Crisis

“ Little wonder if one of Europe’s préeminent thinkers, honored for his wisdom and restraint, should have been forced to make so bold an assertion: “The world is passing through the gravest crisis in the history of civilization.” ”

“ It is among such extra-social or “stimuli” factors that catastrophe falls as a precipitating agent in social change.
The significance of crisis in social change likewise requires attention, and it will be clarifying to our thought at this point to distinguish carefully between crisis and catastrophe, and to inquire what the nature of the former really is. The word “crisis” is of Greek origin, meaning a point of culmination and separation, an instant when change one way or another is impending. Crises are those critical moments which are, as we say, big with destiny. ”

“ My feeling is, that we are very fast approaching to a crisis, and in that crisis our eyes are unto the everlasting hills—to him who says, ‘I will never leave thee nor forsake thee,’ but who will be with us always even unto the end of the world. ”

“ We stand at a crisis—the supreme crisis of the ages. For unnumbered millenniums man has toiled upward from the dank jungles of savagery toward glorious heights which his mental and spiritual potentialities give promise that he shall attain. ”

“ Crises often, perhaps most often, precede catastrophies, as when revolutions break. The alternate truth that the catastrophies themselves are re-agents to generate the crisis-situation has not been so commonly noted. Nevertheless the disintegration of the normal by shock and calamity is an increasingly familiar spectacle. ”

“ The not infrequent statement that prosperity sometimes merges into depression without the intervention of a crisis means simply that the writers understand by crisis a violent disturbance of business conditions. ”

“ We have lived in the fond hope that if the present corner could be turned, something might transpire to save the recipient of relief from another crisis; and not even the obvious fact that the crisis is chronic in the case of multitudes has shaken us out of our preoccupation with symptoms into an investigation of causes. ”

“ When, in a great crisis, the mighty statesman, the intellectual giant between whose puny legs we petty men do creep and peer about, has proclaimed the Fla-ag in Danger; has led us to stand at the parting of the ways; has shown that the nation must make irrevocable choice of good or evil ”

“ I say, at a crisis like this we might better have lost a thousand men in battle, for it will turn thousands against us, and rouse the slumbering spirit of resistance here, at the very crisis when, had it slumbered on a little longer, all was ours. ”

“ In this opuscule he points out that modern society is passing through a great crisis, due to the conflict of two opposing movements,—the first, a disorganising movement owing to the break-up of old institutions and beliefs ”

“ And thus we shall evoke, not an isolated power waging dubious war against fearful odds, but a CONFEDERATE force, equal, we will hope, to the crisis;—a crisis such as, no one is so obtuse as not to see, demands something vastly in advance of the elements at present available for neutralizing the fearful evils now festering at our core, or looming in the no distant horizon. ”

“ Another blow was to be added, more calculated than all to test their firmness and bring home to their bosoms a sense of the perils of the crisis, and the necessity of immediate action, unless they should conclude to yield at once to the current of destiny which seemed to be setting so strongly against them. ”

“ Nevertheless, how can we afford to shut our eyes to the meaning of this phase of downright revolution through which the world is passing? Suppose it possible for us to make clean abstraction of what such a crisis portends for us as citizens, even so as pure observers and theorists we can surely find here matter for thought in plenty. ”

“ The unscientific character of a policy adopted at any crisis has often been an exact measure of the amount of external pressure applied through the competition of factions, or through the impetuosity of a populace only jaded into an unwonted attention to political affairs by exceptional events. ”

“ As the sea always oscillates between the flowing and ebbing of the tides, so the life of nations, between periods of repose and of crisis: periods of repose, when existing forms answer to the real substance of things, and of crisis, when the changed substance or contents seeks to build up a new form for itself. Such crises are called reforms when they are effected in a peaceful way, and in accordance with positive law. ”

“ Citizens, your magistrates are deeply distressed at the disorders which have recently been disturbing the public peace, at a time when commerce and industry, which are in much need of protection, are beginning to rise above a long crisis of depression. ”

“ Certain stages of this process will be in the nature of crisis according to the strength of the opposition encountered in the personal moral struggle, and in opposing social conditions. Nothing but calamity can forestall this progressive moral adjustment to the whole world. ”

“ The searching crisis through which the nation is passing must have the effect of securing grave consideration for many aspects of our life and institutions. We have already traversed the acute stage of suspense, and are gradually becoming sensible of these wider considerations. ”

“ At times of unusual agitation, and especially at all revolutionary crises, they were wont to muster in alarming force and become aggressive. At the crisis you are describing they must doubtless have made themselves extremely turbulent. ”

“ THE inflexibility of the laws, which prevents them from adapting themselves to circumstances, may, in certain cases, render them disastrous, and make them bring about, at a time of crisis, the ruin of the State. ”

“ All this fermentation was public, one might almost say tranquil. The approaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterranean crisis, which was already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably to the working-classes of what was in preparation. They said: “How is the rising coming along?” in the same tone in which they would have said: “How is your wife?” ”

“ The times in which we live, fellow citizens, are indeed times of trouble, such as no age has yet seen, or perhaps will ever see again. To avoid their calamitous influence, has been our duty and endeavor, and to effect it, great sacrifices of our citizens have been necessary. They have seen that these necessities were forced by the wrongs of others, and they have met them with the zeal which the crisis called for. ”

“ Now and again, no doubt, in some great time of crisis the State may have to appeal to the self-devotion and fertility of resource of its citizens, but that great times of crisis wars and social convulsions will become less and less frequent, more and more temporary in their duration, and increasingly mild in the changes they cause, seems a consummation as probable as it is desirable. ”

“ I want to talk with you very simply about the need for present action in this crisis—the need to meet the unanswered challenge of one-third of a Nation ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed. ”

“ Since we are thus placed, and there is no alternative for us of the free States, but to meet the trouble that is upon us, or by base concessions and compromises to bring upon ourselves a far greater trouble, in the name of God, let us let all things go, and cleave to the right. Prepared to confront the crisis like men, let us with all possible calmness endeavor to take the measure of the calamity that we dread. ”

“ There comes not seldom a crisis in the life of men, of nations, and of worlds, when the old forms seem ready to decay, and the old rules of action have lost their binding force. The evils of existing systems obscure the blessings that attend them; and, where reform is needed, the cry is raised for subversion. ”

“ As a study of the plain, substantial stuff of which American citizenship is largely made up, ‘The Crisis’ has deep and abiding interest. It ought to be read by those students of American life beyond the sea who are anxious ‘neither to laugh nor to weep, but to understand’ ”

“ For our American story is not -- and has never been -- about things coming easy. It's about rising to the moment when the moment is hard, and converting crisis into opportunity, and seeing to it that we emerge from whatever trials we face stronger than we were before. ”

“ In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. ”

“ And, therefore, hold your head high, Herr Stiefel!——Such a crisis as this comes to all of us and will soon be surmounted. If all of us had recourse to dagger or poison in such cases, there would soon be no men left in the world. ”

“ The economic crisis we face is unlike any we've seen in our lifetime. It's a crisis of falling confidence and rising debt, of widely distributed risk and narrowly concentrated reward; a crisis written in the fine print of sub-prime mortgages, on the ledger lines of once mighty financial institutions, and on the pink slips that have upended the lives of so many people across this country and cost the economy 2.6 million jobs last year alone. ”

“ "THE times that tried men's souls,"* are over- and the greatest and completest revolution the world ever knew, gloriously and happily accomplished. ”

“ There are certain circumstances, which, at the time of their happening, are a kind of riddles, and as every riddle is to be followed by its answer, so those kind of circumstances will be followed by their events, and those events are always the true solution. ”

“ It is distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can beat them, and in which we have always beaten them, whenever they made the attempt. The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. ”

“ In the second number of the Crisis, I endeavored to show the impossibility of the enemy's making any conquest of America, that nothing was wanting on our part but patience and perseverance, and that, with these virtues, our success, as far as human speculation could discern, seemed as certain as fate. But as there are many among us, who, influenced by others, have regularly gone back from the principles they once held, in proportion as we have gone forward; and as it is the unfortunate lot of many a good man to live within the neighborhood of disaffected ones ”

“ Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it. ”

“ The writer asks : "Have not the Americans been driven to this frenzy? Is it not common for an enemy to take every advantage?"
Paine, who was in America when the affair occurred at Lexington, would have promptly denounced Gage's story as a falsehood, but the facts known to every one in America were as yet not before the London writer. The English Crisis bears evidence throughout of having been written in London. It derived nothing from Paine, and he derived nothing from it, unless its title, and this is too obvious for its origin to require discussion. ”

“ I repeat, our history since 1789, our endless succession of shocks, revolutions, and wars, have left us in a state of leverish agitation which renders peace insipid, and teaches us to find a blind gratification in the unexpected strokes of a hazardous policy. We are a prey to two opposing currents,—one deep and regular, which carries towards the definite goal of our social state ”

“ Nay; the pillars of the state are trembling even now, and the very foundations of society begin to quiver with pent-up forces that glow underneath. The struggle that must either revivify, or convulse in ruin, is near at hand, if it be not already begun. ”

“ If the tendency of affairs on the other side of our encircling sea was to pull down, to destroy, to modify, and to redistribute, the tendency at home was to build up and consolidate; so that in almost exact proportion to the wild experiments and frantic strugglings of other nations after something new—new principles of government, new theories of society—there arose in this country a dogged spirit of resistance to all alterations, and a persistence in old paths and old opinions. ”

“ We may be surprised by events we did not expect, and in that interval of recollection you may gain some temporary advantage: such was the case a few weeks ago, but we soon ripen again into reason, collect our strength, and while you are preparing for a triumph, we come upon you with a defeat. ”

“ For a weary instant I felt again the pressure of all those currents which bewilder, crush, and smother the struggling individual—movements of peoples, marching of armies, alliances of nations, the tides of poverty and disease, the tremendous impersonal economic conflicts. ”

“ They draw us pictures of the exhaustion which must inevitably follow upon such a struggle conducted upon the modern scale, of the stupendous loss of capital, destruction of credit, paralysis of industry, arrest of progress in things spiritual as well as temporal, the shock to civilisation, and the crippling for a generation, probably for several generations, possibly for ever, of the victorious country in its race with rivals who have wisely stood aside from the fray. ”

“ The economic civil war, the social war, will continue—sometimes visibly, sometimes covertly, sometimes violently, sometimes sullenly, but always with the same sufferings, the same exasperation, the same iniquity, so long as the world of production be disputed by two antagonistic forces. ”

“ FROM REVOLUTION In these doubtful and anxious days, when all the world is at unrest and, look which way you will, the road ahead seems darkened by shadows which portend dangers of many kinds, it is only common prudence that we should look about us and attempt to assess the causes of distress and the most likely means of removing them. ”

“ Society which, but a short time before, was in a state of perfect repose, is on a sudden agitated with the most fearful convulsions, and seems to be on the verge of dissolution; and the rulers who, till the mischief was beyond the reach of all ordinary remedies, had never bestowed one thought on its existence, stand bewildered and panic-stricken, without hope or resource, in the midst of the confusion. ”