Extinction Quotes - Page 10

• Reason's biological function is to preserve and promote life and to postpone its extinction as long as possible. Thinking and acting are not contrary to nature; they are, rather, the foremost features of man's nature. The most appropriate description of man as differentiated from nonhuman beings is: a being purposively struggling against the forces adverse to his life.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Struggle, Men, Thinking

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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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

  Friendship, Mean, Path

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• In the beginning, there were bacteria.... [A] nearly universal assumption is that all subsequent life descended from the original life form through a continuous chain of ancestor-descendant pairs. This assumption looks good because all living organisms share biochemical traits. It is conceivable, of course, that life originated more than once on the early earth but that all except one life form died out early, leaving a single lineage as the ancestor of life as we know it. If this did happen, it was the first important species extinction.

  David M. Raup

  Leaving, Important, Earth

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• 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

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• After all, if you have the majority of customers, then what you do becomes the standard. Your competitors have little choice but to follow. If you are the leader, then having a nonstandard infrastructure is a bad idea. Ultimately, it leads to extinction.

  Douglas Gwyn

  Ideas, Choices, Leader

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• 'Extinction' issue. Save the species for whom??? Humans' convenience, of course! Individuals of the species are snatched from their homes/family/habitat/held in captivity/forced to mate at great physical/ spiritual pain. When the right numbers are reached, their holocaust starts all over again! Another merry-go-round/ bu$ine$$ a$ u$ual!!! Protectionists/welfarists find it a profitable issue: no controversy/ easy donations! I'd rather see an entire species extinct than in the hands of the humans!

  Adela Popescu

  Spiritual, Pain, Home

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• 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.

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• The biggest bursts of speciation that we know about in the history of the earth are soon after great cataclysms, like the extinction of the dinosaurs, which create new opportunities, and all sorts of new forms spring up... So, quite often, the reasons for creativity depend on accidents or disasters that prevent the normal habits being carried out.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Spring, Creativity, Opportunity

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• For all the sublimity of art, physics, music, mathematics, and other manifestations of human genius, everything depends on the mundane, frustrating, often debased vocation known as politics (and its most exacting subspecialty - statecraft). Because if we don't get politics right, everything else risks extinction.

  Charles Krauthammer

  Art, Risk, Genius

  "Are We Alone in the Universe?". jewishworldreview.com. December 30, 2011.

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• In view of the fading animals the proliferation of sewers and fears the sea clogging, the air nearing extinction we should be kind, we should take warning, we should forgive each other Instead we are opposite, we touch as though attacking, the gifts we bring even in good faith maybe warp in our hands to implements, to manoeuvres

  Margaret Atwood

  Animal, Air, Views

  Margaret Atwood (1987). “Selected Poems: 1965-1975”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The human heart is not yet so corroded that it can read off the extinction of these two men without a shock to the very roots of its belief in justice and humanity.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Heart, Men, Two

  The Nation, August 31, 1927.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Darren Shan

  Ignorance, Bliss, Ignorance Is Bliss

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• 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

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• One of the most jolting days of adulthood comes the first time you run out of toilet paper. Toilet paper, up until this point, always just existed. And now it's a finite resource, constantly in danger of extinction, that must be carefully tracked and monitored, like pandas?

  Kelly Williams Brown

  Running, Pandas, Paper

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• 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.

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• If global extinction is to be avoided, woman must unite and come to terms with their destiny.

  Frederick Lenz

  Women, Destiny, Enlightenment

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