Population Quotes - Page 32

• It was a splendid population - for all the slow, sleepy, sluggish-brained sloths stayed at home - you never find that sort of people among pioneers - you cannot build pioneers out of that sort of material. It was that population that gave to California a name for getting up astounding enterprises and rushing them through with a magnificent dash and daring and a recklessness of cost or consequences, which she bears unto this day - and when she projects a new surprise the grave world smiles as usual and says, "Well, that is California all over.

  Mark Twain

  Home, Names, California

  Mark Twain (2017). “Mark Twain, the Globetrotter: Complete Travel Books, Memoirs & Anecdotes (Illustrated Edition): A Tramp Abroad, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, Old Times on the Mississippi, Life on the Mississippi, Following the Equator & Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion, With Author’s Biography”, p.999, e-artnow

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• He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he'd picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.

  Douglas Adams

  Moving, Two, Knowing

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.510, Pan Macmillan

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• A refugee population is hungry for language and aware that anything can happen.

  Anne Carson

  Language, Hungry, Anything Can Happen

  Anne Carson (1999). “Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse”, Vintage

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• Do we look like thrill-seekers? Wasn't it enough that we had to put up that sign reading NO HABLA ESPANOL and acknowledge the existence of thirty percent of the population, even in the negative?

  Christopher Moore

  Reading, Negative, Looks

  Christopher Moore (2009). “The Lust Lizard Of Melancholy Cove: Book 2: Pine Cove Series”, p.244, Hachette UK

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• A significant portion of the earth's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Spiritual, Choices, Humanity

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.27, Penguin

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• Begging your pardon, sir....One population can't make peace with another by force.

  Gregory Maguire

  Pardon, Force, Begging

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• A stereotype becomes a stereotype when a significant percentage of the population appears to conform to it.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Stereotype, Significant, Percentages

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• 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80 percent can be moved in either direction.

  Susan Sontag

  Matter, Moved, Percent

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• That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.

  Orson Scott Card

  Children, Night, Law

  Orson Scott Card (2013). “Ender's Game Boxed Set: Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow”, p.94, Macmillan

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• Every Valentine's Day, the student council sponsered a holiday fundraiser by selling roses that would be delievered in class. The roses came in four colors:white, yellow, red, pink, and the subtleties of thier meaning were parsed and analyzed by the female population to no end. Mimi had always understood it thus:white for love, yellow for friendship, red for passion, and pink for a secret crush.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Crush, Valentine, Passion

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• After a moment, Wrath turned to John. "This is Lassiter, the fallen angel. One of the last times he was here on earth, there was a plague in central Europe-" "Okay, that was so not my fault-" "-which wiped out two-thirds of the human population." "I'd like to remind you that you don't like humans." "They smell bad when they're dead." "All you mortal types do.

  J.R. Ward

  Angel, Wrath, Europe

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• It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.

  Hilaire Belloc

  Suggestions, Dull, Urban

  Hilaire Belloc (2002). “An Essay on the Restoration of Property”, p.35, IHS Press

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• One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Night, Cities, Pyramids

  J. M. Coetzee (1980). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, Penguin Group USA

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• ... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.

  Bernard Beckett

  Fear, Vantage Point, Clear

  "Genesis". Book by Bernard Beckett, www.npr.org. 2010.

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• For half of the world's population, roughly three billion people around the world living on less than two dollars a day, an election is at best a means, not an end; a starting point, not deliverance. These people are looking less for an "electocracy" than for the basic elements that for most of us define a decent life--food, shelter, electricity, basic health care, education for their children, and the ability to make their way through life without having to endure corruption, violence, or arbitrary power.

  Barack Obama

  Children, Mean, Two

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.317, Canongate Books

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• I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers.

  Muriel Barbery

  Numbers, World, Calm

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• Well now," the scholar went on, "I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who could use a tan, so you needn't grant my opinion any authority, but I consider the queendom lucky that a handful of Milliners and their children lived incognito among the population during Redd's tyranny.

  Frank Beddor

  Children, Lucky, Use

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• The Population Reference Bureau predicts that the world's total population will double to 7,000,000,000 before the year 2000. I suppose they will all want dignity, I said.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Years, Slaughterhouse Five, World

  KURT VONNEGUT, JR (1969). “SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE”

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• Where would David Copperfield be if Dickens had gone to writing classes? Probably about seventy minor characters short, is where. (Did you know that Dickens is estimated to have invented thirteen thousand characters? Thirteen thousand! The population of a small town!)

  Nick Hornby

  Writing, Character, Class

  Nick Hornby (2004). “The Polysyllabic Spree”, McSweeneys Books

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• Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.

  Tom Robbins

  Halloween, Giving, Scary

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.418, Bantam

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• Imagine the earth’s population of six billion people reduced to just one hundred representatives. Statistically, that makes 30 white, 70 non-white. It means 6 people own 59% of the wealth and they all live in North America. 80 are in substandard housing. One has an education. One owns a computer. Don’t blame me if it all sounds crazy.

  Grant Morrison

  Crazy, Mean, White

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• The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Writing, Heart, World

  P.J. O'Rourke (2009). “On The Wealth of Nations: A Book that Shook the World”, p.85, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• The Three Theorems of Psychohistorical Quantitivity: The population under scrutiny is oblivious to the existence of the science of Psychohistory. The time periods dealt with are in the region of 3 generations. The population must be in the billions (±75 billions) for a statistical probability to have a psychohistorical validity.

  Isaac Asimov

  Three, Generations, Periods

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• The optimum population is modeled on the iceberg- eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.

  Aldous Huxley

  Brave New World, Eight, Water

  Peter Edgerly Firchow, Aldous Huxley (1984). “The end of Utopia: a study of Aldous Huxley's Brave new world”, Bucknell Univ Pr

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• If they would rather die, . . . they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

  Charles Dickens

  Scrooge, Christmas Carol, Decrease

  Charles Dickens (1858). “A Christmas Carol”, p.9

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