Extinction Quotes - Page 11

• How could being the entire cosmos and all of its wonder and all of its stages and cycles, and yet being that which is beyond them all, the invisible, be extinction? Extinction? The extinction of what, of whom? How can that which has never been be extinguished?

  Frederick Lenz

  Buddhism, Suffering, Enlightenment

  4 Copy quote

• All this I bear, for, what I seek, I know: Peace, peace is what I seek, and public calm: Endless extinction of unhappy hates.

  Matthew Arnold

  Peace, Hate, Unhappy

  Matthew Arnold (2013). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold (Illustrated)”, p.325, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

• 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

  Death, Book, Deeper

  17 Copy quote

• It is essential to release humanity from the false fixations of yesterday which seem now to bind it to a rationale of action leading only to extinction.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Inspirational, Yesterday, Humanity

  R. Buckminster Fuller “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

  40 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.

  70 Copy quote

  Show source

• To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Mean, Men

  John Ruskin (1935). “Modern Painters”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
  I speak, by the way, not with any sense of futility, but with a panicky conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of existence which could easily be misinterpreted as pessimism. It is not. It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man.

  Woody Allen

  Men, Healthy, Despair

  Side Effects "My Speech to the Graduates" (1980)

  4 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

• 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

• America faces a fundamental choice: either the blessings of liberty or the servitude of liberalism. In the political struggle for survival, one or the other is headed for extinction.

  Nancy Pearcey

  Struggle, Blessing, America

  10 Copy quote

• Just one Bush justice on the court means left-wingers might have to start actually winning votes for their wacky ideas; a prescription for liberal extinction.

  Jay Severin

  Mean, Winning, Ideas

  6 Copy quote

• Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh.

  Barbara Block

  Sharks, People, Flesh

  "Barbara Block: Use apps to save the great white shark". Interview with Robin McKie, www.theguardian.com. November 17, 2012.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Quite clearly, our task is predominantly metaphysical, for it is how to get all of humanity to educate itself swiftly enough to generate spontaneous social behaviors that will avoid extinction.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Humanity, Tasks, Social Behavior

  R. Buckminster Fuller “Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking”, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

  6 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

• Like most of my poems, 'Lie' has several sources: I read a very troubling book called The Sixth Extinction. I took note of the way people, including me, enjoy talking knowledgeably about how the world will end. I drove to Tucson and saw the desert flowering on either side of the road. And I glanced at my spam to see what people wanted to sell me these days.

  Rae Armantrout

  Lying, Book, Talking

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Dark, Owl, Doe

  Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt (1968). “Illuminations”, Schocken Books Incorporated

  7 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

• There's no question that the gay movement would not be as far along as it is without AIDS. But how can there be any other issue in the face of death, possible extinction?

  Larry Kramer

  Gay, Issues, Movement

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Rights, Environment, Ifs

  36 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

• Cheetah genes cooperate with cheetah genes but not with camel genes, and vice versa. This is not because cheetah genes, even in the most poetic sense, see any virtue in the preservation of the cheetah species. They are not working to save the cheetah from extinction like some molecular World Wildlife Fund.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Wildlife, Vices

  38 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

• 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