Luana Ehrlich Quotes

Assumptions can get you killed. --Titus Ray, Chapter 2 ~ Luana Ehrlich

Islamic jihadists making sacrifices tended to create gruesome headlines.--Titus Ray, Chapter 29 ~ Luana Ehrlich

There's something to be said for silence. --Titus Ray, Chapter 25 ~ Luana Ehrlich

I've never minded finding out what others thought I didn't know. Titus Ray, Chapter 3 ~ Luana Ehrlich

Now, along with the guns I'd retrieved from my personal storage unit, I felt totally prepared to write a scholarly book on the Middle East.--Titus Ray, Chapter 9 ~ Luana Ehrlich

Pride is a great energizer for me. --Titus Ray, Chapter 1. ~ Luana Ehrlich

Prayer wasn't a familiar practice in my life. --Titus Ray, Chapter 2 ~ Luana Ehrlich

A tree is an aerial garden, a botanical migration from the sea, from those earliest plants, the seaweeds; it is a purchase on crumbled rock, on ground. The human, standing, is only a different upsweep and articulation of cells. How treelike we are, how human the tree. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

We've all got to get together and demand something better out of our government and out of each other. We've got a system that's making us working harder, and isn't giving us satisfaction. We've got to sit down and decide what the hell we really want to be as human beings. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Woman should have the choice whether to have an abortion or not, but I like what Bill Clinton said: It ought to be safe and rare. You don't want to offend people with it. You try and do as much as you can to let people be different, but also to try and protect them from things that they think are bad. And it's worth all of us giving a little. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Thoughtful people of different political philosophies can disagree, but in a very agreeable manner. ~ Bob Ehrlich

My capital budget maintains my commitment to the education of children, health of the Chesapeake Bay, and safety of all Maryland citizens. We will continue to focus on the five pillars of my Administration as we build today and look forward to the projects of the future. ~ Bob Ehrlich

Most pundits regard an election year session as an opportunity for the two parties to frame issues and garner political advantage in advance of the approaching election. ~ Bob Ehrlich

A tree is a thought, an obstruction stopping the flow of wind and light, trapping water, housing insects, birds, and animals, and breathing in and out. How treelike the human, how human the tree. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild is an exquisite, far-sighted articulation of what freedom, wildness, goodness, and grace mean, using the lessons of the planet to teach us how to live. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Islands are reminders of arrivals and departures. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

In ten years [i.e., 1980] all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

From the clayey soil of northern Wyoming is mined bentonite, which is used as filler in candy, gum, and lipstick. We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough. We have a cultural tendency toward denial, but being affluent, we strangle ourselves with what we can buy. We gave only to look at the houses we build to see how we build *against* space, the way we drink against pain and loneliness. We fill up space as if it were a pie shell, with things whose opacity further obstructs our ability to see what is already there. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

I don't like the idea of teaching religion in schools, and creation is not my thing, but that's a trivial point compared to saving the creation. I'd much rather have half of the people in the country be creationists and work really hard to save the creation than have everybody be evolutionists and be destroying the planet. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Too many cars, too many factories, too much detergent, too much pesticides, multiplying contrails, inadequate sewage treatment plants, too little water, too much carbon dioxide - all can be traced easily to too many people. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Maryland has a tradition of Democratic Party conservatism. ~ Bob Ehrlich

Some of the most important conversations I've ever had occurred at my family's dinner table. ~ Bob Ehrlich

After The Bomb we developed a fairly good system for moving food around and have avoided the kind of massive famines that attract the media. Although of course we've had a fair number of them, particularly in Africa, since The Bomb was written. But we have had a steady level of attrition of malnutrition and malnutrition-related disease. Probably something on the order of 5 to 10 million people starve to death each year, but they're spread out; they're not dramatic news events. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Every Maryland family wants financial security, schools that work, quality healthcare, safer neighborhoods, and ever-expanding economic opportunity. These are the building blocks of a superior quality of life. ~ Bob Ehrlich

It's appropriate to celebrate public service, and the thoughtful people who choose to serve. They symbolize what is good and decent about this historic citizen legislature, and we thank them. ~ Bob Ehrlich

Our urge to undo things must come from an idea that what we find in the natural world isn't good enough, that our tinkering will make it better. Spare us the scandal of improvement, I say. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Love life first, then march through the gates of each season; go inside nature and develop the discipline to stop destructive behavior; learn tenderness toward experience, then make decisions based on creating biological wealth that includes all people, animals, cultures, currencies, languages, and the living things as yet undiscovered; listen to the truth the land will tell you; act accordingly. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

All my memories are things I gave away, traded for new days after days after days... ~ Brenna Ehrlich

I designed furniture that pulled apart, folded, and broke down into neat stacks. Since arriving in California, I had moved four times and it looked as if I would move again. Was it the land running under my feet or my feet running over the land? ~ Gretel Ehrlich

I started traveling in the Arctic in 1991, so I experienced the ice in winter and spring. The seasonal sea ice, it has a long season. It starts in September and ends in June. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Leaders do not sway with the polls. Instead, they sway the polls through their own words and actions. ~ Bob Ehrlich

Here's the scientific community saying, fundamentally, "If we don't change our ways, we're screwed." And they got no attention at all. Even though the Union of Concerned Scientists put out this statement which was signed by more than half of all the Nobel laureates in science and another 1,500 distinguished scientists. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Your children should have it impressed upon them that their adult life-style will bear very little resemblance to yours and that they should now be acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and tastes that will sustain them in less materially affluent circumstances. On the other hand, the fresh insights and imaginations of your children may help you find a viable future while there's still time. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

I understood why war zones are called 'theaters' because they frame a kind of play acting or, worse, deceit, that can stain a human life forever: the deceit of hate on hearsay - hating an enemy one doesn't know ... ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Trying to separate the contributions of nature and nurture to an attribute is rather like trying to separate the contributions of length and width to the area of a rectangle, which at first glance also seems easy. When you think about it carefully, though, it proves impossible. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Serving in Congress has been the honor of a lifetime. ~ Bob Ehrlich

Fog rolled in like a form of sorrow. To live exiled from a place you have known intimately is to experience sensory deprivation. A wide-awake coma ... The sea was a memory bank into which everything fell and was lost. I dove in but came out empty-handed. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

The drilling idea is spherically senseless - it's senseless from whatever point of view you look at it. It'd take 10 years to bring any oil online, and it would probably go to Japan. It sure wouldn't help gasoline prices here. All the economists say gasoline is still too cheap in the United States anyway. So here we're having this huge debate over offshore drilling that is just straightforward nonsense, which won't surprise you. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

June marked the end of spring on California's central coast and the beginning of five months of dormancy that often erupted in fire. Mustard's yellow robes had long since turned red, then brown. Fog and sun mixed to create haze. The land had rusted. The mountains, once blue-hued with young oaks and blooming ceanosis, were tan and gray. I walked across the fallen blossoms of five yucca plants: only the bare poles of their stems remained to mark where their lights had shone the way. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

It's like I did something really god damn fucking virtuous in a past life to be rewarded with you. ~ Sigal Ehrlich

For example, I'm a great fan of pornography, but I don't see any reason not to restrict it so that people walking down the street who hate pornography don't have full color pictures outside of movie theaters. Let them be in a different district. I'm kidding about pornography, but you get the point. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich

Actually, the problem in the world is that there are too many rich people. ~ Paul R. Ehrlich