Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe. — Susan Sontag
Catastrophe is the essence of the spiritual path, a series of breakdowns allowing us to discover the threads that weave all of life into a whole cloth. — Joan Halifax
The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe — Walter Benjamin
Apocalypse has become banal, a set of statistical risk parameters to everyone's existence. — Anthony Giddens
Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster. — Jim Wallis
The world is literally about to blow up. — Lindsey Graham
Geniuses were like storms or cyclones, pulling everything into their path, sticks and stones and dust. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
It is clearly evident that most events of a widespread nature draw their causes from the enveloping heavens. — Ptolemy
Madness, mayhem, erotic vandalism, devastation of innumerable souls - while we scream and perish, History licks a finger and turns the page. — Thomas Ligotti
with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy. — John Kennedy Toole
The sense of impending disaster hung over the garden like a chandelier. — Antal Szerb
Destruction was effected after visitation, for visitation always precedes. — Emanuel Swedenborg
A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent. — Elie Wiesel
Synchronistic events constitute moments in which a 'cosmic' or 'greater' meaning becomes gradually conscious in an individual; generally it is a shaking experience. — Marie-Louise von Franz
Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges. — Margaret J. Wheatley
Short Cataclysmic Quotes
Send me one hundred francs on our future deals, otherwise I will disappear in a cataclysm. — Camille Claudel
Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter. — Josh Mcdowell
My mind is filled with cataclysm and apocalypse. I wish for earthquakes, eruptions, flood. — Madeline Miller
Hurricanes have killed more people worldwide in the last 50 years than any other natural cataclysm. — Kerry Emanuel
The way Japan had tried to build up a modern state modelled on the West was cataclysmic. — Kenzaburo Oe
The worst time to take a survey is in the middle of a cataclysmic event. — Stuart Rothenberg
What's it called when a hellhole hits a cataclysm? A catastro[phrack]. I just coined that, didn't I? — Jon Stewart
When you've been through that, a fight just doesn't seem that cataclysmic. — Brian Stann
...humanity learns true lessons only in cataclysm. — Daniel H. Wilson
He'd surely been spawned by some cataclysmic event of nature, not born. — Karen Marie Moning
Cataclysmic Image Quotes
Catalyst Quotes
I found out that the things that hurt us the most can become the fuel and the catalyst that propel us toward our destiny. It will either make you bitter or it will make you better. — T. D. Jakes
The big catalyst was seeing my sister, when I was 11, doing a dramatic recital. When I saw her on the stage and everyone listening to her so patiently, quietly, that's all I wanted: for someone to look at me and listen to me, but in some beautiful and artistic way. — Gene Wilder
I am and always will be a catalyst for change. — Shirley Chisholm
Capitalism has the power to shape society and act as a powerful catalyst for change. — Larry Fink
You know, I had the ability like a catalyst to really get everybody hyped up. — Jim Capaldi
I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a 'transformer' in any situation, any organization. Such an individual is yeast that can leaven an entire loaf. It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader. — Stephen Covey
A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results. — Wade Boggs
You can't save the world...save YOUR heart. Be a catalyst & create a life where you are powerful. Rebel. Be happy & allow others happiness. — Andy Biersack
Restlessness is a fickle catalyst; it can drive you to achieve or it can coax your demise, and sometimes the choice isn't yours — Slash
Catastrophically Quotes
Success is not built on success. It's built on failure. It's built on frustration. Sometimes its built on catastrophe. — Sumner Redstone
If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Error is not just acceptable, it is necessary for the continuation of life, provided it is not too great. A large error is a catastrophe, a small error is essential for enhancing existence. Without error, there is no movement. Death follows. — Jacques Lecoq
All the parties of capitalist society, all its moralists and all its sycophants will perish beneath the debris of the impending catastrophe. The only party that will survive is the party of the world socialist revolution. — Leon Trotsky
Either God can do nothing to stop catastrophes like this, or he doesn't care to, or he doesn't exist. God is either impotent, evil, or imaginary. Take your pick, and choose wisely. — Sam Harris
In 1920 [H.G. Wells] described human history as becoming more and more a race between education and catastrophe. — Joel Garreau
The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically. — Emily Greene Balch
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. — H. G. Wells
The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals — Chrissie Hynde
In their meditations, the high priests and priestesses of Atlantis had seen that the Atlantean civilization was going to end cataclysmically. — Frederick Lenz
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day. — Jim Rohn
We have in fact entered upon the final phase..., the darkest period of this dark age, the state of dissolution from which there is to be no emerging except through a cataclysm, since it is no longer a mere revival which is required, but a complete renovation. — Rene Guenon
The US has unthinkingly embarked upon a neoimperial policy that must involve us in virtually every great war of the coming century-and wars are the death of republics. If we continue on this course of reflexive interventions, enemies will one day answer our power with the weapon of the weak-terror, and eventually cataclysmic terrorism on US soil. — Pat Buchanan
Disease, a simple famine, plagues of locusts everywhere, or a cataclysmic earthquake, I'd accept with some despair, but no, you sent us Congress! Good God, Sir, was that fair? — Peter Stone
Or will it take some cataclysmic act of violence on U.S. soil to finally awaken our gamesmen to the costs of global hegemony? — Pat Buchanan
People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul. — David Brooks
There is no Christian Gospel if history simply unwinds into a meaningless puddle, if the cosmos simply escapes into a cataclysmic black hole, or if the universe finally dies of exhausted energy. Without belief in a biblical eschatology, there is no Christian hope. Without a sense of perfect moral judgment in the end, the human heart is homeless. — Albert Mohler
The biggest bursts of speciation that we know about in the history of the earth are soon after great cataclysms, like the extinction of the dinosaurs, which create new opportunities, and all sorts of new forms spring up... So, quite often, the reasons for creativity depend on accidents or disasters that prevent the normal habits being carried out. — Rupert Sheldrake
Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life! — Charles Darwin
The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine, on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated. — George Smoot
The option of quitting has long been undervalued and underused... Quitters must not be frightened by the potentially cataclysmic outcome of a particular quit. — Evan Harris
Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. — Jim Rohn
Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out. — James Levine
Geologists have usually had recourse for the explanation of these changes to the supposition of sundry violent and extraordinary catastrophes, cataclysms, or general revolutions having occurred in the physical state of the earth's surface. — George Julius Poulett Scrope
...The girl raised her eyes to see who was passing by the window, and that casual glance was the beginning of a cataclysm of love that still had not ended half a century later. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In Hiroshima, thirty days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly-people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague. — Wilfred Burchett
I was like a lost moon―my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation―that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity. — Stephenie Meyer
I would have a flick of fear, as in a dream when you find yourself in the wrong building or have forgotten the time for the exam and understand that this is only the tip of some shadowy cataclysm or lifelong mistake. — Alice Munro
Once again, the puppets on Capitol Hill are about to slam the Muppets on Main Street. The country still hasn't recovered from the Wall Street-induced financial cataclysm of 2008, yet Congress is preparing to enact the Orwellian 'JOBS Act' - a bill that should in fact be called the 'Return Fraud to Wall Street in One Easy Step Act.' — Eliot Spitzer
I was writing a lot of true love songs-true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment...Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life...Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good. — Jorma Kaukonen
The land promised to Abraham and his descendants is once again theirs. God always keeps His promises. Even in times of cataclysmic upheaval and change, God's love and faithfulness are unchanging. — Lynn Austin
Defaulting on the nation's debt would be cataclysmic. The U.S. Treasury's Aaa rating is the one constant in the world's financial system. When times are bad anywhere on the planet, global investors flock to Treasury bonds because they know they will get their money back. — Mark Zandi
If all fossil fuel were to go POOF! tomorrow, the result would be a cataclysmic social upheaval, with food riots, warlords, shutdowns, breakdown of social order, water shortages, and outbreaks of bloodshed and disease. — Margaret Atwood
Welcome it as part of a process... you just can't avoid it... if you go to bat enough times, you are going to strike out; and you will do it cataclysmically; and you know success and failure are just millimeters apart. — Peter Guber
It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm. — John Wyndham
It was quite a European war until 1917, when the Americans joined up. They don't have the same sense of the loss of innocence and the cataclysmic loss of life. A whole generation was wiped out. — Tom Hiddleston
The weapons were conceived and created by a small band of physicists and chemists; they remain a cataclysmic threat to the whole of human society and the natural environment. — Barry Commoner
Storms of every sort, torrents, earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the song of creation, varied expressions of God's love. — John Muir
If we - particularly, if we peremptorily attack North Korea - that without deliberation, that North Korea will reflexively unleash all the rocketry and artillery - which they're pretty good at, by the way - on Seoul, and do as they vowed many times, to convert Seoul into a sea of fire. So, if we do something like this, this will have cataclysmic results. — James R. Clapper
President [John F.] Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs, said to Turner Catledge of The New York Times: I wish you had written more, I wish you had investigated more, because it might have saved the country of the cataclysm of the Bay of Pigs. — Mark Shields
Donald Trump is this whirling dervish of chaos. He picked a fight with Mexico. Germany is not far behind. He will pick a fight with them. He will pick a fight with China, which would be truly cataclysmic. — David Brooks
There can come a time when change is so cataclysmic that it changes the fundamentals of how we do our politics. — Allan Lichtman
Of course people are angry. Generation upon generation had jobs at steel mills or whatever - things were going on and it looked like it would always be that way. And then there's these cataclysmic changes and people find themselves out on their arse and they're angry and they want answers. But one thing that's for sure is that those answers will not come in the form of Donald J. Trump. — Dylan Moran
Characters exist in a flat line until we challenge them - sometimes they challenge themselves, sometimes they're challenged by other people, by nature, by robots, or by fungal infections in and around one's nether-country. Stories need conflict across the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual spectra. Accidents, betrayals, cataclysm, desperation, excess - these are the letters in the alphabet of conflict. — Chuck Wendig
For me, the Dennis Wilson story is a quintessential You Must Remember This story because it's one of these stories that people never talk about, don't really think about, and it's forgotten within this major thing that is thought to be this cataclysmic event of the 20th century. — Karina Longworth
People never heard bells in Western music sounding really cataclysmic. You hear that more in Russian music or in Asian, Indonesian traditions. — Charlemagne Palestine
There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But he still says so. There was no link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaida. But he still says so. And thus, gripping firmly these figments of his own imagination, Mr. Cheney lives on, in defiance, and spreads - around him and before him - darkness, like some contagion of fear. They are never wrong, and they never regret - admirable in a French torch singer, cataclysmic in an American leader. — Keith Olbermann
Life is a matter of dealing with other people, in little matters and cataclysmic ones, and that means a series of conversations. — Deborah Tannen
In Conclusion
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