Quotes: The Spiritual Dynamics of Crisis

Forget not that humanity grows through the presentation of moments of crisis.
Alice Bailey

Today, the conflicts are numerous, vital and unavoidable; they are present in the individual consciousness and in the mass consciousness; they present constant points of crises and are today bringing about a point of world tension which seems well-nigh unbearable. But ahead of the individual disciple and of humanity lies a point of emergence.
Alice Bailey

The whole of humanity is confronted with an intertwined set of crises which, taken together, constitute the crisis of a humanity that is unable to access Humanity.
Stéphane Frédéric Hessel

The crisis is the moment when the old world order is fading away and the new one has to impose itself in spite of all resistance and contradictions. This transitional phase is precisely marked by many mistakes and torments.
Antonio Gramsci

In every crisis, doubt or confusion, take the higher path – the path of compassion, courage, understanding and love.
Amit Ray

Times of crisis, of disruption or constructive change, are not only predictable, but desirable. They mean growth. Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

In times of crisis, people reach for meaning. Meaning is strength. Our survival may depend on our seeking and finding it.
Viktor E. Frankl

What if we used this disruption as an opportunity to let go of everything that isn’t essential in our life, in our work, and in our institutional routines? How might we reimagine how we live and work together? How might we reimagine the basic structures of our civilization? Which effectively means: how can we reimagine our economic, our democratic, and our learning systems in ways that bridge the ecological, the social, and the spiritual divides of our time?
Otto Scharmer

Organizations and communities do not fail because of their problems, nor do they necessarily succeed because they solve them. Problems will always exist. Communities that succeed open up to the unknown during periods of crisis. We succeed in the grand sense and become sustainable by following the cycle of things. We come together by following the flow – through operating as a community, having trouble, almost going to pieces and then coming together.
Arnold Mindell

Can the 1945 multilateral order be reforged to confront the deeper level of interdependence we now face? The crucial tests ahead include finding solutions to urgent problems concerning financial market regulation, global economic imbalances, climate change, the prevention of nuclear proliferation, and investing in capabilities more broadly to cope with global goods and bads. These tests are for the here and now, not some remote future. We face a choice between an effective and representative rule-based multilateral order, or the further development of gridlock and descent into negative scenarios …

It should not be forgotten that the international order has been rebuilt before. The codification of the United Nations was the first step in the creation of a framework of rules embedding rights and responsibilities in the international order, as were the Bretton Woods institutions, and their successors. These developments were the result of crisis and can be thought of as “crisis innovations”: international institutions and governance preceded by devastation and human destruction. Here and elsewhere one can observe that some of the most violent and catastrophic moments of human history have been followed by transformative institutional developments.
Thomas Hale, David Held and Kevin Young, Gridlock, p.306

…to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.
Nelson Mandela

More than ever before in human history, we share a common destiny. We can master it only if we face it together. And that is why we have the United Nations.
Kofi Annan

For the first time in human history, the lines of demarcation between that which is right from the angle of the spiritual values (the essential freedom of the human spirit) and that which is wrong (the imprisonment of the human spirit by materialistic conditions) are clearly perceived by the majority of the nations of the planet. Within the United Nations is the germ and the seed of a great international and meditating, reflective group – a group of thinking and informed men and women in whose hands lies the destiny of humanity.
Alice Bailey

Without trust there’s no cooperation. And without cooperation there’s no progress. History stops.
Rick Yancey

Peacebuilding requires an eternal belief in the creative act, the building and coaxing of imagination itself. Creativity moves beyond what exists toward something new and unexpected while rising from and speaking to the everyday. This is the role of the artist and why it is that imagination and art are at the edge of society. I believe that the primary role of the moral imagination is to provide space for the creative act to emerge. Providing space requires a predisposition, a kind of attitude and perspective that opens up, even invokes the spirit and belief that creativity is humanly possible.
John Paul Lederach

Destiny is something not be to desired and not to be avoided. A mystery not contrary to reason, for it implies that the world, and the course of human history, have meaning.
Dag Hammarskjold

The difficulty is that, so long as unreason prevails, a solution of our troubles can only be reached by chance; for while reason, being impersonal, makes universal co-operation possible, unreason, since it represents private passions, makes strife inevitable. It is for this reason that rationality, in the sense of an appeal to a universal and impersonal standard of truth, is of supreme importance to the well-being of the human species.
Bertrand Russell

The race faces a new crisis of opportunity wherein new values can be seen as important, wherein the establishing of right human relations will be deemed desirable, not only from the idealistic point of view but also from the purely selfish angle. Some day the principles of cooperation and of sharing will be substituted for those of possessive greed and competition. This is the inevitable next step ahead for humanity – one for which the entire evolutionary process has prepared mankind.
Alice Bailey

Love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way – and if we are to live together and not die together – we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Bertrand Russell

When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn’t work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form – or a species – will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Eckhart Tolle

Throughout the ages, humanity has been advancing on a winding path towards higher degrees of maturity. The well-being of humankind is not static; it requires ever greater degrees of commitment to fulfilling ever increasing ambitions. At each stage, even significant advances may prove inadequate. And it is in these moments of great crisis when humanity is called on, by virtue of the prevailing circumstances, to reconsider its trajectory. Largely, though not exclusively, driven by enormous tragedy, these moments are significant in the narrative of human progress.
Daniel Perrell

Every test successfully met is rewarded by some growth in intuitive knowledge, strengthening of character, or initiation into a higher consciousness.
Paul Brunton

A crisis gives us the opportunity to practice our creativity, for it makes us think outside the box.
Abhijit Naskar

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
Abraham Lincoln

At critical moments the veil between the little-self and the deep self thins and a meaningful self-adjustment becomes possible. If a person does not become paralyzed with fear or frozen in hatred, the wise self hidden within will rise to the occasion.
Michael Meade

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Paul Romer