Quotes About Resources

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his lttle finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

The shortage of student loans may require ... divestiture of certain sorts-stereo divestiture, automobile divestiture, three-weeks-at-the-beach divestiture.

valuable technical nutrients—cars, televisions, carpeting, computers, and refrigerators, for

The idea that commons can set and enforce limits on usage also seems improbable because it rejects the idea of humans having unbounded appetites. Ostrom

This island of Earth of ours is finite in resources, including wilderness- particularly wilderness. The dwindling worldwide reservoir of wild lands must be the concern of everyone, but especially of those of us who have been privileged to experience wildness, and thus learn its value to the individual human soul and to the spirit of mankind.

the strongest predictor of students' success is related to their social circumstances. The social, intellectual, and fiscal resources, or "capital," students bring with them into schools, whether charter or traditional, are much more important than the structure of the school or even the quality of the teachers

God never intended for an individual to solve all of life's problems. He intended for each one of us to use whatever resources and gifts He gave us to make a difference where we are.13

Robert de Balsac, ended a study on warfare with the remark that "most important of all, success in war depends on having enough money to provide whatever the enterprise needs.

Innovation ensured that each cycle normally reached a higher level than its predecessor, but innovation was normally too slow to prevent an eventual collapse within each cycle, as populations outstripped available resources.

That is to say, every putative physical transformation, to be performed in a given time with given resources or under any other conditions, is either – impossible because it is forbidden by the laws of nature; or – achievable, given the right knowledge.

the assumption that progress in a hypothetical rapacious civilization is limited by raw materials rather than by knowledge.

while humans transform inhospitable environments like the biosphere into support systems for themselves. And, while every other organism is a factory for converting resources of a fixed type into more such organisms, human bodies (including their brains) are factories for transforming anything into anything that the laws of nature allow. They are 'universal constructors'.

most important distinction in the investment world does not separate individuals and institutions; the most important distinction divides those investors with the ability to make high quality active management decisions from those investors without active management expertise. Few institutions and even fewer individuals exhibit the ability and commit the resources to produce risk-adjusted excess returns.

Every time we burn a fossil fuel, we're releasing the energy of sunlight stored millions of years ago.

I think capitalism is a good thing. The only problem with capitalism is that it destroys the planet, and that it's based on growth. I mean apart from those two little details it's got a lot to be said in its favour.

If you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell those same people they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they already know what they are going to discover.105 That's pretty much the system we have now.

The treasury is based upon mining, the army upon the treasury; he who has army and treasury may conquer the whole wide earth.

Capital, then, is not simply money. It is not even just wealth that can be turned into money. But neither is it just the use of political power to help one use one's money to make more money.

For me, this is exactly what's so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money—and then tell us that it's only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money.

In America, the fifties were the heyday of a certain ideal of the one-income patriarchal family, and among the more affluent, the ideal was often achieved. Women with no access to their own income or resources obviously had no choice but to spend a great deal of time and energy understanding what their menfolk thought was going on.

To be fair, they don't deny that human beings are quirky and imaginative creatures - they just seem to reason that, in the long run, this fact makes very little difference. Those who don't follow an optimal pathway for the use of resources are destined for the ash heap of history.

if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them.

The ultimate question of human history, as we'll see, is not our equal access to material resources (land, calories, means of production), much though these things are obviously important, but our equal capacity to contribute to decisions about how to live together.

For me, this is exactly what's so pernicious about the morality of debt: the way that financial imperatives constantly try to reduce us all, despite ourselves, to the equivalent of pillagers, eyeing the world simply for what can be turned into money -- and then tell us that it's only those who are willing to see the world as pillagers who deserve access to the resources required to pursue anything in life other than money.