Population Quotes - Page 6

• In the future, will our technologies help stabilise or planet and population, leading to a very long lifetime for us? Or will we destroy our world and its inhabitants, after only a brief appearance on the cosmic stage?

  Jill Tarter

  Technology, Our World, Long

  7 Copy quote

• The paid wealth which hundreds in the community acquire in trade, or by the incessant expansions of our population and arts, enchants the eyes of all the rest; the luck of one is the hope of thousands, and the bribe acts like the neighborhood of a gold mine to impoverish the farm, the school, the church, the house, and the very body and feature of man.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, School, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• On the other side, the conservative party, composed of the most moderate, able, and cultivated part of the population, is timid, and merely defensive of property. It vindicates no right, it aspires to no real good, it brands no crime, it proposes no generous policy, it does not build, nor write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor establish schools, nor encourage science, nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Real, Writing

  Essays, Second Series "Politics" (1844)

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• No circumstance would prevent over-population so effectually as a general raising of the customary standard of comfort among the poorer classes. If they had accustomed themselves to a more comfortable style of living, they would use every effort not again to sink below it.

  Millicent Fawcett

  Class, Effort, Growth

  26 Copy quote

• Historically the opposition to abortion and birth control ... stemmed from the urgency of the need to decrease the mortality and morbidity rates and to increase the population ... in the matter of abortion the human rights of the mother with her family must take precedence over the survival of a few weeks' old foetus without sense or sensibility.

  Edith Summerskill, Baroness Summerskill

  Mother, Rights, Abortion

  4 Copy quote

• Machines have no political opinions, but they have profound political effects. They demand a strict regimentation of time, and, by abolishing the need for manual skill, have transformed the majority of the population from workers into laborers. There are, that is to say, fewer and fewer jobs which a man can find a pride and satisfaction in doing well, more and more which have no interest in themselves and can be valued only for the money they provide.

  W. H. Auden

  Jobs, Pride, Men

  "Forewords and Afterwords" by W. H. Auden, ("A Russian Aesthete"), (p. 279), 1973.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• While ants exist in just the right numbers for the rest of the living world, humans have become too numerous. If we were to vanish today, the land environment would return to the fertile balance that existed before the human population explosion. Only a dozen or so species, among which are the crab louse and a mite that lives in the oil glands of our foreheads, depend on us entirely. But if ants were to disappear, tens of thousands of other plants and animal species would perish also, simplifying and weakening land ecosystems almost everywhere.

  E. O. Wilson

  Animal, Land, Ecosystems

  11 Copy quote

• The State insists that, by thus quarantining the general reading public against books not too rugged for grown men and women in order to shield juvenile innocence, it is exercising its power to promote the general welfare. Surely this is to burn the house to roast the pig...The incidence of this enactment is to reduce the adult population of Michigan to reading only what is fit for children.

  Felix Frankfurter

  Children, Book, Reading

  12 Copy quote

• The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Animal, Progress, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.297

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Occupying armies have responsibilities, not rights. Their primary responsibility is to withdraw as quickly and expeditiously as possible, in a manner determined by the occupied population.

  Noam Chomsky

  Responsibility, Army, Rights

  "How can America get out of Iraq?" by Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Schell, Howard Zinn and William Polk, www.theguardian.com. May 14, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• One must take draconian measures of demographic reduction against the will of the populations. Reducing the birth rate has proved to be impossible or insufficient. One must therefore increase the mortality rate. How? By natural means. Famine and sickness

  Robert McNamara

  Mean, Birth Rate, Impossible

  46 Copy quote

• The ratio between supervisory and producing personnel is always highest where the intellectuals are in power. In a Communist country it takes half the population to supervise the other half.

  Eric Hoffer

  Country, Half, Ratios

  "The Temper of Our Time". Book by Eric Hoffer, 1967.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world of men show like a comedy without laughter: populations, interests, government, history; 't is all toy figures in a toyhouse.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Laughter, Men, World

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.328

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Many of the lower middle class are members of labor unions, churches, bowling clubs, fraternal, service, and nationality organizations. They are organizations and people that must be worked
  with as one would work with any other part of our populations - with respect, understanding, and sympathy.

  Saul Alinsky

  Class, Organization, People

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.189, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Numbered among our population are some 12,000,000 colored people. Under our Constitution their rights are just as sacred as those of any other citizen. It is both a public and a private duty to protect those rights. The Congress ought to exercise all its powers of prevention and punishment against the hideous crime of lynching, of which the negroes are by no means the sole sufferers, but for which they furnish a majority of the victims.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Mean, Exercise, Rights

  "First State of the Union Address" by Calvin Coolidge, 1923.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The good news about fresh water is that, even after accounting for the larger volume of water that is unavailable to people from the hydrologic cycle, there is enough on a global scale to support current and anticipated populations on a sustainable basis... Three essential goals are dependable and safe supplies for people, protection and management of the environmental systems through which water moves, and efficient water use. Meeting these goals will require that fresh water not continue to be treated as a free good or as the principal means for disposing of human and industrial wastes.

  Gilbert F. White

  Moving, Mean, Water

  7 Copy quote

• Although population and consumption are societal issues, technology is the business of business. If economic activity must increase tenfold over what it is today to support a population nearly double its current size, then technology will have to reduce its impact twenty-fold merely to keep the planet at its current levels of environmental impact. For example, to stabilize the climate we may have to reduce real carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, while simultaneously growing the world economy by an order of magnitude.

  Stuart L. Hart

  Real, Technology, Order

  Stuart L. Hart (2010). “Capitalism at the Crossroads: Next Generation Business Strategies for a Post-Crisis World”, p.52, FT Press

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is much easier to make intellectual messes than it is to clarify complicated issues, especially when real solutions would challenge the status quo and require much careful thought across many fields of knowledge. Problems of climatic change, biotic impoverishment, population growth, and the choices to be made by various technologies and the transition to a sustainable and decent society with an economy that works over the long-term are difficult, complex, and intertwined problems with many possible answers.

  David W. Orr

  Real, Technology, Issues

  David W. Orr (2012). “The Last Refuge: Patriotism, Politics, and the Environment in an Age of Terror”, p.53, Island Press

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The gains made by better management and technology are still being outpaced by the environmental impacts of population and economic growth. We are on an unsustainable course.

  Klaus Topfer

  Technology, Impact, Growth

  9 Copy quote

• Every time we share something rather than own it ourselves, we reduce the stress on the planet. That could make the critical difference as the global population continues to grow.

  Lisa Gansky

  Stress, Differences, Share

  "Welcome To The World Wide Mesh: Where Access Trumps Ownership" by Lisa Gansky, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 7, 2010.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Heartless though it may seem to some, among the least harmful things to eat are sustainably culled wild animals. In the absence of natural predators, deer populations in parts of Britain have reached such dense numbers that the woodlands they browse fail to regenerate.

  Tristram Stuart

  Animal, Numbers, Heartless

  "Happy Hunting" by Tristram Stuart, www.theguardian.com. October 20, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Medicine is still all about treating populations, not people - one-size-fits all treatments and diagnoses.

  Eric Topol

  Medicine, People, Diagnosis

  6 Copy quote

• The composition of our society has been changing. We [world] are becoming a more urban population. Mega-cities, those with more than 10 million residents, are booming.

  Hari Sreenivasan

  Cities, World, Our Society

  4 Copy quote

• Historically, there would always be people among the general population who had family members, friends, cousins who'd done time or who'd been in prison.

  Hank Azaria

  Cousin, People, Done

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We're at a great transition point in terms of population, demographics, and what it means to be a human being.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Mean, Transition, Demographics

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  12 Copy quote

  Show source