#extinct

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

#existence #extinction #holds #intellectual #much

They are all beasts of burden in a sense, ' Thoreau once remarked of animals, 'made to carry some portion of our thoughts.' Animals are the old language of the imagination; one of the ten thousand tragedies of their disappearance would be a silencing of this speech. ↗

— Rebecca Solnit

#extinction #nature #page- #imagination

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

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

#change #day #does #extinction #last

It is peoples' fantasies of what is true that is so extraordinary. That that we were born and that we face eternal extinction after death is an extraordinary fantasy. ↗

— Brian Perkins

#born #death #eternal #extinction #extraordinary

I can't visualize the situation in which we nuke ourselves into extinction. ↗

— John Keegan

#i #into #ourselves #situation #visualize

I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours. ↗

— John F. Kennedy

#advanced #am #because #extinct #i

It is a rule in paleontology that ornamentation and complication precede extinction. And our mutation, of which the assembly line, the collective farm, the mechanized army, and the mass production of food are evidences or even symptoms, might well correspond to the thickening armor of the great reptiles—a tendency that can end only in extinction. If this should happen to be true, nothing stemming from thought can interfere with it or bend it. Conscious thought seems to have little effect on the action or direction of our species. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#farming #human-development #production #thought #war

Buddhism: a violent religion that has compensated for the exploding human population by causing whole species of animal vessels to go extinct. ↗

— Bauvard

#extinction #funny #humor #funny

Life has had to deal with environmental change, especially climate change, since the beginning of its existence on Earth. Species adjust or go extinct, and both have happened. For life-forms with our kinds of cells—eukaryotic, the kind with distinct organelles—the average existence of a species is about 1 million years, and, on average, one species goes extinct a year, at least of the species we have named and know, including those we know only from fossil records." -Dan Botkin, excerpt from THE MOON IN THE NAUTILUS SHELL. Read the full excerpt from Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/art... ↗

— Daniel Botkin

#environmental-conservation #extinction #change

We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake. ↗

— George Carlin

#humanity #inspirational #pale-blue-dot #perspective #inspirational