Collision Course Quotes

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We were all heading for each other on a collision course, no matter what. Maybe some people are just meant to be in the same story.
Jandy Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun)
Y’look like someone told you they’d stopped making lube.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
yeah, i'm a rocket ship on my way to mars on a collision course i am a satellite i'm out of control i am a sex machine ready to reload like an atom bomb about to oh oh oh oh oh explode i'm burnin' through the sky yeah two hundred degrees that's why they call me mister fahrenheit i'm trav'ling at the speed of light i wanna make a supersonic woman of you
Freddie Mercury
Jesus, dude could suck the orange off a carrot. A big, long carrot.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
Dreams didn't mean anything ? But...what if dreams were all I had ?
S.C. Stephens (Collision Course)
Sometimes we’re on a collision course, and we just don’t know it. Whether it’s by accident or by design, there’s not a thing we can do about it. A woman in Paris was on her way to go shopping, but she had forgotten her coat - went back to get it. When she had gotten her coat, the phone had rung, so she’d stopped to answer it; talked for a couple of minutes. While the woman was on the phone, Daisy was rehearsing for a performance at the Paris Opera House. And while she was rehearsing, the woman, off the phone now, had gone outside to get a taxi. Now a taxi driver had dropped off a fare earlier and had stopped to get a cup of coffee. And all the while, Daisy was rehearsing. And this cab driver, who dropped off the earlier fare; who’d stopped to get the cup of coffee, had picked up the lady who was going to shopping, and had missed getting an earlier cab. The taxi had to stop for a man crossing the street, who had left for work five minutes later than he normally did, because he forgot to set off his alarm. While that man, late for work, was crossing the street, Daisy had finished rehearsing, and was taking a shower. And while Daisy was showering, the taxi was waiting outside a boutique for the woman to pick up a package, which hadn’t been wrapped yet, because the girl who was supposed to wrap it had broken up with her boyfriend the night before, and forgot. When the package was wrapped, the woman, who was back in the cab, was blocked by a delivery truck, all the while Daisy was getting dressed. The delivery truck pulled away and the taxi was able to move, while Daisy, the last to be dressed, waited for one of her friends, who had broken a shoelace. While the taxi was stopped, waiting for a traffic light, Daisy and her friend came out the back of the theater. And if only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab, Daisy and her friend would’ve crossed the street, and the taxi would’ve driven by. But life being what it is - a series of intersecting lives and incidents, out of anyone’s control - that taxi did not go by, and that driver was momentarily distracted, and that taxi hit Daisy, and her leg was crushed.
Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay)
The War on Drugs and the War on Homelessness are on a collision course that no one in the media or in public life are willing to acknowledge. Ostensibly aimed at decreasing the use of illegal drugs, the War on Drugs succeeds only in increasing homelessness.
Thomas Szasz
This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best — less trouble).
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
I held her tight, my hands coming up to wrap over her shoulders, wishing I could wrap myself around her heartache.
S.C. Stephens (Collision Course)
Princess?" "You do get this kind of bossy, don't-fuck-with-my-tiara attitude when you're pissed.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
They were like two trains set on a collision course. Better for all those involved if they not relish each other's company.
Renée Ahdieh (The Beautiful (The Beautiful, #1))
When I had woken up the next morning, I'd stared at my ceiling for a good ten minutes, reliving the dream, committing it to memory...wishing it was real, wishing I could crawl back inside that dream and disappear--stay there forever.
S.C. Stephens (Collision Course)
When you, the lover, are ready, your SoulMate will inevitably come. The two currents of your life mission and purpose and their life mission and purpose are on a collision course. It is only a matter of time.
Annette Vaillancourt (How to Manifest Your SoulMate with EFT: Relationship as a Spiritual Path)
He remained convinced that romantic behaviour was basically monotonous and predictable and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people.
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
Staring at Joey's eyes blinking up from his pale face was a bit like inhaling a pound of rock candy while watching puppies play.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
For those who find it remarkable that we live in a universe of Something, just wait. Nothingness is heading on a collision course right toward us!
Lawrence M. Krauss (A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather than Nothing)
captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
Not every collision course comes as a surprise.
John Irving (Avenue of Mysteries)
Romantic behavior was basically monotonous and predictable, and that therefore one could write a fairly straightforward formula that would predict the collision course of any two people.
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
Of course I don’t want to get knocked down. But the single and sole solution to that fear is to not go anywhere where I can be knocked down. And is that not already being knocked down?
Craig D. Lounsbrough (An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus)
Aaron held him and reached down to free a surprisingly big cock, measuring it with his hand. "Wow, where'd you get all this?" "Stole it from my last boyfriend." "Knew you were trouble.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
The mountains are great stone bells; they clang together like nuns. Who shushed the stars? There are a thousand million galaxies easily seen in the Palomar reflector; collisions between and among them do, of course, occur. But these collisions are very long and silent slides. Billions of stars sift amont each other untouched, too distant even to be moved, heedless as always, hushed. The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper; I cannot quite make it out. But God knows I have tried.
Annie Dillard (Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters)
I would like to propose that the reason our actions have been so manifestly unsuccessful in steering the world away from its present collision course is that we have not, generally speaking, been basing them on any true understanding.
Charles Eisenstein (The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible (Sacred Activism))
Jesus and institutional religion are on a collision course, and those who go with Jesus will find more adventure, freedom, and religion-bursting grace than they can stand, all the things that make traveling worth the effort. But they will also find clash and conflict. The path of Jesus is not well tolerated by the establishment.
Ronnie McBrayer (Leaving Religion, Following Jesus)
He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack-knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled with celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display windows of deserted supermarkets. He dreamed of alienated brothers and sisters, by chance meeting each other on collision courses on the access roads of petrochemical plants, their unconscious incest made explicit in this colliding metal, in the heamorrhages of their brain tissue flowering beneath the aluminized compression chambers and reactions vessels.
J.G. Ballard (Crash)
There is a collision course between the greed and rationalizations of the West and the force of nature; science and the planet are the casualties.
Eric Mann (Playbook for Progressives: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer)
We just gotta fly I can take you thru the center of the dark We gonna fly On a collision course to crash into my heart I will be your, I will be your rocket
Def Leppard
There was nothing left for me to do, but go. Though the things of the world were strong with me still. Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-titled streetlight; a frozen clock, a bird visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; towering off one’s clinging shirt post-June rain. Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth. Someone’s kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. A bloody ross death-red on a platter; a headgetop under-hand as you flee late to some chalk-and-woodfire-smelling schoolhouse. Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded. The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger. Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead. Goodbye, I must now say goodbye to all of it. Loon-call in the dark; calf-cramp in the spring; neck-rub in the parlour; milk-sip at end of day. Some brandy-legged dog proudly back-ploughs the grass to cover its modest shit; a cloud-mass down-valley breaks apart over the course of a brandy-deepened hour; louvered blinds yield dusty beneath your dragging finger, and it is nearly noon and you must decide; you have seen what you have seen, and it has wounded you, and it seems you have only one choice left. Blood-stained porcelain bowl wobbles face down on wood floor; orange peel not at all stirred by disbelieving last breath there among that fine summer dust-layer, fatal knife set down in pass-panic on familiar wobbly banister, later dropped (thrown) by Mother (dear Mother) (heartsick) into the slow-flowing, chocolate-brown Potomac. None of it was real; nothing was real. Everything was real; inconceivably real, infinitely dear. These and all things started as nothing, latent within a vast energy-broth, but then we named them, and loved them, and in this way, brought them forth. And now we must lose them. I send this out to you, dear friends, before I go, in this instantaneous thought-burst, from a place where time slows and then stops and we may live forever in a single instant. Goodbye goodbye good-
George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo)
With a soft gasp from Aaron, the soundtrack started up in Joey’s brain again. Goldfrapp’s “Ooh La La” was perfect for blow jobs. If he sang along, his tongue did interesting things.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
Well then – I see two ways of letting things take their course – Create one’s own sensations with the help of a flamboyant collision of rare words – not often, mind you – or else neatly draw the angles, the squares, the entire geometry of feelings – those of the moment, naturally.
Jacques Vaché
The spinner of my story set me on a collision course that began the night I walked into the Red Iguana, and it was sealed after escaping death’s clutches the day of the comet, but none of those fateful events would have happened if I hadn’t fallen in love with science. Just like in the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I believe a series of events resulted in leading me to find my soulmate.
Kayla Cunningham (Fated to Love You (Chasing the Comet Book 1))
If I didn't understand what was happening at the time, he says, then it doesn't matter. I'm no more to blame than the knife is to blame in a stabbing, or the car in a collision. "But I'm not an inanimate object," I argued. "I'm a person." He looked confused for a moment and then laughed. "Of course, Charlie. But I wasn't referring to now. I meant before the operation." Smug, pompous—I felt like hitting him too. "I was a person before the operation. In case you forgot—" "Yes, of course, Charlie. Don't misunderstand. But it was different..." And then he remembered that he had to check some charts in the lab.
Daniel Keyes (Flowers for Algernon)
I cupped her pale cheek, lightly highlighted with a rosy blush, and kissed her tenderly, savoring the feel of her lips against mine. "You could come with me ? We could do this while we wait." "I'm dreaming...aren't I ?" "Yeah, I'm sorry." "Don't be. As far as dreams go, this one's not so bad.
S.C. Stephens (Collision Course)
Abby stood nervously before her Master in the classic submissive pose: fully nude, legs apart, wrists placed behind her back; deeply ashamed of her evident arousal. Worse, she had to recount in exact detail the proceedings of her last whipping. The whipping had been severe; as was the case with most of the clients she was commissioned to serve. Most of these clients were men, some were women, on occasion a couple, or even a group. Nevertheless her body reacted like that of a wanton whore as she retold of the sadistic punishments and extreme sexual use inflicted upon her body. How far would her Master push her with these ‘tests’? How far would Abigail go? How many times could she stand before him blushing; yet with that unmistakable tingle? Their relationship was surely headed for a collision course. Or was it?
Al Daltrey (Testing the Submissive)
The family is inherently an obstacle to schemes for central control of social processes. Therefore the anointed necessarily find themselves repeatedly on a collision course with the family. It is not a matter of any subjective animus on their part against families. The anointed may in fact be willing to shower government largess upon families, as they do on other social entities. But the preservation of the family as an autonomous decision-making unit is incompatible with the third-party decision making that is at the heart of the vision of the anointed.
Thomas Sowell (The Vision Of The Annointed: Self-congratulation As A Basis For Social Policy)
It would be truly foolish to let the decline of communism blind us to the long-term contradictions in a free market economy unrestrained by considerations of the environment and social justice, and driven by heedless consumerism, instant gratification, and the quick fix. Our dedication to growth at all costs puts us on a collision course with the environment. Our dedication to the illusion of endless climaxes puts us on a collision course with the human psyche.
George Leonard (Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment)
So what are you doing here?" Dylan asked in between forkfuls of eggs. That was the first thing Dylan had said that bothered Joey. He didn't want Aaron thinking too much about it, either. Going for the kill, Joey said, "I suck your brother's cock and take it up my ass. Any more questions?" "Gross. Fuck no. Jesus." Dylan grabbed his plate and went into the living room. "If you spill anything clean it up," Aaron yelled after him.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
Two centuries ago, Napoleon warned, “Let China sleep; when she wakes, she will shake the world.” Today China has awakened, and the world is beginning to shake. Yet many Americans are still in denial about what China’s transformation from agrarian backwater to “the biggest player in the history of the world” means for the United States. What is this book’s Big Idea? In a phrase, Thucydides’s Trap. When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead. China and the United States are currently on a collision course for war— unless both parties take difficult and painful actions to avert it. As a rapidly ascending China challenges America’s accustomed predominance, these two nations risk falling into a deadly trap first identified by the ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Writing about a war that devastated the
Graham Allison (Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?)
There Are No Happy Endings
Zombienose (Collision Course Goad)
The truth is that no business plan survives a collision with a real customer. So the trick is to take your idea and set it on a collision course with reality as soon as possible.
Marc Randolph (That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea)
We are stumbling into dangerous territory, but I might as well be drunk on his touch because there’s no righting this collision course we’re on now.
Sara Cate (Give Me More (Salacious Players Club, #3))
For those who find it remarkable that we live in a universe of Something, just wait. Nothingness is heading on a collision course right toward us.
Christopher Hitchens
Afterwards, the princeps asked the science consul, “Did we destroy a civilization in the microcosmos in this experiment?” “It was at least an intelligent body. Also, Princeps, we destroyed the entire microcosmos. That miniature universe is immense in higher dimensions, and it probably contained more than one intelligence or civilization that never had a chance to express themselves in macro space. Of course, in higher dimensional space at such micro scales, the form that intelligence or civilization may take is beyond our imagination. They’re something else entirely. And such destruction has probably occurred many times before.” “Oh?” “In the long history of scientific progress, how many protons have been smashed apart in accelerators by physicists? How many neutrons and electrons? Probably no fewer than a hundred million. Every collision was probably the end of the civilizations and intelligences in a microcosmos.
Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past, #1))
Somewhere in the universe two black holes collide — as heavy as stars, as small as cities, literally black (the complete absence of light) holes (empty hollows). Tethered by gravity, in their final seconds together the black holes course through thousands of revolutions about their eventual point of contact, churning up space and time until they crash and merge into one bigger black hole, an event more powerful than any since the origin of the universe, outputting more than a trillion times the power of a billion Suns. The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the energy exploding from the collision comes out as light. No telescope will ever see the event.
Janna Levin (BLACK HOLE BLUES AND OTHER SONGS)
Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women . . . which way the wind blows on a certain day . . . a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier’s eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God.
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
The future is the monster, not the boogeyman under the bed. The past is just something we're trying to outrun tomorrow. The monster is the future. The unknown. The boundaries not yet crossed. The challenge not yet met. The potential not yet realized. The dragon not yet tamed. On a one way collision course with no turning back. The future, the monster, is always waiting for us, and always sees us a-comin'. So we should lift our heads, look it in the eye, and watch it heed.
Matthew McConaughey (Greenlights)
Ah, adventure! Ah, romance! Ah, courtly graces and the noble gestures! Don't you wish you knew people like that? Don't you wish we could still walk around in cloaks and boots and breeches, with leather doublets and flowing white dueling shirts and swords strapped around our waists? Of course, if we did, given the way things are today, there'd be people out there lobbying for sword control, and we'd need a National Sword Association and bumper stickers that would read "Swords don't kill people, knights kill people," and there would be a five-day waiting period and background check before you could buy a rapier. We'd have drive-by lungings and people would be afraid of children carrying broadswords to school. "Milady" would be regard as a sexist term and feminists would go absolutely berserk if any woman called a man "Milord." Ralph Nader would probably get quarter horses banned because they are too small and unsafe in a collision and someone would figure out a way to put seat belts and air bags on our saddles. That's why people join the SCA and read fantasy novels, because the real world sucks.
Simon Hawke (The Ambivalent Magician (Reluctant Sorcerer, #3))
we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship. The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.” Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.” The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.” “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.” By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.” Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
Standing there, peering around his room, Pete realized something that should have dawned on him years ago: Science really did suck. (Russell was right.) There just wasn’t any point to it. Sure, in its most altruistic distillation, science saved lives—but when had it ever made those lives worth living? The cold machine called science’s sole purpose, and Pete knew it now, was to drain the wonder out of things, to sap the imagination of its juices, to rob possibilities from dreamers. Science explained without ever getting to the crux of the matter, locking us all into a single paradigm of thought: that all we are is randomly accumulated stardust hanging out on a larger clump of randomly accumulated stardust that is spiraling out and away from other chunks of randomly accumulated stardust, on a collision course with an empty infinity.
Jay Nichols (Canis Major)
Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.    Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, “Light, bearing on the starboard bow.”    “Is it steady or moving astern?” the captain called out.    Lookout replied, “Steady, captain,” which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship.    The captain then called to the signalman, “Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees.”    Back came a signal, “Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees.”    The captain said, “Send, I’m a captain, change course 20 degrees.”    “I’m a seaman second class,” came the reply. “You had better change course 20 degrees.”    By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, “Send, I’m a battleship. Change course 20 degrees.”    Back came the flashing light, “I’m a lighthouse.”    We changed course.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
The highly moralistic and uncompromising outlook of the Puritans eventually put them and their descendants on a collision course with the institution of slavery and produced. among others, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who was called by Abraham Lincoln the little lady who started the Civil War" because of her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Thomas Sowell (Conquests and Cultures: An International History)
Well Dennis you don't have to hear any of the mountain music they play here. Telling the young lies so that they can learn to get old. Favouring them with biscuits. "It's a mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville, declension on a three mile grade." In either case collision course. You either pick up the music or you don't.
Jack Spicer
To all who have discerning eyes, it is apparent that the republican form of government established by our noble forefathers cannot long endure once fundamental principles are abandoned. Momentum is gathering for another conflict-a repetition of of the crisis two hundred years ago. This collision of ideas is worldwide. Another monumental moment is soon to be born. The issue is the same that precipitated the great premortal conflict-will men be free to determine their own course of action or must they be coerced?
Ezra Taft Benson (The Constitution: A Heavenly Banner)
Men are such idiots. I think I’ll be gay.” Aaron put his arm around her shoulder. “At least then you won’t get pregnant.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
And who would dare write their own death into the script so that the rest of the characters in the tale might live? God of course.
Craig D. Lounsbrough (An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus)
C’est ça, le lycée : la course à qui fera le plus de mal aux autres. À qui s’autodétruira le mieux. Être cruel, c’est tellement rock’n’roll. S’avouer malheureux, par contre... Moche, pas vrai ?
Joanne Richoux (Les Collisions)
From the senior officer down to the lowest and newest pantry boy, each crewman reflected the Scandinavian concept of rigid devotion to duty and work. The company cared for the welfare of the crew
Alvin Moscow (Collision Course: The Classic Story of the Collision of the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm)
US Ship: Please change course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision. CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course. CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course! US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!! CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.
Presh Talwalkar (The Joy of Game Theory: An Introduction to Strategic Thinking)
Chase grabbed Joey’s neck and hauled him into a kiss. Oh shit. Not again. It didn’t matter how many times it had been wrong, he still wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe it when he kissed a guy and everything inside said him. It had been wrong about Mark and Noah and Jorge and Tom and the whole list going right back to kissing Eduardo under the bleachers in tenth grade. Or maybe before. When he’d been three and told his mom he was going to marry his best friend Cody.
K.A. Mitchell (Collision Course (Florida Books, #2))
Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I wonder if there is a greater plan, if things are just meant to be. If all my life I was supposed to circle back to Broken Bar, and meet you.” Her broken eyes met his. Her hand still rested on Ace. “That’s what I asked Melody Vanderbilt once. She was Gage’s wife, a journalist who used to come and sit with me in the hospital. I asked whether she thought we could pinpoint the exact moment our life first started on a collision course with another’s—
Loreth Anne White (A Dark Lure (A Dark Lure, #1))
Still, you resist; it’s hard to despise your own substance, you’d like to stop all this, give yourself time to think about it and listen without difficulty to your heartbeat, but it’s too late for that. This thing can never stop. This enormous steel box is on a collision course; we, inside it, are whirling madly with the machines and the earth. All together. Along with the thousands of little wheels and the hammers that never strike at the same time, that make noises which shatter one another, some so violent that they release a kind of silence around them, which makes you feel a little better.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline (Journey to the End of the Night)
I wondered how I would come to love a woman, and with both pleasure and terror, I would think that somewhere in the world there was some laughing, singing girl who would one day become my wife. In my mind, I could see her dancing and playing and flirting in preparation for that day of awe and wonder when we would meet and in mutual ecstasy declare, “I shall live with you forever.” How much of my father would I bring to that singing girl’s life? How much of my mother? And how many days would it take before I, Tom Wingo, child of storm, would silence her laughter and song for all time? How long would it take for me to end the dance of that laughing girl who would not know the doubts and imperfections I brought to the task of loving a woman? I loved the image of this girl long before I ever met her and wanted to warn her to beware the day when I would come into her life. Somewhere in America she was waiting out her childhood innocent of her destiny. She did not know that she was on a collision course with a boy so damaged and bewildered he would spend his whole life trying to figure out how love was supposed to feel, how it manifested itself between two people, and how it could be practiced without rage and sorrow and blood. I was thirteen years old when I decided that this wonderful girl deserved much better and I would warn her long before I interfered with her lovely passage and transfiguring dance.
Pat Conroy (The Prince of Tides)
THE NEW All that appeared true seems to be coming unglued; All that was established is being questioned anew; All that was in place is being quickly erased; We are coming to a crossroad on a collision course and the train is rapidly accelerating; The winds of the New are howling and anxious to be embraced; The usual is blinding and needs to be replaced; So turn it around and rethink your thoughts; The old ways are going and the cracks are showing; Reshape the unchangeable and shake the unshakable; Then face the new light with its brilliance absorbing you; Now you've left behind what shouldn't have been and attained a new plateau to view the past; When you arise the old will be left in the wake; And you will go forward to a better place. The Complaint, page 34.
Tom Breen
As I continue to sip at the chest-warming liquor, entering ever-deeper states of inebriation, a mauldin thought begins to take shape in my whiskey-addled skull. My notion is this: We are each of us our own container ship, transporting our various cargoes through the ocean of life. At ports along the way, we may stop and pick up a new lover, a spouse, a child. At other ports we unload precious items - friends move away, relationships end, parents die. Even when we’re lost in the deepest fog, we must try to keep our watch, not be the cause of any tragic collisions, and to do what we can to keep our cargo safe. In the end, of course, your ship rusts out and is not longer seaworthy. So, I suppose, in this analogy, the afterlife equates to being bought by a Greek shipping line.
Seth Stevenson (Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World)
Cousy quickly learned that the pressure to win as a player as opposed to the pressure to win as a coach was vastly different. The pressure to win as a coach was filled with conflicting demands, to be honest with your players while being honest with the fans, management, and the games’ governing body. Success as a coach had a lot to do with relationships and keeping everybody happy and to do that which sometimes caused you to compromise your values.
William A. Cook (Collision Course: The Basketball Lives of Bob Cousy and Oscar Robertson and the Fall of the Cincinnati Royals)
Sorry about our . . . altercation in the buggy. I was only playing. I’m Raphael.” “The one who likes the hurting.” I moved to shake his hand and he reversed it and kissed my fingers instead, singeing me with a look that was pure smolder. I took my hand back. “That woke me up.” He smiled a picture-perfect smile. “Been a while?” For some reason, I felt like answering. “Two years. And if you could tone down that smile, I’d appreciate it. Getting weak in the knees.” Raphael took a step back. His face took on the same concerned look I saw on Doolittle when I assured him I was fine. “Two years? That’s entirely too long. If you want, we can take care of that. After two years, it’s pure therapy.” “No thank you. Curran already offered to help me with that problem, and since I turned him down, I wouldn’t want to cause any friction between you two.” The last thing I needed was to set Curran and the hyenas on a collision course. Raphael backed away with his hands in the air, strategically positioning himself behind Andrea. “No offense.” “None taken.” “Is Curran serious?” Aunt B asked. She wanted to know if she now had to walk on eggshells around me. For once, I was happy to disappoint. “No, he’s just being an asshole. Apparently every time he calls me ‘baby,’ I look like a red-hot poker is stuck up my butt. Causes him no end of fun.” Aunt B gave me an odd look. “You know,” she said, stirring her tea, “the fastest way to get him off your back is to sleep with him. And tell him you love him. Preferably while in bed.” I smirked and the tea almost came out of my nose. “He’d run like he was on fire.” Raphael rested his hands on Andrea’s shoulders. “Still a bit tense?” His fingers began to gently knead her muscles. “Will you do it?” Aunt B gazed at me over the rim of her cup. “Not while I’m alive, no. Wait, I take it back. That should be ‘hell no.
Ilona Andrews (Magic Burns (Kate Daniels, #2))
Governments may rise and fall for reasons which appear insignificant, Prince. What small events! An argument between two women . . . which way the wind blows on a certain day . . . a sneeze, a cough, the length of a garment or the chance collision of a fleck of sand and a courtier’s eye. It is not always the majestic concerns of Imperial ministers which dictate the course of history, nor is it necessarily the pontifications of priests which move the hands of God.
Frank Herbert (Children of Dune (Dune, #3))
Navy: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision. Civilian: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to South to avoid a collision. Navy: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Civilian: No, I say again, divert your course. Navy: This is the aircraft carrier Enterprise. We are a large warship of the US Navy. Divert your course now!! Civilian: This is a lighthouse. Your call.” Canadian naval radio conversation38
John D. Barrow (The Book of Nothing: Vacuums, Voids, and the Latest Ideas about the Origins of the Universe)
Sam: There's no collisions out there, Hally. Nobody trips or stumbles or bumps into anybody else. That's what that moment is all about. To be one of those finalists on that dance floor is like... like being in a dream about a world in which accidents don't happen. Hally: [Genuinely moved by Sam's image.] Jesus, Sam! That's beautiful! Willie: [Can endure waiting no longer.] I'm starting! [Willie dances while Sam talks.] Sam: Of course it is. That's what I've been trying to say to you all afternoon. And it's beautiful because that is what we want life to be like. But instead, like you said, Hally, we're bumping into each other all the time. Look at the three of us this afternoon. I've bumped into Willie, the two of us have bumped into you, you've bumped into your mother, she bumping into your Dad... None of us knows the steps and there's no music playing. And it doesn't stop with us. The whole world is doing it all the time. Open a newspaper and what do you read? America has bumped into Russia, England is bumping into India, rich man bumps into poor man. Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we're sick and tired of it now. It's been going on for too long. Are we never going to get it right? ... Learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it? Hally: [Deep and sincere admiration of the man.] You've got a vision, Sam! Sam: Not just me. What I'm saying to you is that everybody's got it. That's why there's only standing room left for the Centenery Hall in two weeks' time. For as long as the music lasts, we are going to see six couples get it right, the way we want life to be. Hally: But is that the best we can do, Sam... watch six finalists dreaming about the way it should be? Sam: I don't know. But it starts with that. Without the dream we won't know what we're going for. And anyway I reckon there are a few people who have got past just dreaming about it and are trying for something real.
Athol Fugard (Master Harold...and the boys)
Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were traveling, but the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at all. Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was traveling toward them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be. He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircar dipped sharply and headed downward in what seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all over. The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him. He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had happened. They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had been their own, relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an hour. He closed his eyes in terror. After a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight subsidence in their speed and some while later became aware that they were gradually gliding to a gentle halt. He opened his eyes again. They were still in the silver tunnel, threading and weaving their way through what appeared to be a crisscross warren of converging tunnels. When they finally stopped it was in a small chamber of curved steel. Several tunnels also had their termini here, and at the farther end of the chamber Arthur could see a large circle of dim irritating light. It was irritating because it played tricks with the eyes, it was impossible to focus on it properly or tell how near or far it was. Arthur guessed (quite wrongly) that it might be ultraviolet. Slartibartfast turned and regarded Arthur with his solemn old eyes. “Earthman,” he said, “we are now deep in the heart of Magrathea.
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1))
They try to make meaning of actual life, even if an awful lot has yet to be figured out. They grapple and reflect with seriousness and humor. They philosophize and confess with intellect and emotion. They recollect and reimagine private and public history with a combination of clarity and conjecture. They venture into what happened and why with a complicated collision of documented proof and impossible-to-pin-down remembrances. And they follow the answers to the questions that arise in the course of writing about what happened wherever they go. The essay’s engine is curiosity; its territory is the open road.
Cheryl Strayed (The Best American Essays 2013 (The Best American Series))
I’m afraid to go back,” she admitted. “I feel as if something bad will happen. It doesn’t seem real that we can truly be together now.” “We can’t hide here forever,” Kev murmured, stroking her hair. “Nothing will happen, love. We’ve gone too far to turn back. You’re mine now, and no one can change that. Are you afraid of Harrow? Is that it?” “Not afraid, exactly. But I’m not looking forward to facing him.” “Of course not,” Kev said quietly. “I’ll help you through it. I’ll talk to him first.” “I don’t think that would be wise,” she said uncertainly. “I insist on it. I won’t lose my temper. But I’m going to take responsibility for what I’ve done. I would hardly leave you to handle the consequences without me.” Win lowered her cheek to his shoulder. “Are you certain nothing will happen to change your mind about marrying me?” “Nothing in the world could do that.” Feeling the tension in her body, he ran his hands over her, lingering on her chest, where every heartbeat was a hard, anxious collision. He rubbed a circle to soothe her. “What can I do to make you feel better?” he asked tenderly. “I already told you, and you wouldn’t,” she said in a small, sullen voice, and that drew a smothered laugh from him. “Then you’ll have your way,” he whispered. “But slowly, so I won’t hurt you.
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
I wouldn’t have a person around that wanted to hold on to a crossing or passing situation in which a chance of collision was prevalent,” he continued. “The old rule was that the privileged vessel held its course, the burdened vessel had to give way. They followed that rule for a hundred years and piled up one ship after another. The privileged vessel was required to maintain course and speed until such time that only action by both vessels would prevent collision. You had to hang on so long that even if only you took action it was too late. I myself never hung on to a situation that long, even though that was the court interpretation of the rules, and I didn’t abide my officers’ hanging on to it that long. We were out of there before the situation got that close. The rule has been changed now. You are not required to do that. You have more leeway to play with. It’s more a question of prudence and good seamanship now. When I see certain ships, I seem to have some kind of an instinct that says, ‘Hey, give this guy a little more room.’ In ship channels and rivers, you pass fifty feet apart all the time, but that don’t mean it’s apropos to do it in the middle of an ocean. Hey, it’s just like driving, out here. You sail defensively. You cannot depend on that other fella to always stop at the stop sign or not change lanes or give you the right of way or use his blinker signal. You can’t count on him to do anything. Hey, the only way I’m going to get hit is in the stern. Somebody faster who is really after me is going to have to run me down and hit me in the stern.” In
John McPhee (Looking for a Ship)
If we ascribe the ejection of the proton to a Compton recoil from a quantum of 52 x 106 electron volts, then the nitrogen recoil atom arising by a similar process should have an energy not greater than about 400,000 volts, should produce not more than about 10,000 ions, and have a range in the air at N.T.P. of about 1-3mm. Actually, some of the recoil atoms in nitrogen produce at least 30,000 ions. In collaboration with Dr. Feather, I have observed the recoil atoms in an expansion chamber, and their range, estimated visually, was sometimes as much as 3mm. at N.T.P. These results, and others I have obtained in the course of the work, are very difficult to explain on the assumption that the radiation from beryllium is a quantum radiation, if energy and momentum are to be conserved in the collisions. The difficulties disappear, however, if it be assumed that the radiation consists of particles of mass 1 and charge 0, or neutrons. The capture of the a-particle by the Be9 nucleus may be supposed to result in the formation of a C12 nucleus and the emission of the neutron. From the energy relations of this process the velocity of the neutron emitted in the forward direction may well be about 3 x 109 cm. per sec. The collisions of this neutron with the atoms through which it passes give rise to the recoil atoms, and the observed energies of the recoil atoms are in fair agreement with this view. Moreover, I have observed that the protons ejected from hydrogen by the radiation emitted in the opposite direction to that of the exciting a-particle appear to have a much smaller range than those ejected by the forward radiation. This again receives a simple explanation on the neutron hypothesis.
James Chadwick
There are two ways in which the human machine goes wrong. One is when human individuals drift apart from one another, or else collide with one another and do one another damage, by cheating or bullying. The other is when things go wrong inside the individual—when the different parts of him (his different faculties and desires and so on) either drift apart or interfere with one another. You can get the idea plain if you think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. The voyage will be a success only, in the first place, if the ships do not collide and get in one another’s way; and, secondly, if each ship is seaworthy and has her engines in good order. As a matter of fact, you cannot have either of these two things without the other. If the ships keep on having collisions they will not remain seaworthy very long. On the other hand, if their steering gears are out of order they will not be able to avoid collisions. Or, if you like, think of humanity as a band playing a tune. To get a good result, you need two things. Each player’s individual instrument must be in tune and also each must come in at the right moment so as to combine with all the others. But there is one thing we have not yet taken into account. We have not asked where the fleet is trying to get to, or what piece of music the band is trying to play. The instruments might be all in tune and might all come in at the right moment, but even so the performance would not be a success if they had been engaged to provide dance music and actually played nothing but Dead Marches. And however well the fleet sailed, its voyage would be a failure if it were meant to reach New York and actually arrived at Calcutta. Morality, then, seems to be concerned with three things. Firstly, with fair play and harmony between individuals. Secondly, with what might be called tidying up or harmonising the things inside each individual. Thirdly, with the general purpose of human life as a whole: what man was made for: what course the whole fleet ought to be on: what tune the conductor of the band wants it to play. You
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
From deep within the solar system a large planetoid was headed Earth’s way. It was on a collision course and it was unbelievably massive—possibly the size of Mars itself. Had there been humans on Earth then they would have spotted this intruder millions of miles out. They would have watched it grow in size night after night. Soon it would have filled the sky. There would have been no escape, no reprieve. Instantly they would have been staring doom in its face as—at an oblique angle—the planetoid squashed the young Earth.
Jay Barbree (Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight)
Rachel and Ace had been on a collision course since long before he’d met them. If he didn’t want to end up left behind, he had to be between them when they finally crashed together.
Kit Rocha (Beyond Jealousy (Beyond, #4))
Dualism is on a collision course with Christianity. The Christian faith has no stock in dualism. Satan may be opposed to God, but he is by no means equal to God. Satan is a creature; God is the Creator. Satan is potent; God is omnipotent. Satan is knowledgeable and crafty; God is omniscient. Satan is localized in his presence; God is omnipresent. Satan is finite; God is infinite. The list could go on. But it is clear from Scripture that Satan is not an ultimate force in any sense.
R.C. Sproul (Surprised by Suffering: The Role of Pain and Death in The Christian Life)
there was just one person in the world who knew the full details of both the McMahon-Hussein Correspondence and the emerging Sykes-Picot compact, and who might have grasped the extent to which Arab, French, and British goals in the region had now been set on a collision course: Mark Sykes.
Scott Anderson (Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East)
For more than four hundred years we nurtured the belief (should that, perhaps, be faith?) that evidence-based investigation meeting scientific standards of rigor would reveal the true mechanism of nature. and yet when the mechanisms of nature were revealed to be quantum mechanisms, the worlds of science and philosophy were set on a collision course. instead of truth and comprehension, we got deeply unsettling questions about what we can ever hope to know about the world.
Jim Baggott
God opposes pride actively and hates it passionately, which means that pride is spiritual suicide. Pride is on a collision course with God himself and the date is set.
Anonymous
The formal definition of impact is a forcible contact between two things, and God has designed our lives for a collision course with the world.
David Platt (Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream)
golf, oddly, gave Updike a spiritual thrill; from the very beginning, he was acutely sensitive to what he called “the eerie religious latency” of the game; when he wrote about it, he invariably invoked the supernatural. “Intercession” set the pattern, ending with a curse and turning on a seeming miracle. On his second time around, long after his progress across the course has become “a jumbled rout,” Paul yearns for divine intervention: All he wanted was that his drive be perfect; it was very little to ask. If miracles, in this age of faint faith, could enter anywhere, it would be here, where the causal fabric was thinnest, in the quick collisions and abrupt deflections of a game. Paul drove high but crookedly over the treetops. It dismayed him to realize that the angle of a metal surface striking a rubber sphere counted for more with God than the keenest human hope.
Adam Begley (Updike)
Richard Nixon, a president not generally recalled as a visionary environmentalist, created the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law several signature pieces of environmental legislation: the Clean Air Act Extension, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. Things were changing, though, and within a few years, Ronald Reagan would begin to shift the Republican Party away from both environmental preservation and environmental regulation, a position that would separate the party from its historic environmentalism, and put it on a collision course with science.
Naomi Oreskes (Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming)
Can you pinpoint the exact instant your life starts on a collision course with someone else’s? Can you trace back to the moment those lives did finally intersect, and from where they spiraled outward again, yet from that point they remained forever entwined, two lives locked one with another?
Loreth Anne White (A Dark Lure (A Dark Lure, #1))
Digital communication has begun to make me feel I’m moving faster than ever even as I lose the trusted navigational equipment I was born with. My own eyes. My own ears. My own sense of touch. I miss paper and pen. I miss face-to-face conversations. I worry we’re on a collision course with doubt and delusion on a galactic scale.
Patricia Cornwell (Depraved Heart (Kay Scarpetta, #23))
The car kept on coming. The train kept on coming. Vectoring in. Collision course.
Lee Child (Make Me (Jack Reacher, #20))
An unbridled pursuit of justice will never stand on moral pillars but will eventually sink to the same morally-bankrupted motive which caused the need for justice in the first place. At that point, the pursuit becomes nothing but a personal quest to justify one’s own anger and refusal to live life once again. This became the reality of the shell of a man known as Thuy’s father. Thang stood firmly on a collision course with death. Nothing else could satisfy the bitterness. Neighbors, once sympathetic, backed away, frightened that his angst might engulf and destroy
Mark W. Sasse (The Reach of the Banyan Tree)
Our ongoing Hollywood education included the lesson that moviemaking is not finished once you actually make the movie. After that, you have to promote the movie, because if the audience doesn’t show up, all your hard work is a bit pointless. But before we could sell Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course to audiences, we had to sell it to the theater owners who were going to show it to the public. So the first stop for our promotional efforts was a gathering of movie theater exhibitors called Show West, in Las Vegas. We would team up there with Bruce Willis, who had an interest in producing our movie. Bindi and I had been in Oregon for a few days, visiting family, and we planned to catch up with Steve in Las Vegas. But she and I had an ugly incident at the airport when we arrived. A Vegas lowlife approached us, his hat pulled down, big sunglasses on his face, and displaying some of the worst dentistry I’ve ever seen. He leered at us, obviously drunk or crazy, and tried to kiss me. I backed off rapidly and looked for Steve. I knew I could rely on him to take care of any creep I encountered. Then it dawned on me: The creep was Steve. In order to move around the airport without anyone recognizing him, he put on false teeth and changed his usual clothes. I didn’t recognize my own husband out of his khakis. I burst out laughing. Bindi was wide-eyed. “Look, it’s your daddy.” It took her a while before she was sure. Our Show West presentation featured live wildlife, organized wonderfully by Wes. Bruce Willis spoke. “I sometimes play an action hero myself,” he said, “but you’ll see that Steve is a real-life action hero.” Bindi brought a ball python out on stage. Backstage, she and Bruce hit it off. He has three daughters of his own, and he immediately connected with Bindi. They wound up playing with the lion cubs and the other animals that Wes had organized there.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
Based on telescope observations of the solar system, astronomers now estimate that there are at least one hundred thousand Earth orbit–crossing asteroids comparable in size to the one that finished off the ancient dinosaurs. If any one of these hit our planet this afternoon, that would be the end of everything we know. We as a society have an opportunity. We could direct a small fraction of our intellect and treasure to identify the dangerous objects and then build a spacecraft capable of nudging one of these things safely off of a collision course. I’m talking about giving certain line items priority in, say, the NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Roscosmos, China National Space Agency, and JAXA (Japanese Exploration Agency) budgets. Detecting every single seriously dangerous object out there is perhaps a billion-dollar project. Put another way, it would cost the amount of money that the United States government spends every two hours. A two-hour investment could save all of humankind from the most unpleasant form of global change.
Bill Nye (Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World)
George W. Bush’s legacy was a nation impoverished by debt, besieged by doubt, struggling with the aftereffects of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and deeply engaged in military conflicts of our own choosing. His tin ear for traditional conservative values, his sanctimonious religiosity, his support for Guantánamo, CIA “renditions,” and government snooping have eroded public trust in the United States at home and abroad. For eight years Bush made the decisions that put the United States on a collision course with reality. To argue that by taking the actions that he did, the president kept America safe is meretricious: the type of post hoc ergo propter hoc analysis that could justify any action, regardless of its impropriety. The fact is, the threat of terrorism that confronts the United States is in many respects a direct result of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.
Jean Edward Smith (Bush)
Because of its sheer size and population, China is on a collision course with the planet. The country's oil use has doubled in the last ten years, and if the Chinese by 2030 use oil at the same rate as Americans do now, China will need 100 million barrels of oil a day. However, current world production is only around 80 million barrels per day, and is unlikely to rise much further before the ‘peak oil’ point is reached. There simply isn't enough oil in the ground to bring Chinese consumption up to Western levels-the global resource buffer is already being hit.
Mark Lynas (Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet)
The Psychopathology of CCD What am I doing tomorrow? Don’t ask me. Just follow the dance of my double helix, its sinuous spiral twisting like an impetuous nursery of stars on a collision course with the child care nebula. Maybe you can read my palm pilot for my schedule -- I’m just a drone serving the queen bee, serving some other queen, in some master plan unknown to me, possibly unknown even to the Omniscient Beeing, no longer smug in Her certainty, her kids rooting for the teat of extinction, thirsty, hungry, wet and gone clubbing all night. I can’t handle the stress anymore, pesticides, cell phone radiation, genetically modified crops, a Starbucks on every other block, global warming, gay marriage and now this economic crisis. Fuck it! I’m not going back to the hive. I’ve flying to Bali and opening up a yoga/dance studio with an organic café. “Wait! I’m coming with you.” “Me too!
Beryl Dov
He convinced John Stainton to agree that there would be no CGI (computer-generated imagery) wildlife in the movie. We didn’t want to pretend to react to an animal in front of a green screen, and then have computer graphic technicians complete the shot later. That was how Hollywood would normally have done it, but that wasn’t an option for Steve. “All the animals have to be real,” he insisted to the executives at MGM. “I’m doing all of my own stunts. Otherwise, I am not interested.” I always believed that Steve would excel at anything he put his mind to, and a movie would be no different. The camera loved him. As talks ground on at MGM, we came up with a title: Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course. But mostly we had phone calls and meetings. The main sticking point was that no insurance company would touch us. No underwriter would write a policy for a project that required Steve to be working with real live crocodiles. As negotiations seemed to be grinding to a halt, we were all feeling frustrated. Steve looked around at John, Judi, and the others. He could see that everybody had gotten a bit stretched on all our various projects. He decided we needed a break. He didn’t lead us into the bush this time. Instead, Steve said a magic word. “Samoa.” “Sea snakes?” I asked. “Surfing,” he said.
Terri Irwin (Steve & Me)
The third barrier is the superstitious belief that thinking irrational thoughts keeps the plane in the air. It is true that, if you have flown in the past, you worried and the plane arrived safely. You may even have “helped” by listening to every sound, counting the screws on the wings to see if any were missing, watching the faces of the flight attendants for any sign of panic, looking out the window for other planes that might be on a collision course with your plane, and so forth. Unfortunately, your hypervigilant behavior became linked to the safe arrival of the plane. Giving up your superstitious belief that your monitoring actually was the factor that ensured the safety of the flight may be more scary than flying itself. I can only assure you that you had nothing to do with the plane arriving safely. It is impossible for a relatively small person sitting inside the plane to hold up a modern jetliner that may weigh from 100,000 to 1,000,000 pounds. The air traffic control system and the onboard Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) keep the planes a safe distance apart, not your watchful behavior. Decide now to give up these irrational thoughts.
Duane Brown (Flying without Fear: Effective Strategies to Get You Where You Need to Go)
We are like a people under [a] sentence of death, waiting for the date to be set. We sense that something is about to happen. We know that things cannot go on as they are. History has reached an impasse. We are now on a collision course. Something is about to give.
Billy Graham (Billy Graham in Quotes)
Our country is in far worse shape than they are leading the citizens to believe. We are on a collision course with a collapsing and devalued paper dollar.
Daniel Margolin (Fast Tracking Your Prosperity: 21 LESSONS IN PROFESSIONAL & PERSONAL SUCCESS)
Why might there not be as many real worlds as imaginary ones? Why a single real world? Why such an exception? Truth to tell, the real world, among all the other possible ones, is unthinkable, except as dangerous superstition. We must break with it as critical thought once broke (in the name of the real!) with religious superstition. Thinkers, one more effort! In any case, the two orders of thought are irreconcilable. They each follow their course without merging; at best they slide over each other like tectonic plates, and occasionally their collision or subduction creates fault lines into which reality rushes. Fate is always at the intersection of these two lines of force. Similarly, radical thought is at the violent intersection of meaning and non-meaning, of truth and non-truth, of the continuity of the world and the continuity of the nothing.
Jean Baudrillard (The Perfect Crime)
Quoting page 63: Business interests not surprisingly supported the [1965 immigration reform] bill as well, but were not a driving force behind it. Because the baby boom was pouring new workers into the economy, and the assault on racial discrimination promised to feed millions of underemployed blacks into the workforce as well, employers did not seem to be looking for workers overseas. Even the growers were quiet. Sponsors of the Bracero farm worker program that had imported hundreds of thousands of mostly Mexican contract workers since 1942—the program averaged 430,000 guestworkers a year from Mexico during its peak 1955-60 years—the growers had been attacked by organized labor, religious, and civil rights organization for exploiting foreign workers and depressing labor standards. The same liberal coalition that backed the civil rights and immigration reforms of 1964-65 had persuaded Congress to terminate the Bracero program in 1964. … The Wall Street Journal, commenting on the conservative nature of the immigration reform, noted on October 4, 1965, that the family preference priorities would ensure that “the new immigration system would not stray radically from the old one.” The historically restrictionist American Legion Magazine agreed, reassured by the promises of continuity. As Senator Edward Kennedy had pledged in the Senate hearings on immigration, first, “Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same,” and second, “the ethnic mix of this country will not be upset.
Hugh Davis Graham (Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America)
Quoting page 65-66: Race-conscious affirmative action is a familiar term of journalistic convenience. It identifies unambiguously the controversial element of minority preferences in distributing benefits. But it also conflates racially targeted civil rights remedies with affirmative action preferences for groups, such as Hispanics and women, given protected class status irrespective of race. … It includes nonracial as well as racial preferences, and it distinguishes such remedies, available only to officially designated protected classes, from the soft affirmative action … which emphasized special outreach programs for recruiting minorities … within a traditional liberal framework of equal individual rights for all Americans. … The architects of race-conscious affirmative action, Skrentny observes, developed their remedy in the face of public opinion heavily arrayed against it. Unlike most public policy in America, hard affirmative action was originally adopted without the benefit of any organized lobbying by the major interest groups involved. Instead, government bureaucrats, not benefiting interest groups, provided the main impetus. The race-conscious model of hard affirmative action was developed in trial-and-error fashion by a coalition of mostly white, second-tier civil servants in the social service agencies of the presidency… To Skrenty’s core irony, we may add three further ironies, first, the key to political survival for hard affirmative action was persistent support from the Republican Party… Second, the theories of compensatory justice supporting minority preference policies were devised only after the adoption of the policies themselves. Finally, affirmative action preferences which supporters rationalized as necessary to compensate African-Americans for historic discrimination, and which for twenty years were successfully defended in federal courts primarily on those grounds, soon benefited millions of immigrants newly arrived from Latin America and Asia.
Hugh Davis Graham (Collision Course: The Strange Convergence of Affirmative Action and Immigration Policy in America)