Quote

Value is a relative concept: the value of each action is determined by comparing it with other possible actions.

Garrett Hardin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Value
Possible
Comparing
Values
Relative
Action
Compare
Concept
Determined
Actions
Concepts

More quotes by Garrett Hardin

Image
Ecology is the overall science of which economics is a minor speciality.
Garrett Hardin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.
Garrett Hardin
Image
No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.
Garrett Hardin
Image
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
Image
We can't cure a shortage by increasing the supply.
Garrett Hardin
Image
The essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things.
Garrett Hardin
Image
Numeracy: 1. The art of putting numbers to things, that is, assigning amounts to variables in order that practical decisions may be reach. 2. That aspect of education (beyond mere literacy) which takes account of quantitative aspects of reality.
Garrett Hardin
Image
Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species
Garrett Hardin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The social arrangements that produce responsibility are arrangements that create coercion, of some sort.
Garrett Hardin
Image
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
Image
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.
Garrett Hardin
Image
Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
Garrett Hardin
Image
Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.
Garrett Hardin
Image
A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.
Garrett Hardin
Image
The optimum population is, then, less than the maximum.
Garrett Hardin
Image
The population problem has no technical solution it requires a fundamental extension in morality.
Garrett Hardin