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In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable
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
Action
World
Intolerable
Competitive
Limited
Total
Resources
Freedom
Individual
More quotes by Garrett Hardin
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
The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
Garrett Hardin
Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.
Garrett Hardin
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.
Garrett Hardin
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.
Garrett Hardin
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.
Garrett Hardin
In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
Garrett Hardin
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
Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity
Garrett Hardin
In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.
Garrett Hardin
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.
Garrett Hardin
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
Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.
Garrett Hardin
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
Incommensurables cannot be compared.
Garrett Hardin
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
Garrett Hardin
The greatest folly is to accept expert statements uncritically. At the very least, we should always seek another opinion.
Garrett Hardin
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.
Garrett Hardin
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
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