Extinction Quotes - Page 8

• There's a fundamental difference, if you sort of look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that's out there exploring the stars...compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.

  Elon Musk

  Stars, Differences, Space

  "The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity". TED Talk, www.ted.com. February 2013.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Today's environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, finding them seriously deficient in their nervous system design... The degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc., which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their clumsy nervous systems, into extinction.

  Douglas Engelbart

  Organization, Design, Perception

  14 Copy quote

• Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun.

  Brian Swimme

  Survival, Energy, Development

  Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry (1992). “The universe story: from the primordial flaring forth to the ecozoic era--a celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos”, Harper San Francisco

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• When it comes to impending, unavoidable extinction, ignorance is bliss.

  Darren Shan

  Ignorance, Bliss, Ignorance Is Bliss

  5 Copy quote

• We've made some heroic efforts, but the Earth as a whole is in worse shape today than 30 years ago, ... There's been 30 more years of greenhouses gases, species extinctions and population growth.

  Denis Hayes

  Years, Effort, Growth

  4 Copy quote

• The film is therefore a form of science fiction, in which humans, beasts and machines are on the verge of extinction - 'sacred motors' linked together by a common fate and solidarity, slaves to an increasingly virtual world. A world from which visible machines, real experiences and actions are gradually disappearing.

  Leos Carax

  Real, Fate, Together

  4 Copy quote

• We got rich by violating one of the central tenets of economics: thou shall not sell off your capital and call it income. And yet over the past 40 years we have clear-cut the forests, fished rivers and oceans to the brink of extinction and siphoned oil from the earth as if it possessed an infinite supply. We've sold off our planet's natural capital and called it income. And now the earth, like the economy, is stripped.

  Kalle Lasn

  Ocean, Cutting, Past

  "Hey President Obama". Adbusters, March 24, 2009.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Common man has at long last got himself so far out of gear with nature and his environment that he is beginning to see the shape of extinction, whether he recognizes it as such or not.

  Philip Wylie

  Men, Long, Gears

  "Generation of Vipers". Book by Philip Wylie, 1942.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: "Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me."

  Ibn Ata Allah

  Friendship, Mean, Path

  4 Copy quote

• How fascinating is death, the extinction of life. One moment here and the next gone. The light put out and only the empty bag of the body left.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Life, Death, Light

  4 Copy quote

• If we don't watch out, the pleasure o be gained from the discriminating enjoyment of food will be lost. It may not be long before the art of fine cooking is viewed as the invention of a handful of snobs. . . . A whole aspect of living well, of civilization itself, is threatened with extinction.

  Benoite Groult

  Life, Art, Civilization

  8 Copy quote

• We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Nature, Animal, Diversity

  5 Copy quote

• Record stores are the backbone of the recorded music culture. It's where we go to network, browse around, and find new songs to love. The stores whose staff live for music have spread the word about exciting new things faster and with more essence than either radio or the press. Any artist that doesn't support the wonderful ma and pa record stores across America is contributing to our own extinction.

  Joan Jett

  Song, Artist, Essence

  7 Copy quote

• I'm not saying we don't have our set of problems - climate crisis, species extinction, water and energy shortage - we surely do. But ultimately we knock them down.

  Peter Diamandis

  Motivation, Inspiration, Water

  "Abundance is our future". TED2012, www.ted.com. February 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Extinction catches Man by surprise because no one can even imagine that such a catastrophe can happen to an intelligent species.

  Bill Gaede

  Men, Intelligent, Surprise

  4 Copy quote

• Loss of genetic diversity in agriculture is leading us to a rendezvous with extinction--to the doorstep of hunger on a scale we refuse to imagine. To simplify the environment as we have done with agriculture is to destroy the complex interrelationships that hold the natural world together. Reducing the diversity of life, we narrow our options for the future and render our own survival more precarious.

  Cary Fowler

  Loss, Agriculture, Diversity

  Cary Fowler, Patrick R. Mooney (1990). “Shattering: Food, Politics, and the Loss of Genetic Diversity”, p.9, University of Arizona Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• As long as hierarchy persists, as long as domination organises humanity around a system of elites, the project of dominating nature will continue to exist and inevitably lead our planet to ecological extinction.

  Murray Bookchin

  Nature, Persistence, Long

  "Toward an Ecological Society". Book by Murray Bookchin, 1980.

  71 Copy quote

  Show source

• My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Thinking, Vegetables

  Fernando Pessoa (2010). “The Book of Disquiet”, p.50, Profile Books

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• The old ways are dead. And you need people around you who concur. That means hanging out more with the creative people, the freaks, the real visionaries, than you're already doing. Thinking more about what their needs are, and responding accordingly. Avoid the dullards; avoid the folk who play it safe. They can't help you anymore. Their stability model no longer offers that much stability. They are extinct, they are extinction.

  Hugh Jackman

  Real, Mean, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• No move towards the extinction of the passion between the sexes has taken place in the five or six thousand years that the world has existed.

  Thomas Malthus

  Sex, Moving, Taken

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.95, eKitap Projesi

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes in the ignorance I feel the meaning Invincible invisible wisdom, And I commune with intuitive instinct With the force that made life be And since it made life be It is greater than life And since it let extinction be It is greater than extinction. I commune with feelings more than prayer

  Sun Ra

  Prayer, Ignorance, Feelings

  Sun Ra, Hartmut Geerken (2005). “The Immeasurable Equation: The Collected Poetry and Prose”, p.132, BoD – Books on Demand

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?

  Empress Dowager Cixi

  Fighting, Yield, Why Not

  "The Last Empress: The She-Dragon of China". Book by Keith Laidler, p. 221, January 21, 2005.

  42 Copy quote

  Show source

• The principles of my works... are the extinction of expression, permanent covering and contemplative tranquillity... My ideal is the completely dark picture, full of some overwhelming silence.

  Arnulf Rainer

  Dark, Expression, Silence

  8 Copy quote

• The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their 'beliefs.' The reason is that beliefs guide behavior, which has evolutionary importance among human beings. But at a time when our behavior may well lead us to extinction, I see no reason to assume we have any awareness at all. We are stubborn, self-destructive conformists. Any other view of our species is just a self-congratulatory delusion.

  Michael Crichton

  Religious, Fighting, Animal

  Michael Crichton (1996). “The lost world”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The once rather old-fashioned science of paleontology finds itself in a maelstrom of excitement and controversy. Astrophysicists, atmospheric scientists, geochemists, geophysicists, and statisticians are all contributing to the extinction problem. And the general public is taking part through television talk shows, magazine cover stories, newspaper editorials, and even the occasional mention in gossip columns.

  David M. Raup

  Gossip, Television, Maelstrom

  7 Copy quote