Garrett Hardin Quotes - Page 2

In the specific case of abortion, the matter is particularly easy in that no woman wants a late abortion. Once abortion was made legal, the age of the aborted fetus went down. The slope slipped in the other direction. If we legalize RU-486 and other similar new drugs, the age will fall to one week or less and start approaching zero. The slippery slope will slide in the other direction. The only reason we have late abortions is because we make early abortion difficult.

An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.

The god who is reputed to have created fleas to keep dogs from moping over their situation must also have created fundamentalists to keep rationalists from getting flabby. Let us be duly thankful for out blessings.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.

Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.

Education can counteract the natural tendency to do the wrong thing, but the inexorable succession of generations requires that the basis for this knowledge be constantly refreshed.

The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.

Fundamentalists are panicked by the apparent disintegration of the family, the disappearance of certainty and the decay of morality. Fear leads them to ask, if we cannot trust the Bible, what can we trust?

The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

However, I think the major opposition to ecology has deeper roots than mere economics; ecology threatens widely held values so fundamental that they must be called religious.

(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)

The exquisite sight, sound, and smell of wilderness is many times more powerful if it is earned through physical achievement, if it comes at the end of a long and fatiguing trip for which vigorous good health is necessary. Practically speaking, this means that no one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.

We see only what we have names for.

People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed.

Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population?

Moreover, the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce; it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.