Urgent Quotes: Inspiring Perspectives on Immediacy and Prompt Action

"We should so provide for old age that it may have no urgent wants of this world to absorb it from meditation on the next. It is awful to see the lean hands of dotage making a coffer of the grave"

Pearl S. Buck, Novelist

"But for the national welfare, it is urgent to realize that the minorities do think, and think about something other than the race problem"

Zora Neale Hurston, Dramatist

"The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one"

Albert Einstein, Physicist

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'"

Martin Luther King Jr., Minister

"When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I'm sure it made the work seem that much more urgent"

George Carlin, Comedian

"The most important and urgent appeal we have to make is for an immediate cease-fire. Initial reports from the cease-fire talks being held in N'Djamena in Chad are not very encouraging"

Jan Egeland, Public Servant

"Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government"

Milton Friedman, Economist

"There is an urgent need for a radical revision of our current concepts of the nature of consciousness and its relationship to matter and the brain"

Stanislav Grof, Psychologist

"No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks"

James Allen, Author

"As we get closer to the end of this Congress, we should be addressing the urgent needs of the American people - the war in Iraq, affordable health care, a sensible energy policy, quality education for our children, retirement security, and a sound and fair fiscal policy"

Chris Van Hollen, Politician

"To be clear, climate change is a true 800 pound gorilla in the room. The effects of global warming threaten global environmental upheaval over the coming century. But for South Florida and the Everglades, it could be our death knell if urgent action is not taken"

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Politician

"I came to poetry through the urgent need to denounce injustice, exploitation, humiliation. I know that's not enough to change the world. But to remain silent would have been a kind of intolerable complicity"

Tahar Ben Jelloun, Poet

"Properly practiced creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent"

William Bernbach, Businessman

"We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?"

Wendell Berry, Poet

"I believe there are more urgent and honorable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering"

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette, Novelist

"Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together"

Gerald R. Ford, President

"In my view, there is an urgent need to communicate with the public and help to explain where there is consensus, and where are there doubts about the issues of sustainable development"

Jeffrey Sachs, Economist

"I think we have grave problems. I am very much concerned about environmental questions, even though in Finnish society, we are not facing the most urgent problems"

Harri Holkeri, Politician

"From the Bush Administration to the 9-11 Commission, there is an urgent and universally recognized need to change the broken formula through which Homeland Security grant money currently is allocated to our first responders"

Vito Fossella, Politician

"Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet"

Jack Herer, Activist

"The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday"

Dennis Gabor, Scientist

"Most urgent is the good First Job Program, that Lula plans to implement, which hasn't got off the ground"

Claudio Hummes

"Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?"

King Abdullah II, Statesman

"Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent"

Havelock Ellis, Psychologist

"It is common to distinguish necessaries, comforts, and luxuries; the first class including all things required to meet wants which must be satisfied, while the latter consist of things that meet wants of a less urgent character"

Alfred Marshall, Economist

"Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul"

Louis Kahn, Architect

"After this urgent protest against entering into battle at Gettysburg according to instructions - which protest is the first and only one I ever made during my entire military career - I ordered my line to advance and make the assault"

John B. Hood, Soldier

"I am not facing the problem of emigration. I want my music to be acknowledged here first of all, in this country: after that, we shall see - perhaps the question will than become urgent"

Alfred Schnittke, Composer

"I think good radio often uses the techniques of fiction: characters, scenes, a big urgent emotional question. And as in the best fiction, tone counts for a lot"

Ira Glass, Journalist

"Indeed, the attempt to live according to the notion that the fragments are really separate is, in essence, what has led to the growing series of extremely urgent crises that is confronting us today"

David Bohm, Scientist

"A city whose living immediacy is so urgent that when I am in it I lose all sense of the past"

Kenneth Tynan, Critic

"A student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worth while to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests"

Alma Gluck, Musician

"Mexico doesn't deserve what has happened to us. A democratic change is urgent, a change that will permit us to stop being a loser country"

Vicente Fox, Statesman

"The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish"

Donald Knuth, Scientist

"America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance"

Mohamed El-Erian, Businessman

"So we are disappointed that some of our closest allies, including Canada, have not agreed with us on the urgent need for this military action against Iraq"

Paul Cellucci, Politician

"There is an urgent need for Americans to look deeply into themselves and their actions, and musical poetry is perhaps the most effective mirror available. Every newspaper headline is a potential song"

Phil Ochs, Musician

"We were in Little Rock. We were assessing a very important issue. In the midst of our discussions, we were receiving urgent inquiries from The Washington Post asking about interviews"

Kenneth Starr, Lawyer

"But you can make good radio, interesting radio, great radio even, without an urgent question, a burning issue at stake"

Ira Glass, Journalist

"For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties"

Louis Finkelstein, Clergyman

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