quotes about Extinction
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EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.
-- Ambrose Bierce -
I accept extinction as best explaining disjoined species. I see that the same cause must have reduced many species of great range to small, and that it may have reduced large genera to so small, and of families.
-- Asa Gray -
Extinction catches Man by surprise because no one can even imagine that such a catastrophe can happen to an intelligent species.
-- Bill Gaede -
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It is peoples' fantasies of what is true that is so extraordinary. That that we were born and that we face eternal extinction after death is an extraordinary fantasy.
-- Brian Perkins -
Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.
-- Carl Sagan -
The buffaloes are gone. And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
-- Carl Sandburg -
When it comes to impending, unavoidable extinction, ignorance is bliss.
-- Darren Shan -
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One in eight plant species face extinction.
-- David Attenborough -
We advocate biodiversity for biodiversity's sake. It may take our extinction to set things straight.
-- David Foreman -
In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.
-- David MitchellSource : "Cloud Atlas". "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", p. 528. Book by David Mitchell, 2004.
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No matter what we call it, poison is still poison, death is still death, and industrial civilization is still causing the greatest mass extinction in the history of the planet.
-- Derrick Jensen -
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The extinction of the human race will come from its inability to EMOTIONALLY comprehend the exponential function.
-- Edward Teller -
In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.
-- Elizabeth KolbertSource : Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.268, A&C Black
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What man really fears is not so much extinction, but extinction with insignificance.
-- Ernest BeckerSource : Ernest Becker (1985). “Escape from Evil”, Free Press
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Most evolving lineages, human or otherwise, when threatened with extinction, don't do anything special to avoid it.
-- George C. Williams -
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We are in the midst of the 6th largest extinction event in the history of the plant and the first caused by human action.
-- Graciela Chichilnisky -
He who refuses to learn deserves extinction.
-- Hillel the Elder -
There is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation.
-- Homer HulbertSource : Homer Bezaleel Hulbert (1906). “The Passing of Korea”
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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 -
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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 -
A widespread taste for ***** means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.
-- J. G. Ballard -
If we do not save the environment, then whatever we do in civil rights will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction.
-- James L. Farmer, Jr. -
Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.
-- Jasper FfordeSource : Jasper Fforde (2012). “The Last Dragonslayer”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction. This is serious. This may be the ultimate final exam.
-- Joel Garreau -
There are plenty of problems in the world, many of them interconnected. But there is no problem which compares with this central, universal problem of saving the human race from extinction
-- John Foster Dulles -
I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction.
-- John Keegan -
Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now.
-- Jonathan SchellSource : Jonathan Schell (2000). “The Fate of the Earth: And, The Abolition”, Stanford University Press
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There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.
-- Karen Russell -
One can live with the thought of one's own death. It is the thought of the death of the words and books that is terrifying for that is the deeper extinction.
-- Lance Morrow -
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 -
I'm quite mad by nature, and it's my craziness that has saved me from extinction.
-- Marco Pantani -
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That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
If we are to save humanity and the planet from the worst mass extinction of all time, worse even than that at the end of the Permian, we must stop at two degrees.
-- Mark Lynas -
[On women:] We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least - call it a mechanospiritual sense - we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us.
-- Natalie AngierSource : Natalie Angier (1999). “Woman: An Intimate Geography”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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America has faced much more difficult times, including potential national extinction, without flinching.
-- Nick Clooney -
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Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.
-- Oliver LodgeSource : Sir Oliver Lodge, Raymond Lodge (Spirit) (1916). “Raymond Revised: A New Abbreviated Edition of "Raymond Or Life and Death" with an Additional Chapter”
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We human beings are not only the beneficiaries but also the stewards of other creatures. Thanks to our bodies, God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement. Let us not leave in our wake a swatch of destruction and death which will affect our own lives and those of future generations.
-- Pope Francis -
We have decisively changed the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, and the rate of extinction.
-- Rob Nixon -
What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?
-- Robert Pyle -
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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 -
The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
-- Samuel Adams -
Liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.
-- Samuel Adams -
It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.
-- Steven WeinbergSource : The First Three Minutes epilogue (1977)
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Humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years. [With de-extinction,] we have the ability now, and maybe the moral obligation, to repair some of the damage.
-- Stewart Brand -
A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.
-- Thomas Hardy -
The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.
-- Vernor Vinge -
As Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehend.
-- Walter Benjamin -
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We have no problem with the extinction of domestic animals.
-- Wayne Pacelle -
The money to be made is clearly more important than the extinctions we cause, including our own.
-- Guy R. McPherson -
The technical definition of the Holocene has to do with the extinction of a snail species in Sicily.
-- Kenneth LacovaraSource : "What's The Anthropocene?". "TED Radio Hour" with Guy Raz, www.npr.org. September 30, 2016.
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If we somehow put a value on species extinction and factor that into our costs that bottom line would look very different. IF we put any resource depletion into costs our bottom line would change. So what we have is a dishonest market that does not take into account all the costs when it establishes its prices. We need an honest marketplace before we can let the market work for sustainability rather than against it as it works today.
-- Ray Anderson -
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Wilberforce did not believe in either evolution or extinction. Owen believed in extinction but not evolution. Lamarck believed in evolution but not extinction. Darwin believed in evolution and extinction. All four of them believed in God.
-- Sara Maitland -
Evolution crawls to imperfection. It ends in extinction.
-- Gregory Keyes -
The alternative to extinction is stagnation, and stagnation is seldom a good thing.
-- Ian Tattersall -
On an overcrowded planet where more species slip toward extinction every day, should one species have the right to multiply and consume at will, even as it nudges others to oblivion?
-- Thomas French -
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Its haunting to realize that half of the languages of the world are teetering on the brink of extinction.
-- Wade Davis