The upheavals of adolescence silenced 'A Christmas Carol' for a few years. I became a firebrand atheist. Christmas - humbug! Too commercial! Then I became an agnostic. Christmas was a pro-forma affair basically a chore. Buy mother a book dad a new tie my brother and sister small gifts. Pretend thanks for the fountain pens and shirts I received.

The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity.

If Greece had gone through a very normal political life I may have not been in politics. But just the fact that I lived through huge upheavals and very difficult struggles and polarization and the barbarism of dictatorships - that made me feel that we had to change this country.

A knowledge of the forces that rule society of the causes that have produced its upheavals and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization.

My birth neither shook the German Empire nor caused much of an upheaval in the home. It pleased mother caused father a certain amount of pride and my elder brother the usual fraternal jealousy of a hitherto only son.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex the ugly ones included.

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.

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.