Quotes About Extinction

#1. Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun.

Brian Swimme

#2. Had she allowed the flame to burn so low it was now in danger of complete extinction?

Paul Russell

#3. Every day on this planet some species that doesn't draw the attention of humans goes extinct.

Liu Cixin

#4. I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis ... This time it's us that's doing it.

Frans Lanting

#5. Equilibrium is the state of death, only chaos produces life
The Ancient Greeks have been driven to extinction by too much search for architectural harmony.

Stephane Lupasco

#6. A widespread taste for pornography means that nature is alerting us to some threat of extinction.

J.G. Ballard

#7. Dr. Albert Frock: Well, how goes the gradual extinction of the human race, Lieutenant?
Lt. Vincent D'Agosta: I'm doing what I can to keep it orderly.

Douglas Preston

#8. Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched.

Paul R. Ehrlich

#9. Although humankind inherently "desires to know", if open access to, and unlimited development of, knowledge henceforth puts us all in clear danger of extinction, then common sense demands that we re-examine our reverence for knowledge.

Bill Joy

#10. Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.

Marshall McLuhan

#11. I gradually realized that I was seeing another example of creative ebb, another step by another art on the road that may indeed end in extinction.

Stephen King

#12. America faces a fundamental choice: either the blessings of liberty or the servitude of liberalism. In the political struggle for survival, one or the other is headed for extinction.

Nancy Pearcey

#13. The last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
[Lat., Supremus ille dies non nostri extinctionem sed commutationem affert loci.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#14. The principles of my works ... are the extinction of expression, permanent covering and contemplative tranquillity ... My ideal is the completely dark picture, full of some overwhelming silence.

Arnulf Rainer

#15. We live in a time where we have more extinction happening on our planet than since the dinosaurs were wiped out 50 million years ago.

Jeff Corwin

#16. If enough species are extinguished, will the ecosystems collapse, and will the extinction of most other species follow soon afterward? The only answer anyone can give is: possibly. By the time we find out, however, it might be too late. One planet, one experiment.

E. O. Wilson

#17. All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?

Bertrand Russell

#18. Each day, a new crisis, a new massacre, a new threat of extinction, disease, internecine conflict, meteorological catastrophe... Behold man. Violent, self-serving and ruthless when in power; exploited, miserable and diseased when not.

Meg Rosoff

#19. Land bridges were everywhere during the extinction, many species were spreading, and there were many diseases.

Robert T. Bakker

#20. One can live with the thought of one's own death. It is the thought of the death of the words and books that is terrifying for that is the deeper extinction.

Lance Morrow

#21. Not for the first time Richard reflected that this age's vaunted 'communications industry' had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.

Fritz Leiber

#22. The money to be made is clearly more important than the extinctions we cause, including our own.

Guy R. McPherson

#23. The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.

Lester B. Pearson

#24. Extinction is the beginning of the path: it is traveling to God Most High. Guidance comes afterwards. What I mean by guidance is the guidance of God, as described by the Friend of God, Abraham: "Lo! I am going unto my Lord Who will guide me."

Ibn Ata Allah

#25. All autumn, the chafe and jar
of nuclear war;
we have talked our extinction to death.
I swim like a minnow
behind my studio window.

Robert Lowell

#26. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself.

Yuval Noah Harari

#27. Think about it this way: if you are too predictable in any area of your life, you may be paving the way to your own extinction!

T.D. Jakes

#28. We who revel in nature's diversity and feel instructed by every animal tend to brand Homo sapiens as the greatest catastrophe since the Cretaceous extinction.

Stephen Jay Gould

#29. We'll lose more species of plants and animals between 2000 and 2065 than we've lost in the last 65 million years. If we don't find answers to these problems, we're gonna be victims of this extinction event that we're at fault for.

Paul Watson

#30. Everywhere in science the talk is of winners, patents, pressures, money, no money, the rat race, the lot; things that are so completely alien ... that I no longer know whether I can be classified as a modern scientist or as an example of a beast on the way to extinction.

June Goodfield

#31. Transcendence is the only real alternative to extinction. This is serious. This may be the ultimate final exam.

Joel Garreau

#32. For the complete extinction of the state, complete Communism is necessary.

Vladimir Lenin

#33. Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it.

Peter Thiel

#34. Our people still need support. Support us through writing your government officials. We are still on the verge of extinction, with continued injustices brought against us.

Leonard Peltier

#35. Leaders who ignore change risk extinction.

Pat Williams

#36. Why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of the species but so few concerned about the extinction of the species?

Brian D. McLaren

#37. Corporate America is a 20th-century dinosaur, trembling on the edge of extinction, and the only way for you to have a genuinely secure future is for you to take control of that future.

Robert Kiyosaki

#38. Man steps on an ant when he can't catch the fly.

Bill Gaede

#39. There are so many issues in our oceans - like the near extinction of blue fin tuna - that should be taken more seriously worldwide.

Heston Blumenthal

#40. Shelters, conservationists, those concerned about unnecessary cruelty toward the animals we eat, and people working against species extinction fight to preserve the true riches of our planet, our real inheritance. These are big, critical goals.

April Gornik

#41. There's a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilisation, that's out there exploring the stars ... compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.

Elon Musk

#42. With our evolved busy hands and our evolved busy brains, in an extraordinarily short period of time we've managed to alter the earth with such geologic-forcing effects that we ourselves are forces of nature. Climate change, ocean acidification, the sixth mass extinction of species.

Kate Bernheimer

#43. And there was shame in being human: the shame of knowing that twenty of the roughly thirty-five classified species of sea horse worldwide are threatened with extinction because they are killed "unintentionally" in seafood production.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#44. Fulfil the needs of the soul, which travels beyond the death and which will survive the extinction of the world.

Girdhar Joshi

#45. Extinction is not an event, it is a chain reaction!

Vadhan

#46. If I were thinking clearly, Leonard, I would tell you that I wrestle alone in the dark, in the deep dark. And that only I can know, only I can understand my own condition. You live with the threat, you tell me you live with the threat of my extinction. Leonard, I live with it too.

Michael Cunningham

#47. The public image of dinosaurs is tainted by extinction. It's hard to accept dinosaurs as a success when they are all dead. But the fact of ultimate extinction should not make us overlook the absolutely unsurpassed role dinosaurs played in the history of life.

Robert T. Bakker

#48. For those of us who have come to believe that unless we are thinking we are wasting time, it may be challenging to simply linger with a beautiful sunset, an exquisite painting, or an arresting piece of music. The intellect often reacts to the seductions of beauty by attempting to recapture us.

Carolyn Baker

#49. If global extinction is to be avoided, woman must unite and come to terms with their destiny.

Frederick Lenz

#50. For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance of Englishmen.

Mahatma Gandhi

#51. It is a fact that the ecological devastation of the planet can be traced to the consumption of meat and dairy, which contributes to water, soil, and air pollution as well as global warming and the mass extinction of many species of plant and animal forms.

Sharon Gannon

#52. We have no ethical obligation to preserve the different breeds of livestock produced through selective breeding One generation and out. We have no problems with the extinction of domestic animals. They are creations of human selective breeding.

Wayne Pacelle

#53. In an individual, selfishness uglifies the soul; for the human species, selfishness is extinction.

David Mitchell

#54. Gone is what happens when people stop asking, when all research has ceased, when no one contributes to the archives of a life or its extinction.

Ellen Miller

#55. Peace is the ultimate weapon of mankind to save the future generations from extinction!

Avijeet Das

#56. Protecting eagles from the threat of extinction is a conservation success story that we must prudently safeguard for future generations to come.

Frances Beinecke

#57. Is this how it is for a species that senses it is going extinct? Is there a feeling of loneliness, or unease, each morning, upon awakening?

Rick Bass

#58. Our planet has not seen an extinction crisis as serious as the one in progress for 65 million years.

David Suzuki

#59. The current extinction has its own novel cause: not an asteroid or a massive volcanic eruption but one weedy species.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#60. Today, amphibians enjoy the dubious distinction of being the world's most endangered class of animals; it's been calculated that the group's extinction rate could be as much as forty-five thousand times higher than the background rate.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#61. A great brain and a huge organization have been turned
to the extinction of one man. It is crushing the nut with the
triphammer
an absurd extravagance of energy
but the nut is very
effectually crushed all the same.

Arthur Conan Doyle

#62. The fear of extinction will probably bring us together, not 'love' or feeling of brotherhood.

U.G. Krishnamurti

#63. No matter where you live, you have the memory of something you used to eat that is no longer a part of your diet - something your grandmother used to make, something a small shop used to carry. Something we have lost. This extinction is a process; it happens one meal at a time.

Preeti Simran Sethi

#64. I've accepted the fact that there's a beginning and end to everything. All species are born, evolve, and then die off. We're going through the 6th great extinction and the large mammals are going first and, you know what - we're large mammals!

Yvon Chouinard

#65. And that is what Mauritius is most famous for: the extinction of the dodo.

Douglas Adams

#66. The addition of certain chemicals to the atmosphere will destroy wavelengths of light and it may only be a matter of time before one of these wavelengths of light that is critical for human survival is eliminated. This is called: The Extinction Wavelength

Steven Magee

#67. Wilberforce did not believe in either evolution or extinction.
Owen believed in extinction but not evolution.
Lamarck believed in evolution but not extinction.
Darwin believed in evolution and extinction.
All four of them believed in God.

Sara Maitland

#68. The damage that climate change is causing and that will get worse if we fail to act goes beyond the hundreds of thousands of lives, homes and businesses lost, ecosystems destroyed, species driven to extinction, infrastructure smashed and people inconvenienced.

David Suzuki

#69. Science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilisation drives itself to extinction.

David Mitchell

#70. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.

Steven Weinberg

#71. An established company which, in an age demanding innovation, is not able to innovation, is doomed to decline and extinction.

Peter Drucker

#72. EXTINCTION, n. The raw material out of which theology created the future state.

Ambrose Bierce

#73. I did say, at Chicago, in my speech there, that I do wish to see the spread of slavery arrested and to see it placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction.

Abraham Lincoln

#74. My enlightenment comes from the lucid awareness of my extinction not the dream of my eternal ego.

Christopher Zzenn Loren

#75. Given the incredible power of these new technologies, shouldn't we be asking how we can best coexist with them? And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?

Bill Joy

#76. The extinction of race consciousness as between Muslims is one of the outstanding achievements of Islam, and in the contemporary world there is, as it happens, a crying need for the propagation of this Islamic virtue.

Arnold J. Toynbee

#77. Thou art My light and My light shall never be extinguished; why dost thou dread extinction? Thou art My glory and My glory shall fadeth not; thou art My robe and My robe shall never be outworn.

Baha'u'llah

#78. Genocide, the physical extinction of a people, is universally condemned, but ethnocide, the destruction of people's way of life, is not only not condemned, it's universally celebrated as part of a development strategy.

Wade Davis

#79. When all the trees have been cut down and all the animals have been hunted to extinction, when all the waters are polluted and the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#80. The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.

Thomas Huxley

#81. Nevertheless so profound is our ignorance, and so high our presumption, that we marvel when we hear of the extinction of an organic being; and as we do not see the cause, we invoke cataclysms to desolate the world, or invent laws on the duration of the forms of life!

Charles Darwin

#82. That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#83. Doctors, dressed up in one professional costume or another, have been in busy practice since the earliest records of every culture on earth. It is hard to think of a more dependable or enduring occupation, harder still to imagine any future events leading to its extinction.

Lewis Thomas

#84. When flash of hope scans through your dreams. When news of goodness skims the surface of your expectations and bravery abates, break not, keep pressing less the dreams of your fingers suffer extinction.

Darmie Orem

#85. Technology brings mankind closer to divinity or extinction.

Toba Beta

#86. The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility.

Vernor Vinge

#87. To return to nature is to embrace extinction.

Mark X.

#88. My isolation is not a search for happiness, which I do not have the heart to win, nor for peace, which one finds only when it will never more be lost; what I seek is sleep, extinction, a small surrender.

Fernando Pessoa

#89. If we don't cut carbon's money pipeline, we will pay for their gasoline with floods, droughts, fires, super storms, drowned cities, mass extinctions, wars, and collapsing civilizations.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

#90. Experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

Iain Banks

#91. The State of liberated Being can be reached only by "dying"; but (this) dying does not consist in destruction of the body; one should understand that true death is the extinction of the ideas "I" and "mine."

Ramana Maharshi

#92. Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.

Jasper Fforde

#93. We're like . . . like dinosaurs bedazzled by all the pretty lights in the sky, too fucking stupid to realise it's a comet getting closer and closer.

Philip Ridley

#94. But the earth turns, and old ways are reexamined. The insurance companies say there are so many deer, so many wrecks. They have algorithms on their side. Kill more deer. Let all the predators live.

Matthew Neill Null

#95. To follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction.

John Ruskin

#96. Would you kill half the population today in order to save our species from extinction?

Dan Brown

#97. There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

Karen Russell

#98. His interest, after all, was not in the origin of species but in their demise.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#99. We can't say that when x happens we get a mass extinction. To the extent we understand mass extinction, one has been caused by glaciation event, one has been caused by a massive climate change, and one has been caused by an asteroid. These events turn out to have no precedent.

Elizabeth Kolbert

#100. One of the maxims of the new field of conservation biological control is that to control insect herbivores, you must maintain populations of insect herbivores.

Douglas Tallamy