Humanity, in the desperate attempt to fit 8 billion or more people on the planet and give them a higher standard of living, is at risk of pushing the rest of life off the globe. — E. O. Wilson
The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident. — David Rockefeller
I believe that human overpopulation is the fundamental problem on Earth Today" and, "We humans have become a disease, the Humanpox — David Foreman
Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organise peace on this planet — Albert Einstein
Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war. — Robert McNamara
The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. — Thomas Malthus
Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs. — Doug Coupland
Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs. — Douglas Coupland
The human race will be the cancer of the planet. — Julian Huxley
There are 6.6 billion people on the planet today. With organic farming we could only feed four billion of them. Which two billion would volunteer to die? — Norman Borlaug
Our recent divergence from a small population explains another important fact, one that every human ought to know: we are a genetically homogenous species. — Daniel Lieberman
The world's population will multiply more rapidly than the available food supply. — Thomas Malthus
We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves. — Arnold J. Toynbee
World Population Quotes
Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment — David Attenborough
No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid — Michelle Alexander
The greatest contraceptive one can have in the developing world is the knowledge that your children will live — Julius Nyerere
I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots.
Divide the world into regional groups as a transitional stage to world government. Populations will more readily abandon their national loyalty to a vague regional loyalty than they will for a world authority. Later the regions can be brought together all the way into a single world dictatorship. — Joseph Stalin
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. — Kenneth E. Boulding
Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today — Jacques Yves Cousteau
All human unhappiness comes from not facing reality squarely, exactly as it is.
Though Muslims make up roughly 25 percent of the world’s population, they comprise 92.9 percent of terrorists on the FBI list. — Gad Saad
The time is coming when the pressure of population on the means of subsistence will be felt here as it is now felt in Europe and Asia. Then will the world enter upon a new stage of its history - the final competition of races, for which the Anglo-Saxon is being schooled. — Josiah Strong
Without the Nile, there would be no one in Egypt. It may be a huge country, but the vast majority of its 84 million population lives within a few miles of the Nile. Measured by the area in which people dwell, Egypt is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. — Tim Marshall
The first wave of the bioterrorism is a respiratory virus that spread across the world, and affected relatively few people—about one percent of many populations—but generated great fear. — Peter A. McCullough
Population Quotes
As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome. — Noam Chomsky
We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. — Enoch Powell
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.
Cause the registration of all firearms on some pretext, with the view of confiscating them and leaving the population defenseless. — Unknown Author
The whole plan of extermination was nothing less than a cold blooded, calculated political measure, having for its object the annihilation of a superior element in the population, which might prove troublesome, and to this must be added the motive of greed. — Fridtjof Nansen
Southern girls are God's gift to the entire male population. There is absolutely no woman finer than one raised below the mason-dixon line and once you go southern may the good Lord help you - you never go back — Kenny Chesney
Being naked approaches being revolutionary; going barefoot is mere populism. — John Updike
But the Jews will also be believers, so you can say that all the saints, both gentiles and Jews, will go into the millennial kingdom and populate the earth. — Tim LaHaye
We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue. — Walter Cronkite
The Delaware Estuary has sustained a human population for thousands of years, but by the end of the 19th Century, increased population and industrialization had transformed much of the upper Estuary watershed. — Jim Gerlach
Population Growth Quotes
Budget consolidation and economic growth are two sides of the same coin. — Angela Merkel
Ireland added around 2.75% to its population this year through immigration - in a single year. That means that 1 in every 36 people you see is a new arrival. You need not be particularly anti-immigration to recognise that’s an enormous number. — Philip Pilkington
In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder. — Stephen Hawking
It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal.
Frankly, I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. — Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Child labor perpetuates poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, population growth and other social problems. — Kailash Satyarthi
...the chief cause for the impending collapse of the world - the cause sufficient in and by itself - is the enormous growth of the human population: the human flood. The worst enemy of life is too much life: the excess of human life. — Pentti Linkola
Unexpected kindness is the most powerful, least costly, and most underrated agent of human change.
As a woman leader, I thought I brought a different kind of leadership. I was interested in women's issues, in bringing down the population growth rate... as a woman, I entered politics with an additional dimension - that of a mother. — Benazir Bhutto
The most important benefit of population size and growth is the increase it brings to the stock of useful knowledge. Minds matter economically as much as, or more than, hands or mouths. — Julian Simon
No circumstance would prevent over-population so effectually as a general raising of the customary standard of comfort among the poorer classes. If they had accustomed themselves to a more comfortable style of living, they would use every effort not again to sink below it. — Millicent Fawcett
Rapid population growth and technological innovation, combined with our lack of understanding about how the natural systems of which we are a part work, have created a mess. — David Suzuki
Population Problem Quotes
We have a problem that we have to fix in El Salvador - We have been sending migrants to the United States and elsewhere since the '80s and now we have almost a quarter of our population living abroad. — Nayib Bukele
The problem is some of the populism on both the far left and the far right, it can make a Tweet but not make a policy. And, you know, when you are dealing with issues that are as important and serious as this, I understand why people search for simple solutions. — Tony Blair
The aging and decreasing population is a serious problem in many developed countries today. In Japan's case, these demographic changes are taking place at a more rapid pace than any other country has ever experienced. — Toshihiko Fukui
The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one of two things: either love, or a call for love.
Those who fail to see that population growth and climate change are two sides of the same coin are either ignorant or hiding from the truth. These two huge environmental problems are inseparable and to discuss one while ignoring the other is irrational. — James Lovelock
Another growing problem for the party is its ability to feed the populated. More than 40% of arable land is now polluted or has thinning topsoil. — Tim Marshall
People often ask, "What is the single most important environmental population problem facing the world today?" A flip answer would be, "The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem! — Jared Diamond
Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.
There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort. — Norman Borlaug
Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavour, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally? — Albert Allen Bartlett
I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population — David Attenborough
The problem of numbers can only be dealt with by recognizing that people have a fundamental right to economic security. If you provide them with economic and environmental security, the population will stabilize itself. — Vandana Shiva
Overpopulation Quotes
Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. — Isaac Asimov
Cannibalism is a radical but realistic solution to the problem of overpopulation. — Prince Philip
There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water. — Paul R. Ehrlich
The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
The way to do great science is to stay away from subjects that are overpopulated, and go to the frontiers. — James D. Watson
Overpopulation is perhaps the biggest problem facing us, and immigration is part of that problem. It has to be addressed. — David R. Brower
When humanity measures wealth by love, truth and wisdom we will all be rich.
In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation. — Prince Philip
When you consider the overpopulation in this world ... homosexuality is completely underrated in this society. — Doug Stanhope
Overpopulation in the United States will become THE single greatest issue facing Americans in the 21st century. We either solve it proactively or nature will solve it brutally for us via water shortages, energy crisis, air pollution, gridlock, species extinction and worse. — Frosty Wooldridge
Environmental degradation, overpopulation, refugees, narcotics, terrorism, world crime movements, and organized crime are worldwide problems that don't stop at a nation's borders. — Warren Christopher
Increasing Population Quotes
In Washington State, the immigrant population has grown by 42 percent in the five years between 2000 and 2005 - which is an increase from 8 percent to 10.6 percent of the overall population - and the jobless rate in the state has hit a 6 year low. — Dave Reichert
Since 1850, burning of fossil fuels, coal, oil and natural gas has increased 100 times to produce energy as the world has industrialized to serve the world's more than 6 billion and growing population. — John Olver
There's no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we're not addressing the one single factor putting more pressure on the eco system than any other - namely the ever-increasing population. — Chris Packham
One thing that defines humans: if we can imagine it, we can do it.
During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago — Norman Borlaug
Tobacco control is clearly a number one priority in Europe, not only aimed at men, particularly the male populations of Central and Eastern Europe, but increasingly targeted towards women, especially in Northern Europe. — Peter Boyle
One must take draconian measures of demographic reduction against the will of the populations. Reducing the birth rate has proved to be impossible or insufficient. One must therefore increase the mortality rate. How? By natural means. Famine and sickness — Robert McNamara
The last of the human freedoms - to choose ones attitude in any given set of circumstances.
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. — Thomas Malthus
A successful society is characterized by a rising living standard for its population, increasing investment in factories and basic infrastructure, and the generation of additional surplus, which is invested in generating new discoveries in science and technology. — Robert Trout
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny. — Jared Diamond
Living in the midst of abundance we have the greatest difficulty in seeing that the supply of natural wealth is limited and that the constant increase of population is destined to reduce the American standard of living unless we deal more sanely with our resources. — Wallace Carothers
Population Density Quotes
During the age of Atlantis, the low population density and the resulting purity of the earth's aura, made conditions ideal for discovering secret meditation techniques. — Frederick Lenz
I was in Taiwan recently and was completely amazed by the density of population. It makes New York look like no one is out on the streets. — Richard Meier
I would hate to see the state of Wisconsin make another mistake and locate another casino in a high-density population area — John Warren Kindt
The disadvantages of a decentralized, spread out urban area are tremendous, and the environmental damage of urban sprawl cannot be ignored. As a large city, Tokyo must be used more efficiently and the population density increased. — Minoru Mori
Less cars on the road means productivity and jobs growth, as it allows for the more efficient movement of goods and services and encourages greater urban population density. — Anthony Albanese
In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City. — P. J. O'Rourke
The density of human population combined with the development of powerful and largely unconstrained technology has given us the problems of the anthropocene and the serious possibility of self-caused extinction. — Dale Jamieson
In Europe, it's common to hear about young professionals living with their parents. With the continent's high rents and taxes and its population density, it makes sense. — Rosecrans Baldwin
By the mid 1970s, the great downtown bookstores had begun to disappear as their customers migrated from city to suburb where population density was too thin to support major backlist retailers. — Jason Epstein
Spend time alone in areas of low population density, where you can feel the stillness. Go out into the desert or up into the mountains or to the ocean where there aren't too many people. — Frederick Lenz
Of all the advantages of farming, the most fundamental and consequential is that more calories allow people to have bigger families, leading to population growth. But larger populations and their effects on human settlement patterns also fostered new kinds of infectious diseases. Without a doubt, these diseases have been and remain the most devastating of the evolutionary mismatches caused by the Agricultural Revolution. — Daniel Lieberman
This not a war. This is a systematic massacre of civilians with destruction of a densely populated area to make it uninhabitable; by cowards hiding behind technology. This is ethnic cleansing. A war is human fighting human. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
One-fourth of humanity must be eliminated from the social body. We are in charge of God's selection process for planet Earth. He selects, we destroy. We are the riders of the pale horse, Death. — Barbara Marx Hubbard
Every politician, clergyman, educator, or physician, in short, anyone dealing with human individuals, is bound to make grave mistakes if he ignores these two great truths of population zoology: (1) no two individuals are alike, and (2) both environment and genetic endowment make a contribution to nearly every trait. — Ernst Mayr
We receive reports now on a daily basis from our own people on the ground in Darfur on widespread atrocities and grave violations of human rights against the civilian population. — Jan Egeland
No country that permits firearms to be widely and randomly distributed among its population - especially firearms that are capable of wounding and killing human beings - can expect to escape violence, and a great deal of violence. — Margaret Mead
It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended. — Boutros Boutros-Ghali
This planet might be able to support perhaps as many as half a billion people who could live a sustainable life in relative comfort. Human populations must be greatly diminished, and as quickly as possible to limit further environmental damage. — Eric Pianka
Right now over 70 percent of the world population is convinced that something serious has to be done about the dangers facing the planet. ...Most of humanity wants to know how to make the change. It's one of those tipping-point times where things can change unbelievably fast. — Paul Ray
I’d like to see Manhattan underwater. I’d like to see when the human population plummets and there are no more high rises, because nobody’s buying them. I’m excited about that. Money and desire—all that is going to collapse, and wild green grasses are going to take over. — Hayao Miyazaki
If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels. — Prince Philip
One way to identify the optimal human diet, pretty obvious to all but fundamentalist reductionists, is to survey and compare populations as they already exist, and see what they eat and how healthy they are. — T. Colin Campbell
Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms — Jeffrey Sachs
The human population can no longer be allowed to grow in the same old uncontrollable way. If we do not take charge of our population size, then nature will do it for us and it is the poor people of the world who will suffer most — David Attenborough
The United Nation's goal is to reduce population selectively by encouraging abortion, forced sterilization, and control of human reproduction, and regards two-thirds of the human population as excess baggage, with 350,000 people to be eliminated per day. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Thus will the fondest dream of Phallic science be realized: a pristine new planet populated entirely by little boy clones of great scientific entrepreneurs free to smash atoms, accelerate particles, or, if they are so moved, build pyramids -- without any social relevance or human responsibility at all. — Barbara Ehrenreich
Human use, population, and technology have reached that certain stage where mother Earth no longer accepts our presence with silence. — Dalai Lama
We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population. — Jeremy Rifkin
Still, whether we like it or not, the task of speeding up the decrease of the human population becomes increasingly urgent. — Havelock Ellis
How a man who holds the entire population of a country as his prisoners, and punishes the families of those who escape, can be admired by people who call themselves liberals is one of the many wonders of the human mind's ability to rationalize. Yet such is the case with Fidel Castro. — Thomas Sowell
The prodigious waste of human life occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food, was more than supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree, unshackled, from the constant habit of emigration. — Thomas Malthus
To this day, I enjoy nature, the luxury of undisturbed wilderness, forests, mountains, lakes, rivers and deserts and their wildlife. But I also know that the greatest danger to their perpetuity is the pressure of human population. — Norman Borlaug
Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
It was a time of madness, the sort of mad-hysteria that always presages war. There seems to be nothing left but war--when any population in any sort of a nation gets violently angry, civilization falls down and religion forsakes its hold on the consciences of human kind in such times of public madness. — Rebecca Latimer Felton
Everything we think about regarding sustainability - from energy to agriculture to manufacturing to population - has a water footprint. Almost all of the water on Earth is salt water, and the remaining freshwater supplies are split between agricultural use and human use - as well as maintaining the existing natural environment. — Jamais Cascio
There can be no real growth without healthy populations. No sustainable development without tackling disease and malnutrition. No international security without assisting crisis-ridden countries. And no hope for the spread of freedom, democracy and human dignity unless we treat health as a basic human right. — Gro Harlem Brundtland
...there is an optimal balance, depending on the manner of man's life, between the density of human population and the tolerances of nature. This balance, in the case of the United States would seem to me to have been surpassed when the American population reached, at a very maximum, two hundred million people, and perhaps a good deal less. — George F. Kennan
...Conservatives have excellent credentials to speak about human rights. By our efforts, and with precious little help from self-styled liberals, we were largely responsible for securing liberty for a substantial share of the world's population and defending it for most of the rest. — Margaret Thatcher
The AIDS epidemic, rather than being a scourge, is a welcome development in the inevitable reduction of human population... If it didn't exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent it. — David Foreman
With earth's burgeoning human population to feed we must turn to the sea with understanding and new technology. We need to farm it as we farm the land. — Jacques Yves Cousteau
Man will survive as a species for one reason: He can adapt to the destructive effects of our power-intoxicated technology and of our ungoverned population growth, to the dirt, pollution and noise of a New York or Tokyo. And that is the tragedy. It is not man the ecological crisis threatens to destroy but the quality of human life. — Rene Dubos
Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We're in for a major disaster if it isn't curbed...We have no option. If it isn't controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation and war. — Prince Philip
Costa Rica remains peacefully and firmly committed to the well- being and safety of our population. We promote a model of development based upon harmony with nature; solidarity and social inclusion; economic and trade opening; development of our human resources, and innovation. — Laura Chinchilla
As a practical matter, it is hard to think of any society in human history in which a majority population has said that as a consequence of historic wrongs, we are now going to take a big chunk of the nation's resources over a long period of time to make that right. — Barack Obama
With the world's human population now at seven billion and growing, and the demand for technology and modern conveniences increasing, we can't control all our negative impacts. But we have to find better ways to live within the limits nature and its cycles impose. — David Suzuki
Consider the problem of over-population. Rapidly mounting human numbers are pressing ever more heavily on natural resources. What is to be
done?... The annual increase of numbers should be reduced. But how? We
are given two choices -- famine, pestilence and war on the one hand,
birth control on the other. Most of us choose birth control. — Aldous Huxley
My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with it's full complement of species, returning throughout the world. — David Foreman
In Conclusion
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