Garrett Hardin Quotes

42 quotes in 663 categories

• 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…
• 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…
• Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily…
• What features of your daily life do you expect to be improved by a further increase in population?
• The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
• A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
• Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
• We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
• Never globalize a problem if it can possibly be dealt with locally.
• The rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another; and another…
• 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…
• Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
• Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
• In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
• You can never do merely one thing. The law applies to any action that changes something in a complex system. The point is that an…
• The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying…
• You cannot do only one thing.
• Why are ecologists and environmentalists so feared and hated? This is because in part what they have to say is new to the general public,…
• Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
• A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.

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