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The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.

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
Dramatic
Tragedy
Essence
Working
Things
Remorseless
Solemnity
Resides
Unhappiness

More quotes by Garrett Hardin

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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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?
Garrett Hardin
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The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
Garrett Hardin
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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
Garrett Hardin
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Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
Garrett Hardin
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To say that we mutually agree to coercion is not to say that we are required to enjoy it, or even to pretend we enjoy it.
Garrett Hardin
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(Technology reliability) x (Human reliability) = (System reliability)
Garrett Hardin
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Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
Garrett Hardin
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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
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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.
Garrett Hardin
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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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The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Garrett Hardin
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The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.
Garrett Hardin
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Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons.
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.
Garrett Hardin
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We see only what we have names for.
Garrett Hardin