much harder to be a good, obedient soldier when things go badly and times are hard. Obedience and faith at such time is a virtue.

Tell the FBI that the kidnappers should pick out a judge that Nixon wants back.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

As to what happened next, it is possible to maintain that the hand of heaven was involved, and also possible to say that when men are desperate no one can stand up to them.

It is not best to swap horses while crossing the river.

The central government possesses no plan of finding the way out of this blind alley.

One said of suicide, 'As long as one has brains one should not blow them out.' And another answered, 'But when one has ceased to have them, too often one cannot.'

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.

Dear God, please take care of your servant John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

I think everybody is covering their posteriors with the Enron scandal and it was very convenient that Sept. 11 came along to deflect the fact that they should never have been in the White House in the first place. What happened in the election was completely corrupt.

Ireland, Ireland! That cloud in the west! That coming storm! That minister of God's retribution upon cruel, inveterate, and but half-atoned injustice! Ireland forces upon us those great social and great religious questions. God grant that we may have courage to look them in the face!

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall our selves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only, not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached, and passed.

Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.

Dissidents should be paid 13 months' salary for a year, otherwise our mindless unanimity will bring us to an even more hopeless state of stagnation. It is especially important to encourage unorthodox thinking when the situation is critical: At such moments every new word and fresh thought is more precious than gold. Indeed, people must not be deprived of the right to think their own thoughts.

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

I don't mind being called tough, because in this racket it's tough guys who lead the survivors.

He's the man of the hour, a man whose extraordinary grace under pressure in the days since this devastating attack has led him to be called America's mayor. He's the mayor of New York City, ladies and gentlemen, Rudy Giuliani.

[He] didn't bring us together, our pain brought us together... We would have come together if Bozo was the mayor.

Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! a sail!

Our media make crisis chatter out of news and fill our minds with anxious phantoms of the real thing - a summit in Helsinki, a treaty in Egypt, a constitutional crisis in India, a vote in the U.N., the financial collapse of New York. We can't avoid being politicized (a word as murky as the condition which it describes) because it is necessary after all to know what is going on. Worse yet, what is going on will not let us alone. Neither the facts nor the deformations, the insidious platitudes of the media (tormenting because the underlying realities are so large and so terrible), can be screened out. The study of literature itself is heavily 'politicized.'

Much of junk culture has a core of crisis - shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.

Deep in my morning time he made his mark And still he comes uncalled to be my guide In devastated regions When the brain has lost its bearings in the dark And broken in it's body's pride In the long campaign to which it had sworn allegiance.

I believe that in the 20th century, humanity has learned from many, many experiences. Some positive, and many negative. What misery, what destruction! The greatest number of human beings were killed in the two world wars of this century. But human nature is such that when we face a tremendous critical situation, the human mind can wake up and find some other alternative. That is a human capacity.

We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year's rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state.

But this momentous question [the Missouri Compromise], like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union.

That the threat is now intense is not a reason to abandon our quest for knowledge. It is a reason to hold it more tightly, in spite of the need for action to preserve our freedom, in spite of the distractions of living in turmoil, that it may not be lost or brushed aside by the demands of the hour. We would not neglect our duty to our country and our fellows to strive mightily to preserve our ways and our lives. There is an added duty, not inconsistent, not less. It is the duty to so live that there may be a reason for living, beyond the mere mechanisms of life. It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding.

In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.

Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required - are impediments - in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham - a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman - to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.

I think we're at a time in American history that's probably analogous to, maybe, Rome before the first emperors, when the Republic started to fall... I think if you look at the pattern of events, if you look at the disputed election of 2000, can you imagine? In America, people are trying to recount ballots and a partisan mob is pounding on the glass and threatening the counters? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine a political party which does its best to keep any representatives from another party - who've even been affiliated with another party - from getting a business job in the nation's capital? Can you imagine a political party that wants to redistrict so that its opponents can be driven out entirely?...it's a different time in America and the Republic is - this election is about a lot more than jobs. I'm not sure everybody in America sees it right now. But I see it, I feel it.

Beware of desp'rate steps! The darkest day (Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.

Survive, it's the name of the game. Would I give a shit about these people?

On making prisoners of our generals, they expected that we should perish from want of direction and order. It is incumbent, therefore, on our present commanders to be far more vigilant than our former ones, and on those under command to be far more orderly, and more obedient to their officers, at present than they were before:On the very day that such resolution is passed, they will see before them ten thousand Clearchuses instead of one.

If the economic crisis comes, and it is always near, do not lay people off. Use them in sales.

I'm going to go home and walk my dog and hug my wife, and maybe get a good Mexican meal and a stiff margarita and a full night's sleep, ... And then I'm going to go right back to FEMA and continue to do all I can to help these victims.

I'm trapped now, please rescue me.

Mostpeople have been heard screaming for international measures that render hell rational -i thank heaven somebody's crazy enough to give me a daisy

These big Texas interns kept saying, 'Mrs. Kennedy, you come with us', they wanted to take me away from him... But I said 'I'm not leaving'... Dave Powers came running to me at the hospital, crying when he saw me, my legs, my hands were covered with his brains... When Dave saw this he burst out weeping... I said 'I'm not going to leave him, I'm not going to leave him'... I was standing outside in this narrow corridor... ten minutes later this big policeman brought me a chair.

Today our world faces a crisis: a crisis which, if its consequences are as grave as now seems, may not fully be resolved for another century. If the destructive forces in civilization gain ascendancy, our new urban culture will be stricken in every part. Our cities, blasted and deserted, will be cemeteries for the dead: cold lairs given over to less destructive beasts than man. But we may avert that fate: perhaps only in facing such a desperate challenge can the necessary creative forces be effectually welded together. Instead of clinging to the sardonic funeral towers of metropolitan finance, our to march out to newly plowed fields, to create fresh patterns of political action, to alter for human purposes the perverse mechanisms or our economic regime, to conceive and to germinate fresh forms of human culture. Instead of accepting the stale cult of death that the Fascists have erected, as the proper crown for the servility and brutality that are the pillars of their states, we must erect a cult of life: life in action, as the farmer or mechanic nows it: life in expression, as the artist knows it: life as the lover feels it and the parent practices it: life as it is known to men of good will who meditate in the cloister, experiment in the laboratory, or plan intelligently in the factory or the government office.

The past month was the 10th anniversary of the massacres in Rwanda, and there was much soul-searching about our failure to do anything about them. So headlines read 'To Say `Never Again' and Mean it; the 1994 Rwandan genocide should have taught us about the consequences of doing nothing' (Richard Holbrooke, Washington Post); 'Learn from Rwanda' (Bill Clinton, Washington Post). So what did we learn? In Rwanda, for 100 days people were being killed at the rate of about 8000 a day, and we did nothing. Fast forward to today. In Africa, about 10,000 children a day are dying from easily treatable diseases, and we are doing nothing to save them. That's not just 100 days, it's every day, year after year, killing at the Rwanda rate. And far easier to stop then Rwanda: it just means pennies to bribe drug companies to produce remedies. But we do nothing. Which raises another question: what kind of socioeconomic system can be so savage and insane that to stop Rwanda-scale killings among children going on year after year it's necessary to bribe the most profitable industry that ever existed? That's carrying socioeconomic lunacy beyond the bounds that even the craziest maniac could imagine? But we do nothing.

And then [he] wondered why he would think of such a useless question at a time like this

red rain is coming down red rain red rain is pouring down pouring down all over me

Mama come rescue me I'm suicidal thinkin thoughts/I'm innocent, so there'll be bullets flyin when I'm caught/Fuck doin jail time, better day, sacrifice

I hear the doctor standing over me screamin I can make it/Got a body full of bullet holes layin here naked

The fat is in the fire.

Now I see what racing skiing is all about. It's all right to miss seeing the trees and the countryside and all the other things when you've got to be in a hurry. And when you're in a war you've got to be in a hurry. Don't you? So I guess maybe racing skiers weren't ruining the sport after all. They were preparing it, if you see what I mean, for the future. Everything has to evolve or else it perishes. . . I'm almost glad this war came along. It's like a test, isn't it, and only the things and the people who've been evolving the right way survive.

People are selfish, but they can also be compassionate and generous, and they care about the country. But not when they feel threatened. That's why this is such a crucial time. We can go in either direction. But if we don't make a choice soon, it will be too late to turn things around. I think people are willing to make the right choice. But they need leadership. They're hungry for leadership.

Come God Help Us! (Estonian: Tule taevas Appi!)

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

'Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.'

'This', cried the Mayor, 'is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red To come to the aid of their country!', he said. 'We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!'

I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous - a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite.

Well, gentlemen, this matter has been a fiasco.

I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy.

If it's going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

In crises the most daring course is often safest.

There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full.

I've also gotten weird letters, suicide letters, girls threatening to jump if I don't get in touch with them. So you think, 'This is bullshit,' but then you think, 'What if it's not?' Who wants to take that chance? I write them back, tell them to hang in there, if things are that bad, they have to get better. But I'm not altogether stable myself, so who am I to give advice? (1988)

Sugar is gone; silk has gone; iron is threatened; wool is threatened; cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries...are like sheep in a field.

Drive on. We'll sweep up the blood later!

Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

In great crisis, it is the lot of women to soften our misfortunes.

The true character of man ever displays itself in great events.

There is neither subordination, nor fear in empty bellies.

To extraordinary circumstances we must apply extraordinary remedies.

On 9/11, those of us who do the jobs that I do, flew without a net for hour and hour and hour after end. And then you hope and pray that you've had the experience to be up to it. Because then you're editor, analyst, reporter, correspondent, ringmaster, the whole thing.

The truth of the matter is - and I'm always a bit reluctant to say this because people think you're a bit unfeeling. The truth of this, on 9/11, people who - myself and others - were so unbelievably focused on what was happening that we were, for many, many hours, I think, spared the agony of loss.

I was so focused on all of that, that it took me many hours, until my kids called, ironically. My kids both called and just left a little message that they were OK. And I turned around and went - Oh, man that really hit me like a ton of bricks - But most of the time we were spared that agony for the time being.

Necessity knows no law except to conquer.

'I remember well, that during the 2000 crisis in Labasa, the late Tui Labasa and I amongst a few other Vanua Levu chiefs were approached both by the Police and Military to intercede in the face off between the soldiers at Sukanaivalu Barracks. We accepted their request and invitation when they sought our assistance traditionally. We went and did what we were asked to do, which was to diffuse the volatility of the situation there in Labasa. I stand here today without any hesitation at all to say that had it not been for our positive contribution, Labasa would have been looted, burnt and soldiers would have been killed and probably maimed each other. Yet, when all was brought to normal, we were charged and convicted for offences, we were asked for assistance and in return went to prison for it.'

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms - he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse.

Still...let's talk about fear. We won't raise our voices and we won't scream; we'll talk rationally, you and I. We'll talk about the way the good fabric of things sometimes has a way of unraveling with shocking suddenness.

We are finding out that what looked like a neglected house a year ago is in fact a ruin.

Trade unions and strikes cannot help in times of crisis when there is no demand for this 'commodity', they cannot change the conditions which, convert labour-power into a commodity and which doom the masses of working people to dire need and unemployment. To change these conditions, a revolutionary struggle against the whole existing social and political system is necessary; the industrial crisis will convince very many workers of the justice of this statement.

You've heard on aeroplanes, they explode? And that is true, it happened to me ah, over thirty thousand feet. (mimes as if he's just having a conversation on a plane, and then his left breast explodes) 'BrrpphhZZZ' (Mimes wiping exploded stuff off of his chest and then mimes reaching up and pushing the stewardess button overhead) 'Sorry about this... Buung!' (Mimes having a sip of drink while waiting for service) 'Yes, my left breast has... exploded. Have you got a pillow? Oh, and some more nibblie, nibblies?' But then you've got one L cup boob and a D cup boob, and you get a lot of looks! I already get a lot of looks. So by the end it, I've got the fork: (Mimes stabbing himself in the right breast, then reaching up and pushing the overhead service call button again.) 'Buung!' 'Another pillow' And you go off with the biggest tits in Christendom... as the crusaders used to say!

Peter Jennings was a gentleman. Even when asking the tough, insightful questions, he did so in a gentlemanly fashion. He was able to find the weakness in an argument and point it out, but in a constructive way, not in a 'gotcha' way... On Sept. 11, Peter's journalistic ability, coupled with his humanity, informed and helped comfort us. Like all those watching that day, he too was in pain over the destruction wreaked on his beloved city, but he soldiered on and did so with compassion and eloquence. While that clear, calm voice is silent now, the memory of his articulate and thoughtful presence will live on in our hearts forever. ~ Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City