Extinction Quotes

• In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  Humanity, Pushing, Busy

  Elizabeth Kolbert (2014). “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”, p.268, A&C Black

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• Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

  Carl Sagan

  Nature, Mass Extinction, Exception To The Rule

  Carl Sagan (2006). “The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God”, p.76, Penguin

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• In the 24 hours since this time yesterday, over 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed in our world. Fully 13 million tons of toxic chemicals have been released into our environment. Over 45,000 people have died from starvation, 38,000 of them children. And more than 130 plant and animal species have been driven to extinction by the actions of humans. And all this just since yesterday.

  Thom Hartmann

  Children, Animal, Our World

  "The Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight: Waking up to personal and global transformation". Book by Thom Hartmann, 1998.

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• The money to be made is clearly more important than the extinctions we cause, including our own.

  Guy R. McPherson

  Important, Causes, Made

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• We torture and kill two billion sentient living beings every week. 10,000 entire species are wiped out every year because of the actions of one, and we are now facing the sixth mass extinction in cosmological history. If any other organism did this, a biologist would consider them a virus.

  Philip Wollen

  Animal, Mass Extinction, Years

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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

  Special, Lineage, Conservation

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• Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.

  Ronald Reagan

  Freedom, People, Presidential

  Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan (2016). “The Last Best Hope: The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan”, p.7, Humanix Books

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• Our planet has not seen an extinction crisis as serious as the one in progress for 65 million years.

  David Suzuki

  Years, Environmental, Progress

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• In the landscape of extinction, precision is next to godliness.

  Samuel Beckett

  Landscape, Next, Precision

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• Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.

  Ronald Reagan

  Veterans Day, Freedom, Our Veterans

  Labor Day Address at Liberty State Park, delivered 1 September 1980, Jersey City, New Jersey

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• Life is a copiously branching bush, continually pruned by the grim reaper of extinction, not a ladder of predictable progress.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Life, Science, Progress

  Stephen Jay Gould (1990). “Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History”, p.35, W. W. Norton & Company

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• That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Change, Death, Dying

  "Tusculanarum Disputationum". Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero (Book I, Chapter 49), translated, 45 BC.

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• People forget the good that zoos do. If it weren't for zoos, we would have so many species that would be extinct today.

  Betty White

  Zoos, People, Would Be

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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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

  Civilization, Mass Extinction, Matter

  Derrick Jensen (2012). “The Derrick Jensen Reader: Writings on Environmental Revolution”, p.87, Seven Stories Press

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• Death is not extinction. Neither the soul nor the body is extinguished or put out of existence.

  Oliver Lodge

  Soul, Body, Existence

  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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• One animal or plant species may become extinct every hour. All species are doomed to extinction, but man through worldwide development/killing animals for food/profit/using toxic chemicals such as pesticides/industrial wastes, will accelerate the extinction of plants/animals and the result will be a more hostile environment for man.

  Erik P. Eckholm

  Men, Animal, Toxic

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• Since after extinction no one will be present to take responsibility, we have to take full responsibility now.

  Jonathan Schell

  Inspiring, Responsibility, Taking Responsibility

  Jonathan Schell (2000). “The Fate of the Earth: And, The Abolition”, Stanford University Press

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• The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

  Robert M. Hutchins

  Freedom, Patriotic, Democracies Have

  Great Books of the Western World vol. 1, ch. 10 (1952)

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• Of the four billion life forms which have existed on this planet, three billion, nine hundred and sixty million are now extinct. We don't know why. Some by wanton extinction, some through natural catastrophe, some destroyed by meteorites and asteroids. In the light of these mass extinctions it really does seem unreasonable to suppose that Homo sapiens should be exempt. Our species will have been one of the shortest-lived of all, a mere blink, you may say, in the eye of time.

  P. D. James

  Eye, Mass Extinction, Light

  P. D. James (2010). “The Children of Men”, p.24, Vintage

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• The extinctions ongoing worldwide promise to be at least as great as the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the age of dinosaurs.

  E. O. Wilson

  Mass Extinction, Promise, Age

  "Planet Of The Year: What on EARTH Are We Doing?" by Thomas A. Sancton, content.time.com. January 2, 1989.

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• In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

  David Mitchell

  Soul, Selfishness, Individual

  "Cloud Atlas". "The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing", p. 528. Book by David Mitchell, 2004.

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• Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. ... Everything science has taught me-and continues to teach me-strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. Nothing disappears without a trace.

  Wernher von Braun

  Inspirational, Death, Spiritual

  Wernher Von Braun (2007). “The Voice of Dr. Wernher Von Braun: An Anthology”, Collectors Guide Pub

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• Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Anger, Hatred, Feelings

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• He who refuses to learn deserves extinction.

  Hillel the Elder

  Learning, Refuse, Deserve

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• Evolution crawls to imperfection. It ends in extinction.

  Gregory Keyes

  Imperfection, Evolution, Ends

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