Extinction Quotes - Page 4

• As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.

  David Grinspoon

  Moon, Self, Long

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• The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. It's hard to accept dinosaurs as a success when they are all dead. But the fact of ultimate extinction should not make us overlook the absolutely unsurpassed role dinosaurs played in the history of life.

  Robert T. Bakker

  Roles, Dinosaurs, History Of Life

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• Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine.

  Anne Sexton

  Ocean, Caves, Earth

  Anne Sexton, “As It Was Written”

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• I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me with a greater terror than the concept of extinction.

  Louis Auchincloss

  Religious, Stupid, Ideas

  Louis Auchincloss (2004). “East Side Story: A Novel”, p.93, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.

  Charles Lyell

  Science, Escaping, Earth

  Sir Charles Lyell (1853). “Principles of geology ; or, The modern changes of the earth and its inhabitants considered as illustrative of geology”, p.696

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• I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Mind, Wish, Chicago

  David W. Bartlett, Abraham Lincoln (1860). “The Life and Public Services of Hon. Abraham Lincoln: With a Portrait on Steel. To which is Added a Biographical Sketch of Hon. Hannibal Hamlin”, p.190

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• In the way our Fathers originally left the slavery question, the institution was in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind rested in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction . . . . All I have asked or desired anywhere, is that it should be placed back again upon the basis that the Fathers of our government originally placed it upon.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Father, Government, Mind

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.567, Jazzybee Verlag

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• For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

  Vladimir Lenin

  Communication, Communism, States

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• All scientists agree that evolution has occurred-that all life comes from a common ancestry, that there has been extinction, and that new taxa, new biological groups, have arisen. The question is, is natural selection enough to explain evolution? Is it the driver of evolution?

  Lynn Margulis

  Groups, Ancestry, Common

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• Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. We have to fight for it and protect it and then hand it to them, so that they shall do the same, or we're going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.

  Ronald Reagan

  Children, Sunset, Fighting

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• Education without execution is extinction

  Bo Sanchez

  Execution

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• As many glaciers are melting and icy tundras are decaying, there's an unprecedented amount of woolly mammoth material that's becoming dislodged from the ice. Not just mammoth, but all kinds of fossils from the past. What occurred to me was, had anyone tried to pinpoint the first case of human-induced extinction? What was the first time we as species pushed another one to oblivion? I would argue that's probably going to be one of the defining moral problems of the century, human-induced extinction. And I really wanted to know, when did we first cross that barrier?

  Dario Robleto

  Past, Ice, Becoming

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals.

  Wayne Pacelle

  Animal, Problem, Aspca

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• The cold view to take of our future is that we are therefore headed for extinction in a universe of impersonal chemical, physical, and biological laws. A more productive, certainly more engaging view, is that we have the intelligence to grasp what is happening, the composure not to be intimidated by its complexity, and the courage to take steps that may bear no fruit in our lifetimes.

  Barry Lopez

  Views, Law, May

  FaceBook post by Barry Lopez from Feb 24, 2016

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• We're handing them [young people & future generations] a climate system which is potentially out of their control. We're in an emergency: you can see what's on the horizon over the next few decades with the effects it will have on ecosystems, sea level and species extinction

  James Hansen

  Future, Sea, Ecosystems

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• People, fearing their own extinction, are willing to accept and perpetuate hand-me-down answers to the meaning of life and death; and, fearing a weakening of the tribal structures that sustain them, reinforce with their tales the conventional notions of justice, freedom, law and order, nature, family, etc. The writer, lone rider, has the power, if not always the skills, wisdom, or desire, to disturb this false contentment.

  Robert Coover

  Hands, Order, Law

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• Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

  Samuel Adams

  Long, Liberty, Moral

  Samuel Adams (1968). “The Writings of Samuel Adams: 1773-1777: 1773-1777”

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• I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers than it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist. I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.

  Prince Philip

  Animal, Numbers, Nwo

  Foreword to "If I Were an Animal" by Fleur Cowles, 1987.

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• We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding.

  Wayne Pacelle

  Animal, Generations, Different

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• If I had my life to live over again I would not devote it to develop new industrial processes: I would try to add my humble efforts to use Science to the betterment of the human race. I despair of the helter-skelter methods of our vaulted homo sapiens, misguided by his ignorance and his politicians. If we continue our ways, there is every possibility that the human race may follow the road of former living races of animals whose fossils proclaim that they were not fit to continue. Religion, laws and morals is not enough. We need more. Science can help us.

  Leo Baekeland

  Ignorance, Humility, Humble

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• The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Mean, Race, Dwelling

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• Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction. This is serious. This may be the ultimate final exam.

  Joel Garreau

  Real, Finals, Alternatives

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• We have decisively changed the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the rate of extinction.

  Rob Nixon

  Carbon Cycle, Nitrogen, Environment

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• an Autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell... the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Cat, Dust

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.55, Chartwell

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• It is so hard for an evolutionary biologist to write about extinction caused by human stupidity. Let me then float an unconventional plea, the inverse of the usual argument. The extinction of Partula is unfair to Partula. That is the conventional argument, and I do not challenge its primacy. But we need a humanistic ecology as well, both for the practical reason that people will always touch people more than snails do or can, and for the moral reason that humans are legitimately the measure of all ethical questions for these are our issues, not nature's.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Writing, Issues, Ethical Questions

  "Eight Little Piggies: Reflections in Natural History". Book by Stephen Jay Gould. "Unenchanted Evening", p. 39, 1993.

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