Instability Quotes

The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water.

States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them

Listen to me: everything you think you know, every relationship you've ever taken for granted, every plan or possibility you've ever hatched, every conceit or endeavor you've ever concocted, can be stripped from you in an instant. Sooner or later, it will happen. So prepare yourself. Be ready not to be ready. Be ready to be brought to your knees and beaten to dust. Because no stable foundation, no act of will, no force of cautious habit will save you from this fact: nothing is indestructible.

Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.

I do worry about civil unrest, or complete collapse of society, or having to flee, or Europe falling into a war.

All that is solid melts into air. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.

Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.

If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.

America is ungovernable. He who serves a revolution ploughs the sea.

… you only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out..

Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.”

If things were not impermanent, life would not be possible.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It's not if, it's when.

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

The Middle East is undoubtedly in for a rocky time. In Palestine we have a situation which is badly fouled up by the past mistakes of many people, including ourselves. These probably cannot be settled without great unpleasantness, including violence.

We can't afford to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and the terrorists.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

Things fall apart, it's scientific.

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle.

There can be no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic societies and political institutions. The failure of these institutions to function and the instability of these regimes in Muslim countries, manifest in frequent changes and coups d'état, is most often the consequence of their a priori opposition to Islam, as the fundamental and foremost feeling of the people in those countries.

Sanity calms, but madness is more interesting.

Politically, [Latin] America is the same as it is physically: the land of the earthquakes.

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

Everything changes and nothing stands still.