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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.

Garrett Hardin

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Garrett Hardin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1915
Born: April 21
Died: 2003
Died: September 14
Biologist
Demographer
Ecologist
Statistician
University Teacher
Dallas
Texas
Garrett James Hardin
Garrett J. Hardin
Atheism
Fundamentalists
Created
Fleas
Situation
Thankful
Getting
Blessings
Rationalists
Religion
Dogs
Moping
Keep
Atheist
Reputed
Also
Dog
Flabby
Must
Blessing
Duly

More quotes by Garrett Hardin

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In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
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But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
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Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
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A finite world can support only a finite population therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.
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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 action taken to alleviate a problem will trigger several effects, some of which may offset or even negate the one intended.
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Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.
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But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.
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Incommensurables cannot be compared.
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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
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Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
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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?
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Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
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We see only what we have names for.
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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, and the new is always alarming.
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A technical solution may be defined as one that requires a change only in the techniques of the natural sciences, demanding little or nothing in the way of change in human values or ideas of morality.
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The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
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Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Garrett Hardin