North America Quotes

We may think of volcanic islands like Ascension as unusual because their recent origin and remoteness mean their ecosystems are made up of a motley crew of mariner migrants. But much of the world is like that. Nature is constantly in flux, and few ecosystems go back very far. Only ten thousand years ago, much of Europe and North America were covered in thick ice. All soil had been scraped away and with it most forms of life. Everything we see today in these former glaciated zones has either returned or arrived for the first time since the ice retreated.
Looked at from this perspective, the spread of alien species today is merely a continuation of a natural process of the colonization begun when the ice retreated. A broad time horizon shows there is no such thing as a native species. All lodgings are temporary and all ecosystems in a constant flux, the victims of circumstance and geological accident. As the pioneer British ecologist Charles Elton argued, "Were it not for the ice age, we [in Britain] should probably have wonderful mixed forests with wild magnolias and laurels and epiphytic orchids, such as . . . in China. ~ Fred Pearce

Quebec City is the most European of any city in North America; they speak French all the time. There is a part of town called Old Quebec which is really like being in France. The architecture is just gorgeous, food, shopping. I'd say Quebec City is the most beautiful city in North America I've seen. ~ Sebastian Bach

We live, in North America in general, if I'm given the indulgence of selling us down the river, in a culture of fear of this connective sense of spirit. ~ Alanis Morissette

In the mid-1970s, there was this huge boom of stand-up comedy throughout North America. I went to see a show at a club called Yuk-Yuks, in Toronto, and I was just fascinated. I ended up coming back for amateur hour on a Monday at midnight and got up there without any thought as to what might come of it. ~ Howie Mandel

When it comes to acid rain or oil spills or depleted fisheries or tainted groundwater or fluorocarbon propellants or radiation leaks or sexually transmitted diseases, national frontiers are simple irrelevant. Toxins don't stop for customs inspections and microbes don't carry passports. North America became a water and free-trade zone long before NAFTA loosened up the market in goods. ~ Benjamin Barber

Natural gas is the best transportation fuel. It's better than gasoline or diesel. It's cleaner, it's cheaper, and it's domestic. Natural gas is 97 percent domestic fuel, North America. ~ T. Boone Pickens

I'm honored and excited to be chosen to lead MLSE, a world-class sports and entertainment organization with the major league teams, premier facilities and employee team that rank with the very best across North America and internationally. ~ Tim Leiweke

[O]ne might ask why, in a galaxy of a few hundred billion stars, the aliens are so intent on coming to Earth at all. It would be as if every vertebrate in North America somehow felt drawn to a particular house in Peoria, Illinois. Are we really that interesting? ~ Seth Shostak

. . . [H]ad North America been a wilderness, undeveloped, without roads, and uncultivated, it might still be so, for the European colonists could not have survived. They appropriated what had already been created by Indigenous civilizations. They stole already cultivated farmland and the corn, vegetables, tobacco, and other crops domesticated over centuries, took control of the deer parks that had been cleared and maintained by Indigenous communities, used existing roads and water routes in order to move armies to conquer, and relied on captured Indigenous people to identify the locations of water, oyster beds, and medicinal herbs. ~ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I hope it's the good kind of dilemma," Reginald broke Patricia's reverie. "Whatever one you're on the horns of."
...
"I was just thinking," she said. "There are so many scary problems in the world. Like, I was just reading that we could be seeing the last of the bees in North America soon. And if that happened, food webs would just collapse, and tons more people would starve. But suppose you had the power to change things? You still might not be able to fix anything, because every time you solve a problem you'd create another problem. And maybe all these plagues and droughts are nature's way of striking a balance. We humans don't have any natural predators left, so nature has to find another way to handle us."
...
"I am, as you know, a fan of nature," said Reginald. "And yet, nature doesn't 'find ways' to do anything. Nature has no opinion, no agenda. Nature provides a playing field, a not particularly level one, on which we compete with all creatures great and small. It's more that nature's playing field is full of traps. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

Brain-like in function and speed, the internet connected over one-third of the global population. Three million searches every minute; one-hundred-trillion emails every year; more Facebook users than people in North America, all with with personal photos, videos, apps, and chats. There were dozens of dating sites, an immersive universe called 2nd Life that boasted a country-sized GDP, a slew of viruses, obnoxious advertising, more than a billion photos of naked women, and seventy-two hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. This was the environment where the friendship flourished. ~ Jake Vander Ark

If the Earth is the size of a pea in New York, then the Sun is a beachball 50m away, Pluto is 4km away, and the next nearest star is in Tokyo. Now shrink Pluto's orbit into a coffee cup; then our Milky Way Galaxy fills North America. ~ Wayne Hays

The wealth-income ratio in the United States has always been lower than in Europe. The main reason in the early years was that land values bulked less in the wide open spaces of North America. There was, of course, much more land, but it was very cheap. ~ Robert Solow

It is natural to suppose that global warming would act as a useful counterweight to the Earth's tendency to plunge back into glacial conditions. However, as Kolbert has pointed out, when you are confronted with a fluctuating and unpredictable climate, 'the last thing you'd want to do is conduct a vast unsupervised experiment on it'. It has even been suggested, with more plausibility than would at first seem evident, that an ice age might actually be induced by a rise in temperatures. The idea is that a slight warming would enhance evaporation rates and increase cloud cover, leading in the higher latitudes to more persistent accumulations of snow. In fact, global warming could plausibly, if paradoxically, lead to powerful localized cooling in North America and northern Europe. ~ Bill Bryson

You're surrounded by electronic music in New York. I mean New York is one of the few places in North America where electronic music is the prevalent form. ~ Bob Mould

The reality is that most of North America knows next to nothing of the 20th century's first genocide - the systematic slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the First World War. ~ Chris Bohjalian

For hundreds of thousands of years, life was brutal. It still is for a good chunk of the planet. The technology and wealth we enjoy in North America is a very new development in history, and I think we miss the challenges of day-to-day survival in our comparatively easy modern lives. Some people will even create problems if they have none. ~ Jeff Carlson

Literacy in North America has historically been focused on reading, not writing; consumption, not production. ~ Clive Thompson

Hundreds of thousands of years ago a very powerful civilization lived in what we now call North America. They congregated around power places - interdimensional vortexes where it is very easy to shift from one plane of reality to another. ~ Frederick Lenz

I did 'Red Riding,' which is TV in the U.K. It became a feature project in North America, but we're in a great era of TV. We all know that, and we hear it all the time, but for filmmakers, it's just a godsend to have your television writing and work to do on television, and the means to do it properly. ~ James Marsh

If you think about the history of mobile handsets, in many respects there was a time when Asia and then Europe all led North America. ~ Stephen Elop

Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here. ~ George Friedman

There were incredibly complex societies already existing in North America long before Europeans arrived. So many people think that before European contact it was just Natives huddling around a fire, waiting for civilization to come save them. But that was not the case. ~ Joseph Boyden

I've been working with them for a couple years and a couple of projects. Essentially Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is the chief litigator for this corporation, this Alliance, and their job is to prosecute corporate polluters of the great bodies of water in North America. ~ Richard Dean Anderson

I own a Ferrari race team, and we race all over North America. ~ Robert Herjavec

Colorado and Wyoming are America's highest states, averaging 6,800 feet and 6,700 feet above sea level. Utah comes in third at 6,100 feet, New Mexico, Nevada, and Idaho each break 5,000 feet, and the rest of the field is hardly worth mentioning. At 3,400 feet, Montana is only half as high as Colorado, and Alaska, despite having the highest peaks, is even further down the list at 1,900 feet. Colorado has more fourteeners than all the other U.S. states combined, and more than all of Canada too. Colorado's lowest point (3,315 feet along the Kansas border) is higher than the highest point in twenty other states. Rivers begin here and flow away to all the points of the compass. Colorado receives no rivers from another state (unless you count the Green River's' brief in and out from Utah).Wyoming's Wind River Range is the only mountain in North America that supplies water to all three master streams of the American West: Missouri, Colorado, and Columbia rivers. ~ Keith Meldahl

This ability to have reliable sources of energy and a reliable transmission of energy here in North America is critical for both of us and for Mexico as we want to keep our economies growing. ~ Paul Cellucci

It is dancing that brings together tribes from all over North America to compete against each other [in pow wows], to share traditional similarities and differences, and to let non-aboriginal people learn about the first cultures on this continent. The dances change over the years, reflecting new generations and their influences, adapting the traditions of their grandparents and their grandparents' grandparents, to be able to exist in this rapidly evolving world.

"There will always be the elders who shake their heads at the younger generation's behaviour and teenagers who push the boundaries of traditions they have been taught. In dancing, though, everyone can be on the same beat, regardless of their fancy footwork or swirling shawls. ~ Lori Henry

After half a millennium of dominance, the West is being eclipsed in the global era, the United States as the lead society in the West stands on the verge of relative if not absolute decline, and much of the Christian Church in both Europe and North America is in a sorry state of weakness, confusion, unfaithfulness and cultural captivity. ~ Os Guinness

President Bush has embarked on an eight-day tour of the continent. He hopes this one goes better than the other ones he's made recently. Obviously he's not doing that well in North America [on screen: '36% Approval'], his South American trip had a few bumps [on screen: 'Angry mobs of torch-carrying bumps'], Europe seems to think the president doesn't care what they think, but hey, who cares what they think? They could at least thank him for what he's done for their burning effigy industry. ~ Stephen Colbert

By transporting Asian species to North America, and North American species to Australia, and Australian species to Africa, and European species to Antarctica, we are, in effect, reassembling the world into one enormous supercontinent - what biologists sometimes refer to as the New Pangaea. ~ Elizabeth Kolbert

Fun fact: The United Nations building in New York City is the only place in all of North America where smoking is still permitted indoors. ~ Douglas Coupland

About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America. ~ James A. Michener

Since the beginning, the US presidents (all of European stock, of course), had been promoting slavery, extermination campaigns against the native population of North America, barbaric wars of aggression against Mexico, and other Latin American countries, the Philippines, etc. Has anything changed now? I highly doubt it. ~ Andre Vltchek

In 1776, at the point of severance, except for an infusion of words from east coast Indian languages, the English language of North America was not in any radical way dissimilar from that of what the American settlers called the mother country. ~ Robert Burchfield

But before we cue the brass section to blare "The Stars and Stripes Forever," it might be worth taking another moment of melancholy silence to mourn the thwarted reconciliation with the mother country and what might have been. Anyone who accepts the patriots' premise that all men are created equal must come to terms with the fact that the most obvious threat to equality in eighteenth-century North America was not taxation without representation but slavery. Parliament would abolish slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty years before President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. A return to the British fold in 1776 might have freed American slaves three decades sooner, which is what, a generation and a half? Was independence for some of us more valuable than freedom for all of us? As the former slave Frederick Douglass put it in an Independence Day speech in 1852, "This is your Fourth of July, not mine. ~ Sarah Vowell

My focus is that firearms are handled safely and that we can continue to enjoy them here in North America. ~ Steve Kanaly

I have 52 first cousins. My mom and dad were the only two to move to North America, so I've got deep family there, but I'm a California kid. ~ Donal Logue

Not that there wasn't still plenty of subduing to do here in North America. "Even within our own limits, the savage still lights his death fires, to appease the wrath of an idol," he points out. What's worse, to the "north, there is an immense region of palpable darkness." (Hi, Canada!) ~ Sarah Vowell

We're all already aware of boobies; it is the general state of most people in North America! THANKS, MEDIA AND THE MALE GAZE ~ Ryan North

Most people don't know how underpaid and often ill-equipped urban fire departments are across North America. ~ Denis Leary

First, to begin with, Mexico is North American; the one that is using wrong the term is United States. United States is not North America. North America is Mexico, United States, and Canada. ~ Vicente Fox

War has generally had grave and fateful consequences for the American monetary and financial system. We have seen that the Revolutionary War occasioned a mass of depreciated fiat paper, worthless Continentals, a huge public debt, and the beginnings of central banking in the Bank of North America. ~ Murray Rothbard

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy's back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down.

"Our duel," Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, "will represent the struggle our nation's currently engaged in."

"Please, we both know you're just going for home team advantage."

"You wound me, Sam. I can't help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field." He did a quick hamstring stretch. "Suck it up."

"Fine," I said, "then I get the handicap."

"Sam, you're Texas. Texas always gets the handicap."

"I'm Team Texas again?"

He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them.

I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. "Shiny."

Ramon snorted. "Classic. Check out the gullwing doors."

"Fine. Classic Shiny."

Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy's cup into the Dumpster. "Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood."

"A car is to get you from place to place. That's it."

Ramon shook his head at my ignorance.

"Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico."

"It's Team South America," he said.

"You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?"

"Yeah, but I have the whole contin ~ Lish McBride

If people think we can draw a circle around North America and that we can be an independent island of energy, that's not realistic. This is a world market for oil, for refined products, and increasingly, for natural gas. ~ Richard Kinder

Mass transportation is doomed to failure in North America because a person's car is the only place where he can be alone and think. ~ Marshall McLuhan

North America makes a ton of movies and there's a ton of movies that are exceptional. ~ Joel Edgerton

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York - and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Turkey tail mushrooms have been used to treat various maladies for hundreds of years in Asia, Europe, and by indigenous peoples in North America. Records of turkey tail brewed as medicinal tea date from the early 15th century, during the Ming Dynasty in China. ~ Paul Stamets

Christianity has roughly 20 percent of its followers in Africa, 20 percent in Asia, 20 percent in Europe, 20 percent in North America, and 20 percent in South America. Every other major religion has at least 80 percent of its followers concentrated on one continent. ~ J.D. Greear

I lived in New York City back in the 1980s, which is when the Bordertown series was created. New York was a different place then -- dirtier, edgier, more dangerous, but also in some ways more exciting. The downtown music scene was exploding -- punk and folk music were everywhere -- and it wasn't as expensive to live there then, so a lot of young artists, musicians, writers, etc. etc. were all living and doing crazy things in scruffy neighborhoods like the East Village.

I was a Fantasy Editor for a publishing company back then -- but in those days, "fantasy" to most people meant "imaginary world" books, like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. A number of the younger writers in the field, however, wanted to create a branch of fantasy that was rooted in contemporary, urban North America, rather than medieval or pastoral Europe. I'd already been working with some of these folks (Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, etc.), who were writing novels that would become the foundations for the current Urban Fantasy field. At the time, these kinds of stories were considered so strange and different, it was actually hard to get them into print.

When I was asked by a publishing company to create a shared-world anthology for Young Adult readers, I wanted to create an Urban Fantasy setting that was something like a magical version of New York...but I didn't want it to actually be New York. I want it to be any city and every city -- a place that anyone from anywhere could go to or rela ~ Terri Windling

The difference between the genius of the British constitution, which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies, cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries. ~ Adam Smith

The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens' arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion). ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Major theme of the book [ Hotels of North America], from my point of view: what is persona, what is self, in the digital sphere, and/or what is the effect of it on self in a prolonged interaction. ~ Rick Moody

. . . take cover North America, I am attracted to someone. ~ Jeni Olin

My scientific career has developed on three continents: Asia, Europe and North America. ~ Susumu Tonegawa

I knew that the wall was the main thing in Quebec, and had cost a great deal of money ... In fact, these are the only remarkable walls we have in North America, though we have a good deal of Virginia fence, it is true. ~ Henry David Thoreau

If my life be spared, nothing shall stop me short of visiting every nation of Indians on the Continent of North America. ~ George Catlin

In North America, the greatest threat to the Jewish people is not the external force of antisemitism, but the internal forces of apathy, inertia and ignorance of our own heritage. ~ Michael Steinhardt

Most independent filmmakers in Britain and North America work for commercial crews and then have their own projects when they've got enough money saved up to do so. ~ Ann Macbeth

Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. ~ Charles Dickens

In fact, the gravest obstacle to the restoration of civilization in North America is universal suffrage. Letting everybody vote makes no sense. Obviously they are no good at it. The whole idea smacks of the fumble-witted idealism of a high-school Marxist society. ~ Fred Reed

A story about the Jack Spratts of medicine [was] told recently by Dr. Charles H. Best, co-discoverer of insulin. He had been invited to a conference of heart specialists in North America. On the eve of the meeting, out of respect for the fat-clogs-the-arteries theory, the delegates sat down to a special banquet served without fats. It was unpalatable but they all ate it as a duty. Next morning Best looked round the breakfast room and saw these same specialists - all in the 40-60 year old, coronary age group - happily tucking into eggs, bacon, buttered toast and coffee with cream. ~ Richard Mackarness

You know, now there is always half of the new Quebecers who are going to the English CEGEP. After that, often they are going to work in English. So for us, that is so important. We are a real minority in North America. Two per cent of the population are French-speaking. We have to protect this reality. ~ Pauline Marois

Milwaukee has more bars and more churches per capita than almost any other city in North America. I'm not sure if there's a relationship in that. Does too much prayer cause you to drink? Or vice versa? ~ Nanci Rathbun

In North America, the medium-to-large publishers are generally confining investment to enhancements, upgrades and opportunities for incremental capacity and efficiency improvements, while among the smaller newspapers, there continues to be interest in systems that can provide a significant boost in production capabilities. ~ Eric Bell

The sad truth is that, within the public sphere, within the collective consciousness of the general populace, most of the history of Indians in North America has been forgotten, and what we are left with is a series of historical artifacts and, more importantly, a series of entertainments. As a series of artifacts, Native history is somewhat akin to a fossil hunt in which we find a skull in Almo, Idaho, a thigh bone on the Montana plains, a tooth near the site of Powhatan's village in Virginia, and then, assuming that all the parts are from the same animal, we guess at the size and shape of the beast. As a series of entertainments, Native history is an imaginative cobbling together of fears and loathings, romances and reverences, facts and fantasies into a cycle of creative performances, in Technicolor and 3-D, with accompanying soft drinks, candy, and popcorn.
In the end, who really needs the whole of Native history when we can watch the movie? ~ Thomas King

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I guess the prime example is in North America there's a thing where if there's no opportunity to move forward with the puck, then a [hockey] player is told to dump the puck into the other zone. Just give up the puck and dump it in. Give it to the other team. And to the Soviet mentality in coaching, it just doesn't make any sense. If you're a skilled player, why are you going to give the puck away to the other team? Just give it away, right? ~ Gabe Polsky

Living here in North America - I have been Americanized. When I go back home now, there are things that I have far less tolerance for in South Africa. We've come such a long way in terms of race relations and the economy as well as people's willingness to move on. There are still a lot of things that are frustrating about being in South Africa. ~ Kandyse McClure

North America was ready for something other than a vanilla cooking show and we were providing the double dark chocolate fudge. ~ Nadia Giosia

One of my recent acquisitions. It is called a medicine bag, from one of the native tribes of North America. A fascinating people, highly skilled in the use of plants' power. They too understand nature's essence as divine. So much so that they do not think it is man's place to own the land at all. Imagine that - think of all the wars we would have missed! ~ Maryrose Wood

We should reconsider greater integration of North America to achieve a region that is more competitive and capable of creating more jobs. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

Ignorance has never been the problem. The problem was and continues to be unexamined confidence in western civilization and the unwarranted certainty of Christianity. And arrogance. Perhaps it is unfair to judge the past by the present, but it is also necessary.

If nothing else, an examination of the past - and of the present, for that matter - can be instructive. It shows us that there is little shelter and little gain for Native peoples in doing nothing. So long as we possess one element of sovereignty, so long as we possess one parcel of land, North America will come for us, and the question we have to face is how badly we wish to continue to pursue the concepts of sovereignty and self-determination. How important is it for us to maintain protected communal homelands? Are our traditions and languages worth the cost of carrying on the fight? Certainly the easier and more expedient option is simply to step away from who we are and who we wish to be, sell what we have for cash, and sink into the stewpot of North America.

With the rest of the bones.

No matter how you frame Native history, the one inescapable constant is that Native people in North America have lost much. We've given away a great deal, we've had a great deal taken from us, and, if we are not careful, we will continue to lose parts of ourselves - as Indians, as Cree, as Blackfoot, as Navajo, as Inuit - with each generation. But this need not happen. Native cultures aren't static. ~ Thomas King

I thought that when they said Atlantic Charter, that meant me and everybody in Africa and Asia and everywhere. But it seems like the Atlantic is an ocean that does not touch anywhere but North America and Europe. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Nova Scotia as a British colony also came into being as another result of these adventurous British expeditions to North America in the reign of James I. ~ Harry Johnston

Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world's finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you've been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You've reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun ~ Jane Taylor Starwood

As a Jew and a psychologist, I understand the stress that religious communities feel in connection with questioning of circumcision ... I raise these questions out of deep caring and compassion, for our community generally, and our male infants in particular. We are inflicting, generally, unrecognized harm with circumcision, and the perpetuation of this harm is far greater a concern than the discomfort that comes from confronting the advisability of this practice. Many Jews who do not circumcise in North America, South America, Europe, and Israel support this view. ~ Ronald Goldman

I was born in Sarnia, Ontario; a small town, it's where oil was pretty much discovered in North America. ~ Chris Hadfield

Those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more ~ Charles Dickens

Bitumen is junk energy. A joule, or unit of energy, invested in extracting and processing bitumen returns only four to six joules in the form of crude oil. In contrast, conventional oil production in North America returns about 15 joules. Because almost all of the input energy in tar sands production comes from fossil fuels, the process generates significantly more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production. ~ Thomas Homer-Dixon

Where would the would-be "purists" draw the line between native and alien elements? This whole planet was altered by the hand of man.
A birder who scorned the alien Sky Larks might stand on San Juan and salute the native eagles . . . but some of those eagles had been released here; and they were living on an unnaturally high population of rabbits, from another continent, introduced here. The rabbits, in turn, were probably feeding on alien plants from other lands that were naturalized here - if the San Juan roadsides were anything like all the other roadsides in North America. And we birders of European descent were introduced here also, a few generations back. Even my Native American friends of the night before could claim to be "native" in only a relative sense; their ancestors had come across the Bering land bridge from Asia. None of us is native here. ~ Kenn Kaufman

I cannot tell you how angry it makes me to hear people from North America tell me how much they love England, how beautiful England is, with its traditions. All they see is some frumpy, wrinkled-up person passing by in a carriage waving at a crowd. But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans: no motherland, no fatherland, no gods, no mounds of earth for holy ground, no excess of love which might lead to the things that an excess of love sometimes brings, and worst and most painful of all, no tongue. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Greetings, conversationalists across the fruited plain, this is Rush Limbaugh, the most dangerous man in America, with the largest hypothalamus in North America, serving humanity simply by opening my mouth, destined for my own wing in the Museum of Broadcasting, executing everything I do flawlessly with zero mistakes, doing this show with half my brain tied behind my back just to make it fair because I have talent on loan from ... God. Rush Limbaugh. A man. A legend. A way of life. ~ Rush Limbaugh

It is not the actual greatness of national wealth, but its continual increase, which occasions a rise in the wages of labour. It is not, accordingly, in the richest countries, but in the most thriving, or in those which are growing rich the fastest, that the wages of labour are highest. England is certainly, in the present times, a much richer country than any part of North America. The wages of labour, however, are much higher in North America than in any part of England. ~ Adam Smith

You can't hate the roots of the tree without ending up hating the tree. You can't hate your origin without ending up hating yourself. You can't hate the land, your motherland, the place that you come from, and we can't hate Africa without ending up hating ourselves. The Black man in the Western Hemisphere - North America, Central America, South America, and in the Caribbean - is the best example of how one can be made, skillfully, to hate himself that you can find anywhere on this earth. ~ Malcolm X

As we sit here, continents are adrift, like leaves on a pond. GPS tracking shows North America & Europe currently moving apart at the same rate your fingernail grows, or about two yards in a human lifetime. ~ Bill Bryson

Covertly invest into non-White areas, invest in ghetto abortion clinics. Help to raise
money for free abortions, in primarily non-White areas. Perhaps abortion
clinic syndicates throughout North America, that primarily operate in
non-White areas and receive tax support, should be promoted. ~ Margaret Sanger

I live in a 'sky island,' a unique mountain valley environment where half the animal species of North America can be found. ~ Nancy Farmer

In order that he might rob a neighbour whom he had promised to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel and red men scalped each other by the great lakes of North America. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

It will be interesting to see if Seoul's urban vocabulary of numerous, ever-present interactive screens will translate to other cities such as Beijing, London, and New York. It will also be intriguing to see if smaller cities and towns adopt aspects of Seoul's screen culture throughout Asia, Europe, and North America. ~ Jan Chipchase

The demand for beef in Canada remains strong because I think people in America, in North America, know that we have a very strong food safety system and that our food is safe to eat. ~ Ann Veneman

The sunset was a massive canvas of gold and orange, green and rose, gray and indigo and blue. It reminded him of beaches on the North American west coast, except there were no vendors clogging the place and no advertising drones muttering about the joys of commerce. ~ James S.A. Corey

The Tyrannosaurus rex was a creature of the jungle. She lived in the deepest forests and swamps of North America, not long after it had broken off from the ancient continent of Laurasia. Her territory encompassed more than five hundred square miles, and it stretched from the shores of the ancient Niobrara inland sea to the foothills of the newly minted Rocky Mountains. ~ Douglas Preston

I think it's just a coincidence that the North American teams are out. Most of us here have been playing in North America for a long time. Our knowledge of the big ice has been world championships here and there, same for the Canadians and the Americans. I don't see it as an advantage. ~ Daniel Alfredsson

I decided to write the book I wanted to read ~ David A. Lottes

This is sacred space.
Libation . . . instead of pouring water on the ground, I pour words on the page.
I begin with this libation in honor of all of those unknown and known spirits who surround us. I acknowledge the origins of this land where I am seated while writing this introduction. This land was inhabited by Indigenous people, the very first people to inhabit this land, who lived here for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived and were unfortunately unable to cohabitate without dominating, enslaving, raping, terrorizing, stealing from, relocating, and murder- ing the millions of members of Indigenous nations throughout Turtle Island, which is now known as North America. I write libation to those millions of Indigenous women, men, and children; and those millions of kidnapped and enslaved African women, men, and children whose genocide, confiscated land, centuries of free labor, forced migration, traumatic memories of rape, and sweat, tears, and blood make up the very fiber and foundation of all of the Americas and the Caribbean. ~ Aishah Shahidah Simmons

In a future that portends stronger and more-frequent hurricanes striking North America's Atlantic coast, ferocious winds will pummel tall, unsteady structures. Some will topple, knocking down others. Like a gap in the forest when a giant tree falls, new growth will rush in. Gradually, the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one. ~ Alan Weisman

Most Europeans have no idea how wild life can be in north America. ~ Tom G. Palmer

The Sinic [Chinese] Civilization originated in the Yellow River Valley. The nature of the challenge which started it is unknown but it is clear that the conditions were severe rather than easy.

The Mayan Civilization originated from the challenge of a tropical fores; the Andean from that of a bleak plateau....

The Indic Civilization in Ceylon flourished in the rainless half of the island.....
New England, whose European colonists have played a predominant part in the history of North America, is one of the bleakest and most barren parts of the continent....

The natives of Nyasaland, where life is easy, remained primitive savages down to the advent of invaders from a distant and inclement Europe. ~ Arnold Joseph Toynbee