Garrett Hardin Quotes

Society does not need more children; but it does need more loved children. Quite literally, we cannot afford unloved children - but we pay heavily for them every day. There should not be the slightest communal concern when a woman elects to destroy the life of her thousandth-of-an-ounce embryo. But all society should rise up in alarm when it hears that a baby that is not wanted is about to be born.

Thou shalt not transgress the carrying capacity

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.

A coldly rationalist individualist can deny that he has any obligation to make sacrifices for the future.

The only kind of coercion I recommend is mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon by the majority of the people affected.

The mathematics of biological reproduction is logically identical with the mathematics of usury. Money earns interest, animals have babies. In

In the specific case of abortion, the matter is particularly easy in that no woman wants a late abortion. Once abortion was made legal, the age of the aborted fetus went down. The slope slipped in the other direction. If we legalize RU-486 and other similar new drugs, the age will fall to one week or less and start approaching zero. The slippery slope will slide in the other direction. The only reason we have late abortions is because we make early abortion difficult.

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.

It is a mistake to think that we can control the breeding of mankind in the long run by an appeal to conscience.

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

An attack on values is inevitably seen as an act of subversion.

It takes five years for a willing person's mind to change. Have patience with yourself and others when treading in an area protected by a taboo.

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.

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.

Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

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.

No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

Freedom to breed will bring ruin to all.

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.

A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero.

Continuity is at the heart of conservatism: ecology serves that heart.

The only thing we can really count on in this uncertain world is human unreliability itself.

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?

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.

We see only what we have names for.

Throughout history, human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonize-destroy-move on.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

In a finite world this means that the per capita share of the world's goods must steadily decrease.

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.

In a competitive world of limited resources, total freedom of individual action is intolerable

You cannot do only one thing.

Economists (and others) who are satisfied with nature-free equations develop a dangerous hubris about the potency of our species

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.

The rational man finds that his share of the cost of the wastes he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them.

The morality of an act is a function of the state of the system at the time it is performed.