Quotes About Impact

If we knew how many species we've already eradicated, we might be more motivated to protect those that still survive.

Homo sapiens held the record among all organisms for driving the most plant and animal species to their extinctions. We have the dubious distinction of being the deadliest species in the annals of biology.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fewer than 5,000 British officials, about 40,000–70,000 British soldiers, and perhaps another 100,000 British business people, hangers-on, wives and children were sufficient to conquer and rule up to 300 million Indians.

In the century following the Cook expedition, the most fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand were taken from their previous inhabitants by European settlers. The native population dropped by up to 90 per cent and the survivors were subjected to a harsh regime of racial oppression. For the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never recovered.

H}umankind ascended to the top so quickly that the ecosystem was not given time to adjust. Moreover, humans themselves failed to adjust.

Talvez se mais pessoas estivessem cientes da Primeira e da Segunda Onda de Extinção, seriam menos indiferentes à Terceira Onda, da qual fazem parte. Se soubéssemos quantas espécies já erradicamos, poderíamos ser mais motivados a proteger as que ainda sobrevivem.

People were unable to fathom the full consequences of their decisions.

off, directly or indirectly, hundreds of species of birds, insects, snails and other local inhabitants. From there, the wave of extinction moved gradually to the east, the south and the north, into the heart of the Pacific Ocean, obliterating on its way the unique fauna of Samoa and Tonga (1200 BC); the Marquis Islands (AD 1); Easter Island, the Cook Islands and Hawaii (AD 500); and finally New Zealand (AD 1200).

humains ont toujours excellé à inventer des outils, beaucoup moins à en faire un usage avisé. Il est plus facile de manipuler un fleuve en construisant un barrage qu'il ne l'est de prédire toutes les conséquences complexes que cela aura pour le système écologique plus large. De même sera-t-il plus facile de rediriger le flux de nos esprits que d'en deviner l'impact sur notre psychologie personnelle ou nos systèmes sociaux.

The journey of the first humans to Australia is one of the most important events in history, at least as important as Columbus' journey to America or the Apollo II expedition to the moon.

Mucho antes de la revolución industrial, Homo sapiens ostentaba el récord entre todos los organismos por provocar la extinción del mayor número de especies de plantas y animales.

Rather, cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them.

Thirdly, mass extinctions akin to the archetypal Australian decimation occurred again and again in the ensuing millennia – whenever people settled another part of the Outer World.

Sin embargo, el crecimiento económico no salvará al ecosistema global; justo lo contrario, porque es la causa de la crisis ecológica. Y el crecimiento económico no resolverá la disrupción tecnológica: esta se afirma en la invención de tecnologías cada vez más disruptivas.

A globalização tornou os habitantes de um país extremamente dependentes de mercados situados noutros pontos do mundo, mas a automatização pode desfazer grandes porções desta rede comercial, com consequências desastrosas para os elos mais fracos.

Desde una perspectiva evolutiva estricta, la que mide el éxito por el número de copias de ADN, la revolución agrícola fue una maravillosa bendición para las gallinas, las vacas, los cerdos y las ovejas.

At the time of the Cognitive Revolution, the planet was home to about 200 genera of large terrestrial mammals weighing over fifty kilograms. At the time of the Agricultural Revolution, only about a hundred remained. Homo sapiens drove to extinction about half of the planet's big beasts long before humans invented the wheel, writing or iron tools. This

if humankind doesn't annihilate itself meanwhile – the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth.

Ever more scholars see cultures as a kind of mental infection or parasite, with humans as its unwitting host. Organic parasites, such as viruses, live inside the body of their hosts. They multiply and spread from one host to the other, feeding off their hosts, weakening them, and sometimes even killing them. As long as the hosts live long enough to pass along the parasite, it cares little about the condition of its host. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. They

What's the point of doing or experiencing anything if nobody knows about it, and if it doesn't contribute something to the global exchange of information?

We should never underestimate human stupidity, it's one of the most powerful forces in history.

We cannot explain the choices that history makes, but we can say something very important about them: history's choices are not made for the benefit of humans. There

Perhaps if more people were aware of the First Wave and Second Wave extinctions, they'd be less nonchalant about the Third Wave they are part of.

Un virus español puede abrirse camino hasta el Congo o Tahití en menos de veinticuatro horas. Por lo tanto, no habría sido descabellado esperar un infierno epidemiológico, con un envite tras otro de enfermedades letales.