These earthquake quotes will inspire you. An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor, or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth’s lithosphere that creates seismic waves.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging earthquake quotes, earthquake sayings, and earthquake proverbs.
Best Earthquake Quotes
- “There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.” ~ Jan Schakowsky
- “An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain – the equality of all men.” ~ Ignazio Silone
- “We learn geology the morning after the earthquake.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” ~ Jeannette Rankin
- “All Nature’s wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature’s heart.” ~ John Muir
- “We know we cannot underestimate the importance of emergency planning in our region, nor can we assume we’ll have ample warning time. If an earthquake or terrorist attack hits, we won’t necessarily have advance alerts or opportunities to double- and triple-check our plans.” ~ Ellen Tauscher
- “When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.” ~ Louis de Bernieres
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“Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.” ~ Louis de Bernieres
- “Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.” ~ Voltaire
- “It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.” ~ Lord Byron
- “It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.” ~ Frederick Douglass
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“People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages.” ~ Hayao Miyazaki
- “We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.” ~ Samuel Goldwyn
- “If you want to understand geology, study earthquakes. If you want to understand the economy, study the Depression.” ~ Ben Bernanke
- “Those who survived the San Francisco earthquake said, ‘Thank God, I’m still alive.’ But, of course, those who died, their lives will never be the same again.” ~ Barbara Boxer
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“I used to sleep nude – until the earthquake.” ~ Alyssa Milano
- “We have become a force of nature Not long ago, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, drought, forest fires, even earthquakes and volcanic explosions were accepted as “natural disasters or “acts of God.” But now, we have joined God, powerful enough to influence these events.” ~ David Suzuki
- “In every area of the world where there is earthquake risk, there are still many buildings of this type; it is very frustrating to try to get rid of them.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
- “As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
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“Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, oil spills and radioactive fallout cause massive death of people, pigs, bats and birds. These disasters also impact the immune health of survivors. All harbor viruses.” ~ Paul Stamets
- “I was a rust repairer. I was a rust repairer and full-time survivor. I survived all the major earthquakes, and the Titanic, and several air crash.” ~ Keith Moon
- “Earthquakes may be brought about because wind is caught up in the earth, so the earth is dislocated in small masses and is continually shaken, and that causes it to sway.” ~ Epicurus
- “When we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help.” ~ Jan Schakowsky
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“Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.” ~ Sylvester Stallone
- “In an earthquake, I shouldn’t run out of the house – I should run into it.” ~ Tony Danza
- “At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.” ~ Gore Vidal
- “Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else.” ~ Anne M. Mulcahy
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“If one introduces the concept of energy of an earthquake then that is a theoretically derived quantity.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
- “If there were a major earthquake in Los Angeles, with bridges and highways and railroads and airports all shut down and huge buildings collapsing, I don’t care how much planning you do, the first 72 hours is going to be chaotic.” ~ Warren Rudman
- “Japans humid and warm summer climate, as well as frequent earthquakes resulted in lightweight timber buildings raised off the ground that are resistant to earth tremors.” ~ Harry Seidler
- “God speaks to me not through the thunder and the earthquake, nor through the ocean and the stars, but through the Son of Man, and speaks in a language adapted to my imperfect sight and hearing.” ~ William Lyon Phelps
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“War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.” ~ Ludwig von Mises
- “Mr. Speaker, from hurricanes and floods in Latin America to earthquakes in Asia, natural disasters are increasingly becoming a regular feature of life for large numbers of people around the globe.” ~ Earl Blumenauer
- “Nothing but an imperious intellectual and moral necessity can drive into doubt a religious mind, for it is as though an earthquake shook the foundations of the soul, and the very being quivers and sways under the shock.” ~ Annie Besant
- “I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we’ve done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.” ~ William J. Clinton
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“[In plotting earthquake measurements] the range between the largest and smallest magnitudes seemed unmanageably large. Dr. Beno Gutenberg then made the natural suggestion to plot the amplitudes logarithmically.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
- “The usual designation of the magnitude scale to my name does less than justice to the great part that Dr. Gutenberg played in extending the scale to apply to earthquakes in all parts of the world.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
- “My base will show up in earthquakes.” ~ Todd Akin
- “A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.” ~ Charles Darwin
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“Stupidity is an elemental force for which no earthquake is a match.” ~ Karl Kraus
- “Most loss of life and property has been due to the collapse of antiquated and unsafe structures, mostly of brick and other masonry. … There is progress of California toward building new construction according to earthquake-resistant design. We would have less reason to ask for earthquake prediction if this was universal.” ~ Charles Francis Richter , Earthquake quotes life
- “I would walk – not run – to the nearest seismograph.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
- “Feeling earthquakes was part of growing up, and also preparing for them: doing earthquake drills, or having earthquake supplies. The looming feeling was part of my life. My experience of earthquakes has always been more the fear of them, or the possibility.” ~ Karen Thompson Walker
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“There is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or an eternal fever. Besides, who would ever shave themselves in such a state?” ~ Lord Byron
- “In the middle of my third Hollywood picture The Magician, the earthquake hit Hollywood. Not the real earthquake. Just the talkies.” ~ Conrad Veidt
- “I couldn’t help but be impressed by the magnitude of the earthquake.” ~ Dan Quayle
- “When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years – which are the gay movement and the women’s movement – I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those.” ~ Bill Condon
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“Presenting statues of honor to reporters for covering an earthquake is like presenting a first prize to a doctor for performing surgery.” ~ Phil Donahue
- “The generosity of the American public toward the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami has been reflected in the outpouring of support for the Pakistani earthquake victims.” ~ Jon Porter
- “After World War II great strides were made in modern Japanese architecture, not only in advanced technology, allowing earthquake resistant tall buildings, but expressing and infusing characteristics of traditional Japanese architecture in modern buildings.” ~ Harry Seidler
- “Just as the spectroscope opened up a new astronomy by enabling the astronomer to determine some of the constituents of which distant stars are composed, so the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see into the earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, up to a certain point, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.” ~ Richard Dixon Oldham
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“Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else. I’ll never forget the wrenching days I spent in Haiti last year for Save the Children just weeks after the earthquake.” ~ Anne M. Mulcahy
- “It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes should one day throw light on the origin of mountains, as it must to the first astronomers, that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon.” ~ Charles Lyell
- “Most of these Mountains and Inland places whereon these kind of Petrify’d Bodies and Shells are found at present, or have been heretofore, were formerly under the Water, and that either by the descending of the Waters to another part of the Earth by the alteration of the Centre of Gravity of the whole bulk, or rather by the Eruption of some kind of Subterraneous Fires or Earthquakes, great quantities of Earth have been deserted by the Water and laid bare and dry.” ~ Robert Hooke
- “I was married once–in San Francisco. I haven’t seen her for many years. The great earthquake and fire in 1906 destroyed the marriage certificate. There’s no legal proof. Which proves that earthquakes aren’t all bad.” ~ W. C. Fields
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“On behalf of my native Japan, I am grateful to the culinary community and hospitality industry for working together to raise much-needed funds to aid the tsunami and earthquake victims.” ~ Masaharu Morimoto
- “We’ve put huge resources into predicting tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes. HIV/AIDS is like an earthquake that’s lasted 30 years and touched every country on the planet. We have such incredible capacity to think about the future, it’s time we used it to predict biological threats. Otherwise we’ll be blindsided again and again.” ~ Nathan Wolfe
- “Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.” ~ Charles Darwin
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“When the Haiti earthquake happened, I registered with UNICEF to set up an account, and posted to Twitter for people to donate to it. In a matter of a couple of hours, $30,000 had been donated. That, to me, was eye-opening.” ~ Misha Collins
- “I was born full grown in the middle of a hurricane and an earthquake on 10 September 1954, 12.52 P.M. When I found out that I had missed lunch, I gave such a shout that the Earth stopped and spun backwards two days. That’s why I celebrate my birthday on 8 September.” ~ Jon Scieszka
- “The most remarkable feature about the magnitude scale was that it worked at all and that it could be extended on a worldwide basis. It was originally envisaged as a rather rough-and-ready procedure by which we could grade earthquakes. We would have been happy if we could have assigned just three categories, large, medium, and small; the point is, we wanted to avoid personal judgments. It actually turned out to be quite a finely tuned scale.” ~ Charles Francis Richter
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“In Europe the various ranks of society are, like the strata of the earth, fixed and fossilized. There can be no great change without a terrible upheaval, a social earthquake.” ~ Josiah Strong
- “Americans rightly asked, if this is the way our government responds to a natural disaster it knew about days in advance, how would it respond to a surprise terrorist attack? How would it respond to an earthquake?” ~ Russ Carnahan
- “The one thing that I have been struck with, after coming here to Congress is, how many people in Washington, D.C. talk about job loss like they are talking about the weather, or a natural disaster like an earthquake.” ~ Stephen F. Lynch
