Cutting Down Quotes

Humanity is cutting down its forests, apparently oblivious to the fact that we may not be able to live without them. ~ Isaac Asimov

Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab ... ~ William Gaddis

Most people know that forests are the lungs of our planet, literally playing a critical role in every breath we take. And that they're also home to incredible animals like the orangutan and elephant, which will go extinct if we keep cutting down their forests. ~ Chris Noth

Active conservation [of gorillas] involves simply going out into the forest, on foot, day after day after day, attempting to capture poachers, killing-regretfully-poacher dogs, which spread rabies within the park, and cutting down traps. ~ Dian Fossey

Trees are great messengers of peace. One of the worst crimes of modern humankind is indiscriminate cutting down of the trees, and forests, in the pursuit of establishing civilization. No wonder, that modern civilized society has everything but peace. ~ Banani Ray

Look at timber prices in the late '90s, at around $50. If you count the true damage of cutting down forests, the resultant flooding, insurance claims, and so on, then the timber price should have been $100. ~ Jochen Zeitz

I'm composing more than before. I'm cutting down on conducting. ~ Esa-Pekka Salonen

Whenever we don't turn the ball over, we're pretty productive. When you're turning the ball over, you're cutting down on offensive opportunities. ~ Eric Snow

To stop smoking was actually really easy because I had already started to cut down. My husband is asthmatic, and he just can't for the life of him imagine why anybody would put smoke in their mouth, so he really helped me to start cutting down. ~ Holly Marie Combs

The Patriot Post not only does the best job of putting important news, policy and opinion in proper context, but also of cutting down to size the pompous praters and propagandists on the left. ~ Lyn Nofziger

The value of the things is not in themselves autonomously, but that God made them, and thus they deserve to be treated with high respect. The tree in the field is to be treated with respect. It is not to be romanticized as the old lady romanticizes her cat (that is, she reads human reactions into it). This is wrong because it is not true. When you drive the axe into the tree when you need firewood, you are not cutting down a person; you are cutting down a tree. But while we should not romanticize the tree, we must realize God made it and it deserves respect because He made is as a tree. ~ Francis Schaeffer

Power, as it is, has a whole apparatus operating that goes about cutting down, closing doors, so that protests, exercises, platforms, and organizations, such as the Zapatistas, can't grow further in the barrio. ~ Bocafloja

having freed ourselves from the constraints of evolution, humans nevertheless remain dependent on the earth's biological and geochemical systems. By disrupting these systems - cutting down tropical rainforests, altering the composition of the atmosphere, acidifying the oceans - we're putting our own survival in danger. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Merton. Gethsemani required a vow of silence, and at dinner if you wanted salt, you had to stare hard at the shaker until another brother noticed. One day, cutting down a tree, Jack couldn't contain himself. He held his head back and roared, "Timber." After that, his days at the monastery were numbered. Within a couple of years, he had married, and he and his young wife, Fran, who herself had just spent a year in a nunnery, opened a Catholic Worker farm in eastern Missouri for recovering alcoholics. ~ Alex Kotlowitz

Don't let anything like trees in the Clearwater National Forest get in the way of providing jobs and fueling the economy, even if that means cutting down every last tree in the state. ~ Helen Chenoweth-Hage

We had about 60 regions in Greece and now there are only 13. It'd be like cutting down 50 states to 13 and making it more efficient. ~ George Papandreou

Sumatra has these lush forests and huge, amazing creatures like elephants, orangutans, and tigers. They're disappearing because of industry coming in and cutting down the forests. ~ Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

If you want to know when a war might be coming, you just watch the U.S. and see when it starts cutting down on its defenses. It's the surest barometer in the world. ~ Will Rogers

I don't know just what, but there will have to be some drastic changes made besides cutting down on boating to get my mind more on painting. ~ E. J. Hughes

Few people realize this, but cutting down the trees is one of the things that keeps us Malawians poor. ~ William Kamkwamba

When the French need a solution to a particular problem, they tend to consult one source, not fifteen different friends or chat-room chums. This has the effect of cutting down on anxiety - and does wonders for just about every aspect of parenting. ~ Catherine Crawford

Fancy cutting down all those beautiful trees ... to make pulp for those bloody newspapers, and calling it civilisation. - Winston Churchill, remarking to his son during a visit to Canada in 1929 ~ John Vaillant

The evil of our times, are mines, dams, power plants and hundreds of smart cities. Shadeless roads, widened by cutting down trees; rivers diverted to fill the flush tanks of five-star hotels; hillocks, the abode of tribal gods, laid bare due to mining; marketplaces without sparrows and trees without birds ~ U.R. Ananthamurthy

Brie! Do Beyonce or Christina or whichever lame MTV diva you're mostly admiring this week waste their time with what-ifs? No, they spend all their energy on looking fabulous and cutting down any bitch that dares get in their way.-Charlie ~ Sarra Manning

We spend most of our lives cutting down our ambitions because the world has told us to think small. Dreams express what your soul is telling you, so as crazy as your dream might seem - even to you - I don't care: You have to let that out. ~ Eleni Zaude Gabre-Madhin

I make a lot of money. I can take a pay cut. All my friends are taking pay cuts that are in the unions, that are - that are farming in Alabama or whatever it is. I can surely take a pay cut, too, not cutting down my show or - or the people that work for me, I can take a pay cut. ~ Kid Rock

Cutting down that tree was my last war!" I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud. He said, "The ax won! It's always that way! ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Suppose that we believe that in 200 years, people would be prepared to pay a million dollars (that's in today's dollars, not inflated ones) to be able to have an unspoilt valley. Now imagine that today we can profit by cutting down the forest in the valley, which will never regrow. If we apply an annual discount rate of 5 percent, compounded exponentially, how big would that profit have to be to justify the loss of a million dollars in 2210? The answer, surprisingly, is just sixty dollars! That's all that a million dollars in 200 years is worth, at that rate of discount. Obviously, then, if we use a 5 percent discount rate, values gained one thousand years in the future scarcely count at all. This is not because of any uncertainty about whether there will be human beings or other sentient creatures inhabiting this planet at that time, but merely because of the compounding effect of the rate of return on money invested now. ~ Peter Singer

He had tried everything, cutting down (many devices), pipes, cigars, even cold turkey. He had quit once in Rome, for seven hours after breakfast, during the last two of which his (first) wife was begging him to take it up again. ~ John Berryman

The Navahos could forgive the Rope Thrower for fighting them as a soldier, for making prisoners of them, even for destroying their food supplies, but the one act they never forgave him for was cutting down their beloved peach trees. ~ Dee Brown

Right now there should be a moratorium on the cutting down of old growth in this country. That is a small thing to ask at this point. There is only four percent of old growth left. Ninety-six percent of it has been cut down. ~ Woody Harrelson

We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue. ~ George Orwell

Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant greys. My whole manner of thinking of our late misfortune was changed. What I had to do, was, to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do, was, to turn the painful discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do, was, to take my woodman's axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty, by cutting down the ~ Charles Dickens

Our current government doesn't give a f*** about transportation. They only give a f*** about making money. When it comes to synchronizing the traffic lights and cutting down on that lost time sitting in traffic, they don't have the IQ for that. But when it comes to stuff that makes them money - chickens*** tickets, parking meters, and speed traps - they're all Lex Luthor. They turn into diabolical mad geniuses. ~ Adam Carolla

Many great people had been considered to be boring, like Nigel Mansell, but anyone who had read the racing driver's autobiography, "Clutch Down, Dick Out", would know that perception was way off the mark. ~ Mark Jackman

Underneath the moonlight,
we laid and laughed
like run-on sentences, kissed like ellipses, and
you held me so close that I wear my bones down smooth
against
the grain of your skin. ~ Shinji Moon

More than anything, she wanted to crawl across the bloody sand toward the place where Jace's body lay, crawl to him and lay down beside him and put her arms around him, even though he was gone. ~ Cassandra Clare

Again, I stuffed down the grief and opened the door wide to denial. I may have looked okay on the outside, but inside I was an ugly hot mess. ~ Betts Keating

You have to be down here in the States to realize just how tightly controlled the corporate media is and how much they practise Soviet-style censorship through creative omission. ~ Jello Biafra

Injuries is a part of a sportsmen life; you have to live with it. You can't be down with that; it is not gonna help you. ~ Jeev Milkha Singh

There is an Iroquois myth that describes a choice the nation was once forced to make. The myth has various forms. This is the simplest version. A council of the tribes was called to decide where to move on for the next hunting season. What the council had not known, however, was that the place they eventually chose was a place inhabited by wolves. Accordingly, the Iroquois became subject to repeated attacks, during which the wolves gradually whittled down their numbers. They were faced with a choice: to move somewhere else or to kill the wolves. The latter option, they realized, would diminish them. It would make them the sort of people they did not want to be. And so they moved on. To avoid repetition of their earlier mistake, they decided that in all future council meetings someone should be appointed to represent the wolf. Their contribution would be invited with the question, 'Who speaks for wolf? ~ Mark Rowlands

Joseph dreamed the sun and moon were bowing down to worship him. Ten years
went by and that came to pass. The saying, 'He sees by God's light,' is not an idle
idiom. It means something. There is light that can shatter this earth-and-sky.
It cannot be seen with eyes. This vision sees only the next step, what's directly in front. ~ Rumi

The whole thing of clothes is insane. You can spend a dollar on a jacket in a thrift store. And you can spend a thousand dollars on a jacket in a shop. And if you saw those two jackets walking down the street, you probably wouldn't know which was which. ~ Helen Mirren

I looked at Allison. "You're a lot of fun. But right now I want you to put down the frying pan, okay?"
"Are you crazy?"
"Put it down. ~ Rick Riordan

You can't forget how important coming together is, whether it be a mom and a son, a dad and a daughter, whether the family be ten people, or twenty people, or a million people. Dinnertime is the perfect time for that. Dinnertime is the perfect time when you can sit down, you can offer thanks to your kids for making you laugh, or to your parents for supporting you, or to a god for looking out for you, or to whomever you want. You can just close your eyes and open them again and realize that you have the opportunity everyday to change your life, or change someone else's. Dinnertime is a great time to think about that.

~ Dillon, age 22
From Dinnertimes: Stories of American Life, 1912 to 2012 ~ Deborah L. Halliday

The time has now come to slow down, to sip Rooibos tea with my beloved wife in the afternoons, to watch cricket, to travel to visit my children and grandchildren, rather than to conferences and conventions and university campuses. ~ Desmond Tutu

We lived in a culture that denied any merit to literary works, considering them important only when they were handmaidens to something seemingly more urgent
namely ideology. This was a country where all gestures, even the most private, were interpreted in political terms. The colors of my head scarf or my father's tie were symbols of Western decadence and imperialist tendencies. Not wearing a beard, shaking hands with members of the opposite sex, clapping or whistling in public meetings, were likewise considered Western and therefore decadent, part of the plot by imperialists to bring down our culture. ~ Azar Nafisi

He would read up on parenting, if he thought it would help, but his errors always seemed too basic for the manuals. "Always tell your kids they have siblings ... " He couldn't imagine any child-raising guru taking the trouble to write that down. Maybe there was a gap in the market. ~ Nick Hornby

Every person and every team will be tested on their journey. It is part of the curriculum of life. It's just like riding a bicycle. In the beginning you're going to fall off and get knocked down but the important thing is to get back on, stay strong, and after a while once you master it you'll ride with the confidence of a champion. ~ Jon Gordon

We've all been a little confused this past week, because our dearly beloved Westertoren bells have been carted off to be melted down for the war, so we have no idea of the exact time, either night or day. ~ Anne Frank

The festive music died down and the granite pillars were replaced with rotted wooden beams as he continued down the alleyways. The scent of fresh flowers turned to mold, and the colorful mosiacs of honor and nobility were nonexistent. Run-down tenements were shadowed by its surrounding buildings, as if the capital itself wanted to conceal its existence. ~ Evan Meekins

It is absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt that more firearms in a society actually cuts the amount of crime in that same society. ~ Matt Shea

The interesting thing for 'Playing House' to me is we both are at crossroads in the pilot. We both have our lives kind of upside-down, and then because we're taking care of each other, we're able to move forward and live our best lives. ~ Lennon Parham

Everyone has the right to walk from one end of the city to the other in secure and beautiful spaces. Everybody has the right to go by public transport. Everybody has the right to an unhampered view down their street, not full of railings, signs and rubbish. ~ Richard Rogers

I sunk down onto the bench in the middle of the car. So Alex had loved me the whole time, from the moment we'd seen each other again? All that time I'd been freaking out about Rachel? All that time I'd spent inches away from him, sleeping in his bed by myself; sitting opposite him at dinner, smashing plates; clinging to him on the back of his bike; sneaking peeks at him through a half-ajar bathroom door - and all the time he'd been in love with me? We'd wasted all that time when we could have been kissing? And he'd had to wait until two seconds before leaving me until he told me? If the Unit didn't kill him, I was going to. ~ Sarah Alderson

Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion. ~ Samuel Shem

The witch mania is shameful. How could we do it? How could we be so ignorant about ourselves and our weaknesses? How could it have happened in the most "advanced," the most "civilized" nations then on Earth? Why was it resolutely supported by conservatives, monarchists, and religious fundamentalists? Why opposed by liberals, Quakers and followers of the Enlightenment? If we're absolutely sure that our beliefs are right, and those of others wrong; that we are motivated by good, and others by evil; that the King of the Universe speaks to us, and not to adherents of very different faiths; that it is wicked to challenge conventional doctrines or to ask searching questions; that our main job is to believe and obey - then the witch mania will recur in its infinite variations down to the time of the last man. Note Friedrich von Spee's very first point, and the implication that improved public understanding of superstition and skepticism might have helped to short-circuit the whole train of causality. If we fail to understand how it worked in the last round, we will not recognize it as it emerges in the next. ~ Carl Sagan

One thing the American defense establishment has traditionally understood very well is that countries don't win wars just by being braver than the other side, or freer, or slightly preferred by God. The winners are usually the guys who get 5% fewer of their planes shot down, or use 5% less fuel, or get 5% more nutrition into their infantry at 95% of the cost. ~ Jordan Ellenberg

That's right; put on the steam, fasten down the escape-valve, and sit on it, and see there you'll land. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

People believe in conspiracies because it's a way of believing that deep down, horror has some order and meaning, even if that meaning is evil. We don't support chaos, but there's no question that life is ~ Rosa Montero

I met her in a club down in North Soho, where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola. ~ Ray Davies

I felt like my vote was the vote that put [Obama] into office. It was down to one vote, and that was going to be my vote. And that may not be true, but that's how much power it felt like I had. ~ Puff Daddy

[When explaining over reactions to small mistakes] I get swallowed up in the moment, and I can't tell the right response from the wrong response. All I know is that I have to get out of the situation as soon as I can, so I don't drown. To get away, I'll do anything. Crying, screaming and throwing things, hitting out even ... Finally, finally, I'll calm down and come back to myself. Then I see no sign of the tsunami attack
only the wreckage I've made. And when I see that, I hate myself. I just hate myself. ~ Naoki Higashida

I try to write down every song that comes to me, even though I know that every song that comes to me isn't a song that I need to sing. ~ Valerie June

US Vice President Joe Biden gave the US government's real view of its regional and Syrian allies with undiplomatic frankness when speaking at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University's Institute of Politics on October 2. He told his audience that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and UAE were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war. What did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world. ~ Patrick Cockburn

The cry of equality pulls everyone down. ~ Iris Murdoch

Irene sighed and rolled her eyes. "Just give her the flowers so we can be gone." She glanced at Van. "I grow tired of the company."
Paul walked away and Van leaned against the wall, staring down Irene's cleavage. "You know, Irene," he said low, so only she could hear, "when you're mean to me like that ... "
"Yes?"
"It makes me so horny. ~ Shelly Laurenston

Can a Filipina be depicted as smart without having to shout all the time? Or down-to-earth and honest without having to start every sentence with a snarky 'Hay nako' or 'Alam mo bah'? ~ Arnold Arre

In general, advertising isn't a "creative" atmosphere. It's a business atmosphere and your job is puzzle solving. My favorite aspect of the business, I guess, was presenting to clients. What I enjoyed least were the clients. Worried corporate brand managers, trying to dumb-down their ads for the stupid American population. I hated the disrespect that these people had for "consumers." ~ Augusten Burroughs

Eating Paleo just leans you down and slims you up and takes that little layer of fat and water-weight right off your body. ~ Jessica Biel

Beer. There's nothing I don't like about it. I love the smell, the taste - even the sound of it. The cool thunk of the cap coming off the bottle, the silvery crack of the pop-top can. You need to sip a whiskey. And I was never a sipper. I was a guzzler. I loved the feeling of it: to open wide the mouth of the soul and pour a cold one down my throat, with my mind racing ever-forward toward the next. Beer was kind and faithful, like an old friend. Every drinker has their poison. I am a beer man. ~ Tod A

Science is an intellectual dead end, you know? It's a lot of little guys in tweed suits cutting up frogs on foundation grants. ~ Woody Allen

He was pleased that she should see death in his face at once. His mother, at the age of sixty, was going to be introduced to reality and he supposed that if the experience didn't kill her, it would assist her in the process of growing up. He stepped down and greeted her. ~ Flannery O'Connor

Conservatives believe that international institutions such as the United Nations are anti-American and anti-Israeli cabals. Progressives do not like the economic medicine that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank force down the throats of developing countries. ~ Michael Ignatieff

Well, it's not far down to paradise, at least it's not for me
And if the wind is right you can sail away and find tranquility ... ~ Christopher Cross

I don't do much. I'm too lazy. That's my problem. Hang around my couch, watching the TV. Just too lazy. I realized this the other day, I get hit my a truck tomorrow - a big truck could hit me - paralyze me from the neck down. Wouldn't effect my lifestyle a bit really. ~ Norm MacDonald

One of my favourite stories is about an old woman and her husband – a man mean as Mondays, who scared her with the violence of his temper and the shifting nature of his whims. She was only able to keep him satisfied with her unparalleled cooking, to which he was a complete captive. One day, he bought her a fat liver to cook for him, and she did, using herbs and broth. But the smell of her own artistry overtook her, and a few nibbles became a few bites, and soon the liver was gone. She had no money with which to purchase a second one, and she was terrified of her husband's reaction should he discover that his meal was gone. So she crept to the church next door, where a woman had been recently laid to rest. She approached the shrouded figure, then cut into it with a pair of kitchen shears and stole the liver from her corpse.

That night, the woman's husband dabbed his lips with a napkin and declared the meal the finest he'd ever eaten. When they went to sleep, the old woman heard the front door open, and a thin wail wafted through the rooms. Who has my liver? Whooooo has my liver?

The old woman could hear the voice coming closer and closer to the bedroom. There was a hush as the door swung open. The dead woman posed her query again.

The old woman flung the blanket off her husband.

– He has it! She declared triumphantly.

Then she saw the face of the dead woman, and recognized her own mouth and eyes. She looked down at her abd ~ Carmen Maria Machado

The second you walk off down that road I'll start telling myself you're gone for good, and why wouldn't you be, and I'll start trying to hate you for it. I will hate you for it. I might even leave here entirely. ~ Marilynne Robinson

When a song came on the radio that I wanted to learn, my mother would quickly write down the lyrics for me. Soon after, I would be singing it. ~ Kiran Ahluwalia

A fierce and monkish art; a castigation of the flesh. You must cut out your imagination and not fly an airplane but regulate a half-dozen instruments ... At first, the conflicts between animal sense and engineering brain are irresistibly strong. ~ Wolfgang Langewiesche

As a busker, one thing that does not work is self-consciousness. A busker needs to be working. A busker needs to shed all ego and get down to work. Play your songs, play them well, earn your money, and don't get in people's way. ~ Glen Hansard

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.
It matters that you don't just give up. ~ Stephen Hawking