Elizabeth Kolbert Quotes

12 quotes in 304 categories

• People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the…
• It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now…
• It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all…
• In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it perches.
• Zalasiewicz is convinced that even a moderately competent stratigrapher will, at the distance of a hundred million years or so, be able to tell that…
• Somewhere in our DNA must lie the key mutation (or, more probably, mutations) that set us apart—the mutations that make us the sort of creature…
• Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it’s not clear that he ever…
• What's the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around…
• In a poll commissioned by Time and CNN, two-thirds of American parents said they think that their children are spoiled.
• Letting things slide is always the easiest thing to do, in parenting no less than in banking, public education, and environmental protection. A lack of…
• Parents want their kids’ approval, a reversal of the past ideal of children striving for their parents’ approval.
• It doesn’t much matter whether people care or don’t care. What matters is that people change the world.

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