Extinction Quotes - Page 12

• This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character.

  Charles Darwin

  Character, Fundamentals, Causes

  Charles Darwin (1870). “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life”, p.12

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• Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mean, Vanity, People

  Blaise Pascal (2008). “Human Happiness”, Penguin Group USA

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• Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time...? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.

  Ismail Kadaré

  Sadness, Fog, Finals

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• Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

  Iain Banks

  Mean, Self, Common Sense

  "Consider Phlebas (The Culture, Book 1)". Book by Iain Banks (Chapter 4 "Temple of Light", p. 96), 1987.

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• Each time one of the medicine men dies, it's as if a library has burned down.

  Mark Plotkin

  Knowledge, Science, Men

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• We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.

  David Foreman

  May, Sake, Global Warming

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• Human use of fossil fuels is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere; oceans are polluted and depleted of fish; 80 per cent of Earth's forests are heavily impacted or gone yet their destruction continues. An estimated 50,000 species are driven to extinction each year. We dump millions of tonnes of chemicals, most untested for their biological effects, and many highly toxic, into air, water and soil. We have created an ecological holocaust. Our very health and survival are at stake, yet we act as if we have plenty of time to respond.

  David Suzuki

  Ocean, Air, Years

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• There is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation.

  Homer Hulbert

  Peculiar, Pathos, Nations

  Homer Bezaleel Hulbert (1906). “The Passing of Korea”

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• When the moon shall have faded out from the sky, and the sun shall shine at noonday a dull cherry red, and the seas shall be frozen over, and the icecap shall have crept downward to the equator from either pole . . . when all the cities shall have long been dead and crumbled into dust, and all life shall be on the last verge of extinction on this globe; then, on a bit of lichen, growing on the bald rocks beside the eternal snows of Panama, shall be seated a tiny insect, preening its antennae in the glow of the worn-out sun, the sole survivor of animal life on this our earth - a melancholy bug.

  William Jacob Holland

  Life, Animal, Moon

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• Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction.

  David Remnick

  One Day, Population, May

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• The number of people in the world engaged in this search for catastrophic impactors totals one or two dozen. How long into the future are you willing to protect Homo sapiens on Earth? Before you answer that question, take a detour to Arizona's Meteor Crater during your next vacation.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Vacation, Two, Numbers

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• But to carve the Grand Canyon, Earth required millions of years. To excavate Meteor Crater, the universe, using a sixty-thousand-ton asteroid traveling upward of twenty miles per second, required a fraction of a second. No offense to Grand Canyon lovers, but for my money, Meteor Crater is the most amazing natural landmark in the world.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Years, Twenties, World

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• Seventy percent of Earth's surface is water and over 99 percent is uninhabited, so you would expect nearly all impactors to hit either the ocean or desolate regions on Earth's surface. So why do movie meteors have such good aim?

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Ocean, Water, Earth

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• If Earth ever suffers a runaway greenhouse effect (like what has happened on Venus), then our atmosphere would trap excess amounts of solar energy, the air temperature would rise, and the oceans would swiftly evaporate into the atmosphere as they sustained a rolling boil. This would be bad.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Ocean, Air, Atmosphere

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• Trillions of years into the future, when all stars are gone...all parts of the cosmos will cool to the same temperature as the ever-cooling background. At that time, space travel will no longer provide refuge because even Hell will have frozen over. We may then declare that the universe has died-not with a bang, but with a whimper.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Stars, Years, Space

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• An asteroid can literally destroy 80 or 90 percent of the species that are alive on Earth. These are big events. I mean, this is called extinction.

  Rusty Schweickart

  Mean, Alive, Earth

  "Asteroid". "NOVA scienceNOW" with Neil Degrasse Tyson, www.pbs.org. October 3, 2006.

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• Historically speaking, the Christian religion is nothing but a Jewish sect... After the destruction of Judaism, the extinction of Christian slave morals must follow logically... Ah, the God of the deserts, that crazed, stupid, vengeful Asiatic despot with his power to make laws!

  Adolf Hitler

  Christian, Religious, Stupid

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• Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction.

  June Goodfield

  Race, Patents, Example

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• All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly - right now.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Humanity, Doe, Peril

  "Critical Path". Book by R. Buckminster Fuller, 1981.

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• There is no place in nature for extinction.

  Lucretius

  Nature

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• Australia has one of the worst mammalian extinction rates in the world.

  Steve Irwin

  Australia, World, Worst

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• ... why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?

  Brian D. McLaren

  Religious, People, Environmental

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• A billion homo sapiens are added every 11 years to the planet. The hypertrophy of a single species pushes other life-forms out of bed and into extinction. The decline of biological diversity is real and severe. The alarming loss of soil fertility, forest cover, and coral reef viability and the release of fossilized CO2 that nature put away 300 million years ago in its march toward greater diversity - all these "losses" and many others are the result of one life-form annihilating other life-forms in its immoral confusion of "dominion" with "domination."

  Leonard Sweet

  Real, Loss, Years

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• We discover too late that we have turned a blind eye to the extinction of a species that is essential to the balance of life in a particular context. Or we discover too late that the importation of a foreign life-form, animal or vegetable, has upset local ecosystems, damaging soil or neighbouring life-forms. We discover that we have come near the end of supplies-of fossil-fuels for example -on which we have built immense structures of routine expectation.

  Rowan Williams

  Eye, Animal, Ecosystems

  Rowan Williams (2012). “Faith in the Public Square”, p.188, A&C Black

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• Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God.

  Winkie Pratney

  Loss, Animal, Race

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