Disasters teach us humility.

It is always one’s virtues and not one’s vices that precipitate one into disaster.

I really like Barack Obama. I think that he’s working very hard. He’s trying to rebuild our reputation throughout the world. The previous administration was a total disaster, a total catastrophe. He was handed a pretty bad deck of cards. And I’m not saying I agree with everything he’s doing. He’s a champion. I mean, he won against all odds. When he first announced, people were giving him virtually no chance. And he’s just done something that’s amazing.

Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Pride and excess bring disaster for man.

All across the world, …increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.

There’s nobody to guide through the process of becoming a man… to explain to them the meaning of manhood. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

Success means participating fully in the conscious evolution of humanity, contributing to the shift in time to avoid the chaos and disasters foreseen.

Yet there is a dignity in the human spirit which can become most clearly visible in the moment of defeat and disaster.

Faith means that a man should regard any disaster simply as a fate-determined blow which must be endured.

We all wish to be brave and strong in the face of disaster. We all wish to be looked up to for our endurance and efforts to help others.

What quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs?

The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.

I learned a long time ago that trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times.

Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires – disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.

Disasters are funny to me. As a comedian you learn from failure, so I’m always trying to put myself in a situation that does not seem ideal for my comedy and see how it works.

Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

Your short-term gains are the rest of the world’s long-term disasters – for everybody, including yourselves. And, I’m sorry, I’ve been saying you and the United States or America, when I actually mean the US government. There’s a difference. Big one.

The world will continue to be hit by natural disasters and hateful mass killings, but communities bounce back stronger, so keep going.

There is something in us that loves certain disasters and the fever of this moment and surrendering to that.

In the social equation, the value of a single life is nil; in the cosmic equation, it is infinite… Not only communism, but any political movement which implicitly relies on purely utilitarian ethics, must become a victim to the same fatal error. It is a fallacy as naïve as a mathematical teaser, and yet its consequences lead straight to Goya’s Disasters, to the reign of the guillotine, the torture chambers of the Inquisition, or the cellars of the Lubianka.

The yearning to know what cannot be known, to comprehend the incomprehensible, to touch and taste the unapproachable, arises from the image of God in the nature of man. Deep calleth unto deep, and though polluted and landlocked by the mighty disaster theologians call the Fall, the soul senses its origin and longs to return to its source.

Trying to micromanage the perfect vacation is always a disaster. That leads to terrible times. If you get lost and you just end up eating just anywhere, you know, you see a bunch of Venetians sitting around smoking cigarettes, eating something unrecognizable in a dark alley somewhere, chances are it’s interesting.

The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels… If we succeed, we create booming new industries, wealth, clean secure energy and maybe we prevent the greatest disaster so far in human history, saving millions of lives while improving billions more. If we fail, basically it’s business as usual while things slowly get worse all around us.

So, in the physical world mankind are prone to seek an explanation of uncommon phenomena only, while the ordinary changes of nature, which are in themselves equally wonderful, are disregarded.

This is how Americans think. You believe that if something terrible happens to someone, they must have deserved it.

Well, there isn’t any one profile of a survivor, but there are profiles. Depending on the disaster you have certain advantages and disadvantages just based on who you are. Women are more likely to survive hurricanes. In hurricanes the deaths come from floods and people driving through high water. That’s much more likely to be a man who dies that way.

In the wake of this disaster, the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida should know that the United States Congress stands ready to help them in their time of need,.

A great disaster had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Nature can seem cruel, but she balances her books.

I was in Manhattan during 9/11, and that was really the only thing that I related to as far as a disaster on a grand scale. It was really interesting to see on that day and in the weeks afterwards how people came together, and what people were able to do for each other, and what I found myself feeling and thinking and doing for the people around me, whether it was strangers on the street or my own family. It was really an experience that you can’t fake.

The cat Horus shot out from under the table and headed for the door, his ears flattened and his tail straight out. There he encountered Abdullah, who had been waiting for us on the verandah and who had, I supposed, been alarmed by Emerson’s shouts and hurried to discover what disaster had prompted them. The cat got entangled in Abdullah’s skirts and a brief interval of staggering (by Abdullah), scratching (by Horus) and swearing (by both parties) ensued before Horus freed himself and departed.

There is a thrill of vulnerability at all airshows. There is no way of making everything completely safe. When the machines are being thrashed to capacity and the pilots are flying at their limits to dazzle, things are bound to go wrong sometimes. There have been some historic disasters, but the danger is a part of the attraction.

Not all introductions worked well. Rabbits were an unmitigated environmental disaster. Unchecked by any natural predator, they bred at a staggering rate and chewed their way across vast areas of pastureland as well as any garden that came their way. Attempts to control them by introducing ferrets, weasels and stoats did much more harm than good. Although these predators probably killed a reasonable number of rabbits, they also devastated populations of kiwi and raided the nests of flighted birds.