Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Since 1963, the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center has conducted nearly 700 field studies on floods and earthquakes, and on-site research reveals the same results every time: the vast majority of people stay calm and help each other.

It's actually more than 700 case studies that show that, especially in times of crisis, we show our best selves. And we get this explosion of altruism and cooperation. This happens again and again after natural disasters, after earthquakes and after floodings.

In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.

Human beings are often at their best when responding to immediate crises - car accidents, house fires, hurricanes. We are less effective in the face of enormous but slow-moving crises such as the loss of biodiversity or climate change.

During a national crisis, we as a nation become a single community and no one should take advantage of a crisis.

We're animals. We're born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts.

As Mayor of San Francisco, I will work hard to ensure that, in the event of natural or man-made disasters, San Franciscans are prepared and our City is protected.

This is the United States of America. It means we respond to our fellow Americans in times of crisis and emergency and disaster.

I was caught on the freeway for hours when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The entire city had to be evacuated. I observed lives threatened by catastrophes and a whole range of behaviour. What could people do during a crisis?

It's not that bad things never happen. But there's a pattern in which most people are calm, resourceful, altruistic, and they improvise emergency systems that work really well - whether it's getting the babies out of a collapsed hospital or putting together a community kitchen to feed everybody for the next few months.

Most zombie stories, the problems they solve are not the actual zombies. The problems they solve are the human interactions.

When you are pulling people out of the water and off of rooftops, there are no Republicans and no Democrats.

If you think people are inherently good, you get rid of the police for 24 hours - see what happens.

Having worked in disasters, I have seen that, in those critical first few hours, those first few days - so much ends up riding on you and your neighbor and whoever is around. The official response always comes later, and it always feels like it comes too slow.

I am certain more emergency supplemental bills will be needed before this process is concluded. In fact, there is a point I have repeated several times recently which keeps the enormity of this situation in perspective.

Two things control men's nature, instinct and experience.

One of my favorite books is 'The Swiss Family Robinson.' The reason is, I'm fascinated by the postapocalyptic recovery. What do we do in a disaster? How do we make do?

There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something.

During a large disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, warnings get hopelessly jumbled. The truth is that, for warnings to work, it's not enough for them to be delivered. They must also overcome that human tendency to pause; they must trigger a series of effective actions, mobilizing the informal networks that we depend on in a crisis.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

Men govern themselves by instinct much more than by laws and intellect.

It's not a disaster, it's comfortably intimate.

Assure personal survival in any kind of disaster.

Commander in Chief of Disasters.

As with most politicians, it took a disaster for them to do something.